The White House does not believe there's a way to block the whistleblower who lodged a complaint against President Trump from meeting with congressional investigators, and officials are now working on a deal to allow the person to speak with them, two people with knowledge of the matter told The New York Times on Tuesday.
The complaint is reportedly linked to a phone call Trump had in July with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked him multiple times to launch an investigation into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of 2020 presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden. After the complaint was filed in August, Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson marked it as being of "urgent concern," and passed it on to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.
Under the law, Maguire was supposed to give the complaint to Congress, but he said he consulted with the Justice Department and was told the complaint was not under the DNI's jurisdiction and also didn't meet the definition of urgent concern. This is what led to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announcing on Tuesday afternoon that she has directed the House to open a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump.
The whistleblower's attorney sent Maguire a letter on Monday, saying his client wants to meet with lawmakers but needs the DNI's approval, the Times reports. Lawyers for the intelligence community have been speaking with White House and Justice Department officials to figure out the next steps, the Times says, so the whistleblower can discuss the complaint without worrying about executive privilege. A White House official told Politico that Trump has approved sending the complaint to Congress by the end of the week.
Earlier Tuesday, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) confirmed that the whistleblower's attorney says his client is ready to speak to the committee, and Schiff said he looks forward to "the whistleblower's testimony as soon as this week." Catherine Garcia
There's a brand new way Democrats can make the debate stage next month.
The Democratic National Committee announced requirements to qualify for February's primary debate Friday, saying the donor threshold will remain steady, with candidates needing at least 225,000 unique donors. Candidates will also, as before, need to hit at least five percent in four qualifying national polls or seven percent in two polls of New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina voters. But there's now a third path that candidates can take to replace the poll requirement: If they win just one delegate in Iowa, they're in.
This could open a path for candidates such as entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who hit the donor requirement but didn't have enough qualifying polls to make January's debate. The Iowa caucuses are Feb. 3, and the next debate is Feb. 7 in New Hampshire. Kathryn Krawczyk
After traveling the world hunting for treasure in his personal life, Nicolas Cage can soon resume doing so in the movies, too.
A third National Treasure film is in the works at Disney with Bad Boys for Life's Chris Bremner writing a screenplay, The Hollywood Reporter wrote Friday.
No further details were provided in the report, which only briefly mentioned National Treasure while focusing on the status of a fourth Bad Boys film, which is also apparently happening. But this news comes more than a decade after National Treasure: Book of Secrets hit theaters, easily outgrossing the original but for some reason not being followed by five to eight more installments centered around Benjamin Franklin Gates' increasingly wacky adventures.
A third National Treasure has been discussed going back years, though, to the point that this movie could just be about the mythical quest for its own screenplay. Director Jon Turteltaub in 2018 suggested the odds it would come together weren't great, telling /Film, "I don't think Disney wants to make it," though he suggested it could happen as a streaming-exclusive film.
Now that it's apparently moving forward, though, what treasure hunt might be at the center of this installment? Could it just completely ignore the first two films and turn into a documentary about Nicolas Cage the actor's totally real attempt to locate the Holy Grail, which he revealed last year and dubbed his "grail quest"? Probably not, but Disney can have that idea for free. Brendan Morrow
The Harvey Weinstein trial officially has its jury.
Jury selection in the trial of the disgraced film producer ended Friday with seven men and five women set to serve, Variety reports. Three alternates, one man and two women, were also selected.
Lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi during jury selection accused the defense and trying to "systematically exclude" young white women, The Hollywood Reporter writes. "They have eliminated every single white woman from this prospective jury panel," Illuzzi said, Variety reports.
The defense, in turn, accused the prosecution of trying to exclude men from the jury, but the Reporter writes Judge James Burke didn't accept either argument. The defense reportedly said it didn't seek to exclude young women but that, as The Associated Press writes, they "didn't want jurors who were too young to understand the way men and women interacted in the early 1990s."
The defense objected to one particular juror, a woman who wrote a forthcoming novel whose plot has to do with "predatory older men," Deadline reports. The judge ultimately said the woman could serve on the jury and denied the defense's subsequent request for a mistrial.
Weinstein is facing rape and sexual assault charges, which he has pleaded not guilty to. Opening arguments in the trial are set to begin on Jan. 22. Brendan Morrow