Whistleblower reaction: Rick Scott defends Trump, Marco Rubio can’t talk specifics

Marco Rubio now finds himself in the middle of another high-profile intelligence investigation.

The Florida Republican is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a body that is investigating a whistleblower complaint alleging that President Donald Trump abused his power “to solicit interference” from Ukraine in the 2020 election, and White House officials tried to cover it up.

Rubio, who also worked on the Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, said Thursday he read a partially declassified report that gave him “more questions than answers” about the president’s conduct.

He wouldn’t say what his specific questions are regarding the complaint that prompted House Democrats to announce an impeachment investigation because the Senate Intelligence Committee is reviewing additional classified material related to the complaint.

“I’m not going to tell you because we’re still working on it and in these serious matters we want to view the whole thing,” Rubio said Thursday. “So when we’re ready to discuss it, we’ll discuss it.”

Rubio said the Senate Intelligence Committee met with the acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire in private on Thursday after he testified publicly before the House Intelligence Committee. The Senate Intelligence Committee also plans to meet with the intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.

“For me, the best thing to do is to do our job. They’ve given us this job to do in the Intelligence Committee and so we’re going to go through the interviews today. We’re going to continue to see the documents and so forth,” Rubio said. “It all has to be viewed in the complete context, that means not just the transcript of the call but other things that are referred to there and there’s just no way to discuss that in an unclassified setting at this stage. The reason why this is an intelligence function is because it deals with a lot of classified information.”

Rubio added that the Republican-led committee is taking the investigation “very seriously.” Many Democrats and Republicans on the Intelligence Committee declined to answer questions about the complaint on Thursday.

Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott also read the complaint and said he respected the Senate Intelligence Committee’s work. But he also said he did not see a violation of the law by Trump in the whistleblower’s declassified complaint.

“I think we ought to go through the process that the Senate is going through,” Scott said. “There’s [North Carolina Sen.] Richard Burr’s committee, Intelligence, I think that’s the right process. I think we ought to slow down. Nobody’s shown me what law...he’s violated. On top of that we ought to look at what [former Vice President Joe] Biden did. We ought to look at both of them. I still haven’t seen there’s a violation of the law. I don’t know what law he’s violated yet.”

Scott was referring to investigating Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company that came under scrutiny by authorities there. In a transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released Wednesday, Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden, a potential 2020 rival. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.

Scott said House Democrats who want to impeach Trump do not have enough legal justification for impeachment. If the Democratic-controlled House successfully impeaches the president, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate conducts a trial.

To date, zero Republicans in Congress have said they support impeaching Trump.

“They’re [Democrats] talking about impeaching the president,” Scott said. “Tell me the law they’re going to go after?”

Florida Democrats in Congress are now all in favor of an impeachment inquiry. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, said Thursday the whistleblower complaint “convincingly alleges that President Trump abused the power of his office against U.S. national security interests, in support of his political interests.”

“More credibility is lent to this report because we know that candidate Trump encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 elections on his behalf, and we know from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia did interfere,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. “Now, even after being warned, evidence exists that President Trump tried to muscle Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 elections, including likely withholding foreign aid funding as part of this effort. It is abundantly clear that only a serious impeachment proceeding will reveal if Trump and his administration abused their public office and engaged in corrupt activity or cover-ups.”

The anonymous whistleblower’s identity is protected by law. At a private event on Thursday, the president said the whistleblower is “almost a spy” according to audio obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

“I want to know who’s the person that gave the whistleblower the information,” Trump said. “Because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do, in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

This story was originally published September 26, 2019 at 4:20 PM.