WASHINGTON – The whistleblower at the center of the Ukraine scandal will testify before the House Intelligence Committee, Chairman Adam Schiff confirmed Sunday.
“Yes we have,” the California Democrat answered when asked by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos if the committee and the whistleblower had come to an agreement.
“And as [acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire] promised during the hearing, that whistleblower will be allowed to come in and come in without a minder from the Justice Department or from the White House to tell the whistleblower what they can or cannot say,” Schiff said.
“We’ll get the unfiltered testimony of that whistleblower,” he told “This Week.”
The whistleblower — who hasn’t been publicly identified, except for a New York Times report that said the individual is a male CIA officer who was, at one point, detailed to the White House — submitted a complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general alleging that President Trump asked the new president of Ukraine to work with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
Biden, the former vice president, is a top 2020 Democratic contender.
The whistleblower wasn’t on the call first-hand, but a number of officials told the individual about the content of the call.
The complaint also said the White House moved a transcript of the call to a more secure server, designed to hold classified information, to avoid embarrassment.
Both the transcript of the call and the whistleblower complaint have since been released to the public.
Schiff said the committee would take “all the precautions” the ensure that the whistleblower’s identity wasn’t compromised.
“Because, as you can imagine with the president issuing threats like we ought to treat these people who expose my wrongdoing as we used to treat traitors and spies – and we used to execute traitors and spies – you can imagine the security concerns here.”
On Thursday, Trump got nostalgic with a crowd at a closed press event in New York, pointing out that in the “old days” with spies “we used to handle them a little differently than we do now.”
He was likely referencing executions.
Trump’s ire was focused at the officials who told the whistleblower the information about the call included in the report, according to a recording obtained by The New York Times.
Schiff said he anticipated the testimony would come “very soon.”
“It will depend probably more on how quickly the director of national intelligence can complete the security clearance process for the whistleblower’s lawyers but we are ready to hear from the whistleblower as soon as that is done,” Schiff said.
“And we’ll keep obviously riding shotgun to make sure the acting director does not delay in that clearance process.”