The whistleblower complaint filed Aug. 12 by a U.S. intelligence official involves Ukraine, two people with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Post reported that the complaint centers around Trump's communications with a foreign leader, and a "promise" he made. The intelligence official was so troubled by this that they notified Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who marked the complaint as being of "urgent concern" and passed it along to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.
By law, Maguire was supposed to pass this complaint on to Congress, but he said he talked to Justice Department officials, who claimed it did not meet the definition of an urgent concern and was not under the DNI's jurisdiction. Maguire's refusal to notify lawmakers about the complaint has sparked a battle between Democratic lawmakers and the acting DNI. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Thursday that someone is "trying to manipulate the system to keep information about an urgent matter from the Congress. ... There certainly are a lot of indications that it was someone at a higher pay grade than the director of national intelligence."
Trump had a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky two-and-a-half weeks before the complaint was filed. Zelensky is an actor and comedian who was elected in May, and House Democrats are already investigating that call as part of a probe into whether Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani tried to manipulate the Ukrainian government into assisting with Trump's re-election campaign.