Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Releases Statement on Whistleblower Complaint

The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) released a statement about the whistleblower form that the Ukraine whistleblower used to file his complaint. The ICIG statement appears to respond to a right-wing conspiracy endorsed by President Trump that alleges that, in the days immediately before the filing of the now-infamous whistleblower complaint, members of the intelligence community altered the whistleblower reporting form in order to remove the requirement that a whistleblower have "first hand" knowledge of the events he or she reports. The ICIG asserted that the "form the Complainant submitted on August 12, 2019 is the same form the ICIG has had in place since May 24, 2018." The ICIG adds that "by law the Complainant...need not possess first-hand information in order to file a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern" and that, even if he wanted to, "the ICIG cannot add conditions to the filing of an urgent concern that do not exist in law." The full statement can be read here.