This might come as a surprise to Democrats, but the president has the right to hire and fire anyone he chooses.
President Donald Trump recently fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community who expressed concern to Congress about the president’s July 25th phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Those concerns brought to Congress are what sparked the impeachment witch hunt and led to Trump being impeached in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives last year.
Now, two top House Democrats are calling on the DOJ’s watchdog to investigate whether comments made by Attorney General William Barr defending Trump’s firing of Atkinson broke DOJ rules, according to the Washington Examiner.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler sent a letter on Monday to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Acting Director of the Office of Professional Responsibility Jeffrey Ragsdale demanding an investigation into comments Barr made during an interview with Fox News.
“In a televised interview on April 9, 2020, Mr. Barr blatantly mischaracterized Mr. Atkinson’s conduct and DOJ’s own actions relating to the complaint filed last summer by an Intelligence Community whistleblower,” Schiff and Nadler said. “Mr. Barr’s misleading remarks appear to have been aimed at justifying the President’s retaliatory decision to fire Mr. Atkinson.”
Here’s what Barr told Fox News host Laura Ingraham, which is what Schiff and Nadler want the DOJ watchdog to investigate:
“I think the president did the right thing in removing Atkinson. From the vantage point of the Department of Justice, he had interpreted his statute, which is a fairly narrow statute, that gave him jurisdiction over wrongdoing by intelligence people, and tried to turn it into a commission to explore anything in the government and immediately reported to Congress without letting the Executive Branch look at it and determine whether there was any problem,” Barr said. “He was told this in a letter from the Department of Justice, and he is obliged to follow the interpretation of the Department of Justice, and he ignored it. So, I think the president was correct in firing him.”
The DOJ clapped back at Schiff and Nadler.
A senior DOJ official told the Examiner that Barr’s remarks “were entirely accurate” and said, “The entire dispute between the IG and the Acting DNI was the IG’s demand that the complaint is sent to Congress before the executive branch entity with jurisdiction — the Criminal Division of DOJ — could review it.”
The official said this “seven-day period gave the DNI the time to review whether the allegations presented an urgent concern, but it was not intended, and hardly provided, time to review the merits.”
The official added that this showed Barr “correctly described the IG as insisting that the complaint immediately go to Congress.”
Schiff and Nadler said Monday that Atkinson “neither ‘ignored’ DOJ guidance, nor acted contrary to his legal and professional obligations in handling the whistleblower complaint,” and “to the contrary,” he “faithfully discharged his legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General in accordance with federal law.”
Schiff and Nadler said Trump fired Atkinson “simply for doing his job and following the law.”
The senior DOJ official told the Washington Examiner that Atkinson “effectively ignored OLC’s opinion by notifying the intelligence committees that he personally disagreed with the DNI’s conclusion — in reliance on OLC — that the allegations against the President did not meet the statutory definition of urgent concern.”
https://conservativebrief.com/dems-want-doj-ig-to-look-into-barrs-defense-of-trump-firing-intel-watchdog-21123/?utm_source=ExplainLife.com&utm_medium=MF&fbclid=IwAR2SlYnG25PMAOX4X2W7Fg5WtCfD0n1287kX4oqnN972vmbMqh2_wq7SzRM
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