If the whirlwind whistleblower scandal has you a little confused, just remember this: Attorney General William Barr's Department of Justice intervened. That's why it's all screwed up.
NBC News reports that it was the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that told the director of national intelligence (DNI) to evade the whistleblower law and withhold information from Congress about the complaint. That is unprecedented.
"Asked whether Attorney General Bill Barr was personally involved, the official declined to comment," writes NBC. Let’s go out on a limb here and guess that Barr's paws are all over this. No one has proven more capable of bending the law to the point of breaking it than AG Barr, especially in matters directly involving Donald Trump.
That OLC guidance is what ultimately prevented the intelligence community's inspector general (IG) from sharing information about the complaint with the House Intelligence Committee during a three-plus hour closed-door session Thursday. The logic goes that the IG, Michael Atkinson, doesn't have the authority to discuss the complaint with Congress because the DNI, Joseph Maguire, hasn't shared the report with the committee yet. In other words, the IG's hands are tied because the DNI is breaking the law at the direction of the Justice Department.
But it gets worse: House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff said Thursday that the Justice Department still has not shared the OLC opinion it wrote in support of withholding the information from the committee. So the DOJ has poured sand in the gears, but hasn't bothered to share its justification for doing that.
Schiff also quoted IG Atkinson’s reasoning for determining the whistleblower complaint was urgent, noting that Atkinson wrote it "relates to one of the most significant and important of the DNI's responsibilities to the American people." Schiff added, "This is what's being withheld from Congress right now."
You can watch Schiff’s press conference following the closed-door session with IG Atkinson below.
Click here for more coverage of the whistleblower complaint and the impeachment inquiry.