As Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire was testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a press conference following the release of the whistleblower complaint.
Pelosi commented specifically on the whistleblower complaint: “I'll just read from the complaint, which is now public, but which I saw yesterday when it wasn't. The complaint states that the White House tried to lock down all records of the call, especially the word-for-word transcript. That gave the whistleblower reason to believe that they, the White House, understood the gravity of what transpired in that call. The complaint reports, a quote, ‘repeated abuse of an electronic records system designed to store classified, sensitive national security information,' which the White House used to hide information of a political nature. This is a cover-up. This is a cover-up.”
Pelosi said she didn't think Maguire was acting nefariously, but that he did break the law: “The law is very clear, the DNI shall convey the complaint to the intelligence committees – not the whole Congress, to the intelligence committee. Carefully balanced to protect our intelligence and to protect the whistleblower. So he has to convey it, and if the complainant is coming to the committee, he or she, whoever the DNI is, is the person who establishes the terms under which they would come to protect our intelligence and also protect information that the whistleblower might convey from any anti-Espionage Act charges. So the very idea that the subject of the complaint is who he went to (the White House) to find out if it was okay to go forward is, I think that this is wrong. … and it's against the law.”
