President Donald Trump made his displeasure toward his hand-picked intelligence community inspector general known on Wednesday after the first public hearing in the impeachment investigation wrapped up.
When asked for his response to the testimonies of Ukraine diplomat Bill Taylor and State Department official George Kent, Trump complained that the investigation was a “situation that was caused by people that shouldn’t have allowed it to happen.”
One of those “people” was the whistleblower, who Trump accused of giving “a lot of very incorrect information” about his “perfect call” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump then complained about Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who reported the whistleblower’s complaint about the call to Congress.
“I want to find out why the IG, why would he have presented that when in fact all he had to do was check the call itself, and he would have seen it,” Trump said.
The President’s comment came on the heels of a New York Times report on Trump’s private discussions with aides over whether he should fire Atkinson for not being sufficiently loyal to him.
Watch Trump below:
Trump complains about Intelligence Community IG's decision to report the whistleblower's complaint: "I want to find out why the IG-why would he have presented that when in fact all he had to do was check the call itself and he would have seen it." pic.twitter.com/iVDM7K4KFh
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) November 13, 2019
