Serious Stuff for Sunday Part One: Secrets Undone

There's been a lot happening lately so I'm trying to parcel this out across different entries today, but there's some serious shit going down.

First up: Cheryl Rofer at Balloon Juice is raising a red flag on a national security matter with a whistleblower dropping hints that the trump White House would rather not talk about:

A whistleblower in the Intelligence Community disclosed a concern to the DNI intended for the congressional intelligence committees on August 12. The Intelligence Community Inspector General then determined that the concern was both urgent and credible. At that point, Maguire had seven days to turn the material over to the House and Senate Intelligence committees. The deadline was September 2. He didn’t.

It looks like Schiff has also requested the material from Maguire. That would mean he heard about it through another channel, possibly notified by the IC IG.

Maguire also consulted the Department of Justice (corrupt William Barr) on whether he should turn the material over. That consultation is not allowed by the law; he’s just supposed to turn the material over...

So for one thing, Congressman Adam Schiff chair of the House Intelligence committee is ticked off that standard procedures aren't being followed. He's extremely pissed off at being ghosted by the DoJ and DNI higher-ups. Back to Rofer:

Schiff puts all that together... The Committee can only conclude that, based on this remarkable confluence of factors,  that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or administration officials. This raises grave concerns that your office (DNI), together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible "serious or flagrant" misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law...

Schiff wants the material by Tuesday, emphasizing that it is an urgent matter. If Maguire doesn’t come up with it, Schiff wants him in front of the committee by Thursday. He also says that the whistleblower had better be protected from reprisal. Good luck with that.

I can imagine a great many possibilities for the content of the complaint, but that’s because there is so little information and the administration is so corrupt.

Next week should be interesting...

As Rofer notes, without better information we have no idea what's going on. But the matter was serious enough to get the Inspector General's attention, and it's serious enough that Barr and the DoJ are looking to cover it up.

Schiff is making demands, but he better be prepared to back them up. So far, every attempt by the House Democrats to investigate trump's wrong-doings have met with stonewalling, ignored requests, and outright contempt. Schiff better be prepared to actually hold Barr and others in trump's administration in criminal contempt (as in, handcuffs and placed in jail cells) to get to the bottom of this intelligence crisis.