President Donald Trump (Official White House photo)
The intelligence community inspector general who already had been rebuked for his handling of the whistleblower complaint that triggered the Democrats' impeachment of President Trump is under investigation, according to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.
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The House Intelligence Committee's ranking member noted in an interview with investigative reporter Sara Carter that the transcript of Michael Atkinson's testimony has never been released by the majority Democrats under the panel's chairman, Adam Schiff.
Nunes said Atkinson is "under active investigation."
"I'm not gonna go any farther than that because you know obviously he has a chance to come in and prove his innocence, but my guess is Schiff, Atkinson, they don't want that transcript out because it’s very damaging," Nunes said.
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The Conservative Tree House blog recalled an Oct. 6 radio interview with Nunes by "Breitbart News Sunday" host Matt Boyle in which the congressman called Atkinson's testimony "a joke."
The interview took place before it was revealed that Schiff's team had contact with the whistleblower before the complaint was filed.
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Nunes said in the October interview that Atkinson is "either totally incompetent or part of the deep state, and he's got a lot of questions he needs to answer because he knowingly changed the form and the requirements in order to make sure that this whistleblower complaint got out publicly."
The reference was to altering the requirement that a whistleblower have first-hand knowledge regarding the complaint. The whistleblower, reported to be CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, did not hear the phone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that is at the center of the complaint.
"So he's either incompetent or in on it," Nunes said of the IG. "And he's going to have more to answer for, I can promise you, because we are not going to let him go. He is going to tell he truth about what happened."
The Conservative Tree House also noted that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that Atkinson's internal justification for accepting the whistleblower complaint was poor legal judgment.
