Page 1067 - Wrongdoing News Today

People might be watching to say what happens in a situation like this legally speaking when you have the branches of government at odds and a private citizen, a government worker potentially with an explosive complaint against the chief executive. legally speaking, how could this play out? >> we have federal laws that encourage citizens and federal government employees to blow the whistle, to talk about something that they see illegal and to report it, and then we give those people protections. ...

Of what you know about the ukraine part of the story? >> yeah, what we know is whats in the story. its frustrating to people. were trying to be careful in making sure we understand each of these details here as we go. a key piece of this is understanding that that whistle-blower complaint does follow by a very short period, only 2 1/2 week, that conversation, that phone call, that president trump had with the president of ukraine. and as you laid out these other dots, its clearly happening sort ...

If the department of justice is taking the position youre not covered. and, you know, the people who do come forward, theyre assured that if they do, their complaint will get to congress. and so a lot is riding on this if those promises are hollow, then it means these important sources of information about wrongdoing are going to dry up. >> congressman adam schiff, chairman of the house intelligence committee, sir, thank you so much for your time tonight. i know this is an ongoing fast-developin...

Rucker is the chief. were also fortunate to be joined by jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and pentagon notably former chief counsel to the house intel committee. jeremy bash please let our viewers know what whistle blower status is supposed to mean in the law, how its been enshrined and protected in the law to come up the chain with protections built in. >> the law is crystal clear, brian. if you are an intelligence community professional and observe wrongdoing and you on serve it i...

Determine has been based on what the inspector general and the director of national intelligence have told us. and dividing sort of between the lines. i can tell you this with certainty, that is the inspector general found this complaint to be credible after doing an investigation. found it to be urgent and found something else which has not really been focused on and that is that this does not involve a policy disagreement. so a lot of people have been speculating, does this involve a president...

Clearly some sense of wrongdoing by the whistle-blower against the president, now we know that that centers on withdrew craukr. i think were kind of getting closer to the nexus of these facts but right now, all we know is what we put in the paper and thats all we were prepared to report tonight. >> and shane, there has been some reporting from various news organizations over the course of the day that maybe the whistle-blowers complaint isnt about one thing that was done by the president, maybe ...

Information about wrongdoing from congress.n the second major objection that we learned about that the acting director raised is that somehow the fact that the person complained about is outside of the intelligence community somehow means that the statute does not apply, the ho whistleblower statute does not apply in this case. again, that is completely wrong. the statute applies to any intelligence activity covered by the operations of the director of national intelligence. and so it doesnt mat...

Rudy tonight on cnn speculating this was a democrat holdover deep inside administration. used the phrase deep state again as everyone was expecting. is he allowed to talk about whistle-blowers that way? is there not some equivalent of witness intimidation in these cases? >> i think clearly they want to silence anybody who sees wrongdoing by the president or by somebody at the white house. they want to silence that person. they want to cover things up. but id like to see the leadership of the nat...

What we know is that acting director maguire raised at least two objections with regard to the analysis that the inspector general had applied. one, that he thinks that somehow theres a privilege which would stand in the way of basically turning over this particular complaint to the intelligence committee. i think thats hogwash. theres no such privilege that would stand in the way. and certainly theres no privilege that would shield information about wrongdoing from congress. the second major ob...

Unusual aspect about this. >> whats your understanding of the state of a congressional probe into some of the same topics that you cover? the president discussing with a foreign leader an investigation for political purposes into the bidens and dispatching his personal criminal attorney to meet with ukrainian government officials to reopen what sounds like a case that had been completed with you write no evidence of wrongdoing by mr. biden or his son. >> so this is actually an area that even bef...