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INTERMEDIATE: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has subpoenaed the Justice Department for the report whose complaint helped convict President Donald Trump in 2019 and the former intelligence inspector general who alerted Congress to the allegations, Fox News Digital has learned.
“I want to pass on information about possible criminal activities in violation of the criminal law of the state committed by one or more former employees of the intelligence community,” wrote the general counsel of the ODNI in the transfer to the Department of Justice.
Fox News Digital on Wednesday reviewed ODNI’s submission to the Department of Justice.
“A potential criminal offense relates to the circumstances described in the following words of Congress: Interview with the Inspector General of Public Intelligence, House Permanent Select Comm. in Intel., 116th Cong. (2019); Briefing by the Inspector General of Public Intelligence, House Permanent Select Comm. in Intel., 116th Cong. (2019),” continued.
GABBARD WANTS ‘MORE EFFORT’ BY INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY TO DEVELOP NEXT WHY TRUMP
Michael Atkinson, who was the inspector general of the intelligence community at the time, leaves the Capitol after a closed-door hearing about a whistleblower’s complaint about a July phone call the president had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump insisted on an investigation of Democratic political rival Joe Biden and his family, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Oct. 94, 201. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The transfer comes after DNI Tulsi Gabbard released documents earlier this week revealing what was described as a “coordinated effort” by agencies within the intelligence community – including former Inspector General Michael Atkinson – to “create a conspiracy” that was used as a basis to impeach Trump in 2019.
An intelligence official told Fox News Digital that the language in the transmission was broad, but that it was directed specifically at Atkinson and the whistleblower who raised concerns about President Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
FLASHBACK: NUNES THREATS TO FORWARD WATCHDOG TO HANDLE WHISTLEBLOWER COMPLAINT TO DOJ
ODNI directed Fox News Digital to a recent X post from Gabbard when asked for comment on the transfer.
“Recently declassified records reveal how deep state actors in the Intelligence Community concocted a false story that Congress used to rig the will of the American people and impeach the rightfully elected President @realDonaldTrump in 2019,” Gabbard said on X Monday.
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shake hands at the start of a joint news conference following a meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (AP)
Fox News Digital contacted the Justice Department Wednesday afternoon about the referral.
The documents released by Gabbard earlier this week include transcripts of Atkinson’s sealed testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which was withheld from the House Judiciary Committee during the original impeachment hearing. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Ark., led the vote to release the documents in March.
ODNI said the documents confirm that Atkinson “failed to do his best and deliberately exceeded his legal authority to misrepresent the president’s phone call with Zelensky as an ‘urgent concern’ to Congress.”
Atkinson, during his investigation, found that the caller showed signs of “bias” and was “favoring a political opponent,” while still treating the complaint as “an urgent concern.”
Atkinson received a complaint in August 2019 from the investigator, who raised concerns about Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, urging him to conduct an investigation into the Biden family’s actions and business dealings in Ukraine. The president suggested that Zelensky look into Hunter Biden’s plans with Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings and former President Joe Biden’s successful effort to have former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin removed.
Hunter Biden has been quietly under investigation, since 2018, during a phone call, an investigation stemming from suspicious foreign transactions.
President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, step off Air Force One, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023, at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, NY (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Trump’s request was considered by Democrats as a quid pro quo because millions of dollars in aid to the US military in Ukraine had been suspended. Democrats also say Trump is interfering in the 2020 presidential election by asking a foreign leader to target a political opponent.
Biden admitted that during his time as vice president, he succeeded in pressuring Ukraine to deport Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings and Hunter had a very lucrative role on the board, earning thousands of dollars a month. The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion in critical US aid if Shokin was not fired.
“I said, ‘You don’t get a billion.’ … I looked at them and said, ‘I’ll be leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor isn’t fired, you don’t get the money,'” Biden recalled telling then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Biden recalled the conversation during a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event.
FLASHBACK: HOUSE INTEL REPUBLICANS INVESTIGATED ICIG HANDLING OF WHISTLEBLOWER COMPLAINT
“Well, son of a b—-, you’re fired,” Biden said during the event. “And they put someone who was strong at the time.”
Biden’s allies maintained that the former vice president at the time wanted Shokin’s ouster out of concern that the Ukrainian prosecutor went easy on corruption, and said that his ouster at the time was the policy position of the US and the international community.
Meanwhile, House Republicans, back in 2019 and 2020, want to refer Atkinson and the referee to the DOJ for investigation.
Republicans, at the time, complained that the spokeswoman contacted the staff of then-Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in advance — though Schiff downplayed the nature of those contacts.
The White House, under Trump’s first term, released an unclassified version of the whistleblower’s complaint, which revealed that the whistleblower’s concerns stemmed from the second-hand accounts of “more than a dozen US officials.”
President Donald Trump speaks during a board meeting of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts in the East Room of the White House, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
However, the counsel’s undisclosed complaint stated: “I was not a direct witness to many of the events described. However, I found my colleagues’ accounts of these events to be true, because, in almost every case, multiple officers recounted patterns of facts that were consistent with one another.”
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Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives in December 2019. He was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Wednesday.
