House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) slammed Attorney General Bill Barr and the Department of Justice on Wednesday for helping President Donald Trump cover up a whistleblower’s complaint.
During a press conference on the Ukraine scandal, Schiff said that Trump invoking Barr in his request for Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden “adds another layer of depravity” to Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July.
The Democratic lawmaker also hit the Justice Department and Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire for refusing to hand over the whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s call to Congress.
“Now, I know the attorney general is denying involvement in this, but nonetheless you can see why the Department of Justice would want this transcript never to see the light of day,” Schiff said. “You can see why they have worked so hard to deprive our committee of the whistleblower complaint.”
He added that the Justice Department’s “startling” opinion “advances the absurd claim that the director of national intelligence has no responsibility over efforts to prevent foreign interference in our elections.”
“It is a sad fact that the director of national intelligence would agree to be bound by that view, that the director of national intelligence would adopt the view that he had no jurisdiction over an effort to seek foreign interference in our election,” he said.
Watch Schiff below:
Schiff shreds DOJ over handling of whistleblower complaint pic.twitter.com/C3txa321J1
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 25, 2019
