Gabbard Sends Criminal Referral for Key Figure in Trump Impeachment
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is once again helping President Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution. The ODNI’s general counsel on Wednesday referred the whistleblower who led to Trump’s first impeachment, and the inspector general who found the complaint credible, for criminal prosecution, MS NOW reported. The whistleblower, whose identity has not been made public, claimed that in July 2019, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in an attempt to pressure the foreign leader into investigating then-former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Despite Trump’s insistence that his phone call was “perfect,” the president was impeached by the House of Representatives in 2019, and then acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate in early 2020. Earlier this week, Gabbard criticized how former intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson handled the whistleblower complaint, alleging that the watchdog had relied on “secondhand evidence.” She released a trove of documents related to Atkinson that she claimed revealed a “coordinated effort” by members of the intelligence community to “manufacture a conspiracy” to get Trump impeached. Ultimately, the documents did not demonstrate any criminal wrongdoing at all, CBS News reported.It seems that Trump is after something specific with this latest attack against his perceived political enemies. Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday about the possibility of getting his impeachment “expunged.” If that’s really what he’s after, all of Gabbard’s efforts may be for nothing: Unfortunately for Trump, impeachment expungement is not really a thing.