NEW: CIA's top lawyer made what she considered a criminal referral to US Justice Dept. about the whistleblower's allegations that Pres. Trump abused his office in pressuring the Ukrainian president, US officials familiar with the matter tell NBCNews.
When Elwood and Eisenberg spoke with DOJ, no one on the phone had seen the whistleblower's formal complaint to the inspector general of the intelligence community, which had been submitted two days before the call and was still a secret. The issue of campaign finance law was not part of their deliberations, the officials said.It is illegal for Americans to solicit foreign contributions to political campaigns.
Text messages turned over to Congress Thursday night, in which diplomats appear to suggest there was a linkage between aid and Ukraine's willingness to investigate a case involving Joe Biden, were not examined as part of the Justice Department's review, officials said, adding that they conducted purely a legal analysis.
Kupec declined to comment on whether the Justice Department was investigating any other aspect of the Ukraine matter. There has been no public indication, however, of any such investigation."They are not by any stretch of the imagination limited to the referral," said Chuck Rosenberg, an NBC News contributor and former U.S. Attorney."They have the authority — in fact, they have the obligation — to look more deeply and more broadly and bring whatever charges are appropriate.
But when he first passed on his concerns, they were not so specific, officials said. He first complained at his own agency, sending word through a colleague to a CIA lawyer. The complaint eventually reached the spy agency's top lawyer, Elwood, officials said. After consulting with others at their respective agencies and learning more details about the complaint, Elwood and Eisenberg alerted the DOJ's Demers, during the Aug. 14 phone call, in what Elwood considered to be a criminal referral. Demers read the transcript of the July 25 call, officials said, on August 15.
At the end of August, the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, sent the Justice Department his own criminal referral based on the whistleblower complaint, he has confirmed.
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