The FBI has reportedly asked to interview the CIA whistleblower whose complaint led to Democrats opening an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The Senate Intelligence Committee has already started interviewing those connected to the whistleblower’s complaint.
“The FBI recently sought to question the CIA whistleblower who filed a complaint over President Trump’s July 25 Ukraine call — a move that came after a vigorous internal debate within the bureau over how to respond to some of the issues raised by the complaint’s allegations and whether they needed to be more thoroughly investigated,” Yahoo! News reported. “But no interview has yet to be scheduled. It is unclear what the intended scope of the interview would be or whether the whistleblower’s lawyers will agree to it. Mark Zaid, one of the lawyers for the whistleblower, said he and his co-counsel would have no comment. An FBI spokesperson also declined comment.”
NBC News noted that the FBI is not at the moment interested in investigating the whistleblower, adding that “the outreach to the whistleblower was approved by the FBI’s Washington field office, and neither Attorney General William Barr nor those in his orbit at the Justice Department were made aware until media reports surfaced on Wednesday, according to another source familiar with the matter.”
News that the FBI wants to interview the whistleblower comes at the same time that other reports note that the Senate Judiciary Committee has already started interviewing people connected to the whistleblower’s complaint.
“North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the chair of the committee, said Tuesday that the panel has been ‘interviewing people that might be tied to’ the complaint,” BuzzFeed News reported. “Burr declined to reveal exactly how many people the committee has already questioned behind closed doors, but a spokesperson for Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the committee vice chair, said it was ‘multiple individuals involved in the handling of the complaint.'”
“Burr has expressed frustration that committee staff have been unable to interview the whistleblower, whose attorneys have conveyed concerns about their client’s safety,” BuzzFeed News added. “They have offered to have the whistleblower answer questions in writing, but Burr said ‘that was rejected.'”
Burr also issued an apparent warning to the whistleblower, saying that the Senate Intelligence Committee could force him to be questioned in person.
“We’ve got a track record of protecting whistleblowers, witnesses,” Burr said. “We’ve offered to meet him anywhere, anytime. Clearly, this is not somebody that wants to meet, and before this is over, they will be compelled in some way, shape, or form to meet with us.”
Numerous reports on the alleged whistleblower have noted that the whistleblower is a registered Democrat, worked with former Vice President Joe Biden, and had a bias in favor of one of Trump’s 2020 Democratic presidential candidate opponents.
The whistleblower reached out to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s aides prior to filing an official complaint.
The Washington Examiner added that Schiff “recruited two former National Security Council aides who worked alongside the CIA whistleblower at the NSC during the Obama and Trump administrations.”