ODNI refers impeachment whistleblower and former inspector general to DOJ for possible criminal charges

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department this week targeting the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint triggered President Donald Trump's first impeachment and the former intelligence community inspector general who forwarded that complaint to Congress. The referrals, reviewed by Fox News Digital, mark the most concrete step yet toward holding accountable the officials who set the 2019 impeachment machinery in motion.

The ODNI general counsel's letter to the Justice Department does not name the targets outright but refers to "one or more former employees of the intelligence community." An intelligence official told Fox News Digital the referrals are specifically directed at former Inspector General Michael Atkinson and the whistleblower tied to Trump's July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard framed the referrals as the culmination of a broader document release. On Monday, she posted to X:

"Newly-declassified records expose how deep state actors within the Intelligence Community concocted a false narrative that Congress used to usurp the will of the American people and impeach duly-elected President @realDonaldTrump in 2019."

Whether the Justice Department acts on the referrals remains an open question. Fox News Digital reached out to both the DOJ and the White House for comment Wednesday afternoon. Neither response was reported.

What the referral says, and what it cites

The referral letter itself is tightly scoped. ODNI's general counsel wrote:

"I want to refer information that may constitute possible criminal activity in violation of federal criminal law committed by one or more former employees of the intelligence community."

The letter ties the alleged criminal conduct to two specific 2019 sessions before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: a "Discussion with Intelligence Community Inspector General" and a "Briefing by the Intelligence Community Inspector General," both during the 116th Congress. Those sessions involved Atkinson's closed-door testimony about the whistleblower complaint he had received in August 2019.

An ODNI spokesperson confirmed to the New York Post that "a criminal referral was sent to DOJ related to one or more former employees of the Intelligence Community and their role in the 2019 impeachment of President Trump." No specific federal criminal statutes were identified in the referral text reviewed by reporters.

The ODNI also released a statement saying newly declassified documents confirmed that Atkinson "failed to conduct basic due diligence and willfully exceeded his statutory jurisdiction to mischaracterize the president's phone call with Zelensky as an 'urgent concern' to Congress." That characterization, "urgent concern", was the procedural trigger that compelled Atkinson to notify lawmakers and set the impeachment timeline in motion.

Atkinson's role and the bias question

Michael Atkinson, who served as the intelligence community's inspector general in 2019, received the whistleblower's complaint in August of that year. His own investigation at the time found that the whistleblower showed indications of "political bias" and was "in favor of a rival political candidate." Despite that finding, Atkinson deemed the complaint a matter of "urgent concern" and forwarded it to Congress.

That decision is now at the center of the criminal referral. ODNI's position, as laid out in the newly released documents, is that Atkinson overstepped his authority and failed basic procedural safeguards. House Republicans had sought to refer both Atkinson and the whistleblower to the DOJ for investigation as far back as 2019 and 2020, but those efforts went nowhere at the time.

The pattern of intelligence and law enforcement officials being used, or using their positions, to advance political outcomes against Trump has become a recurring theme. It echoes the concerns raised around the discredited Steele dossier and the political operatives behind it, where procedural tools were wielded for partisan ends.

Gabbard was more direct in her characterization. She said Atkinson "weaponized the whistle-blower process" and used his office to "manufacture a conspiracy that was used as the basis to impeach President Trump," as reported by Just The News.

The whistleblower complaint and the call that started it all

The complaint at issue centered on Trump's July 2019 phone call with Zelenskyy, during which Trump pressed for an investigation of Joe Biden and his family. At the time, millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been frozen, and Democrats alleged Trump was leveraging the aid for political gain.

The whistleblower's complaint referred to "more than half a dozen U.S. officials" as sources. The White House released a declassified version of the complaint during Trump's first term. Trump was impeached by the House in December 2019 and acquitted by the Senate in February 2020.

What the newly declassified records reportedly show, according to ODNI and multiple outlets, is that the whistleblower had potential bias, provided false information in the initial complaint, and that evidence of these problems was not made public during the impeachment proceedings. Newsmax reported that Gabbard's referrals were prompted by these declassified documents and testimony she says show the whistleblower process was weaponized and standard procedures were not followed.

The Biden-Ukraine backdrop

The impeachment saga always had a second layer that Democrats preferred to ignore. Trump's request that Ukraine investigate the Bidens was treated as a scandal in itself. But the underlying facts were never fully litigated in the court of public opinion.

Then-Vice President Joe Biden had successfully pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian natural gas firm on whose board Hunter Biden sat, collecting thousands of dollars per month. Biden recounted the episode at a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event with unmistakable pride:

"I said, 'You're not getting the billion.'... I looked at them and said, 'I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.'"

Biden added: "Well, son of a b----, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time." He was referring to then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Hunter Biden, meanwhile, was under federal investigation beginning in 2018.

None of this excused Trump's conduct in the eyes of Democrats. But it raised a question they never answered satisfactorily: if a sitting vice president could openly pressure a foreign government to fire a prosecutor investigating a company paying his son, why was a president's request for an investigation of those same facts treated as an impeachable offense?

The broader pattern of political and legal offensives aimed at Trump and his family has been well documented, with Democratic operatives openly promising further investigations even as earlier ones collapsed under scrutiny.

Congressional action and the transcripts

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Ark., led a vote in March to release transcripts from Atkinson's closed-door testimony before the committee. Those transcripts had been withheld during the first impeachment trial, the House Judiciary Committee never received them, according to the reporting. Republicans argued for years that the transcripts would reveal procedural failures and coordination that undermined the integrity of the complaint.

Republicans also pointed to then-Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., whose staff had contact with the whistleblower in advance of the complaint's formal filing. Schiff downplayed the nature of that contact at the time. The newly released documents, combined with the criminal referrals, represent the most aggressive institutional response to those long-standing Republican grievances.

The legal fights surrounding Trump have taken several turns in recent months. A D.C. Circuit ruling rebuking a federal judge over a contempt probe related to Trump administration deportation flights showed courts pushing back on what many conservatives view as judicial overreach.

What comes next

A criminal referral is not an indictment. It is a formal request that prosecutors examine potential criminal conduct. The Justice Department has full discretion over whether to open an investigation, convene a grand jury, or decline the matter entirely.

Fox News Digital reported that the DOJ had not responded to a request for comment as of Wednesday afternoon. The White House was also contacted. No charges have been filed, and the identity of the whistleblower remains officially undisclosed.

Several open questions remain. What specific federal criminal statutes does ODNI believe were violated? Will the DOJ under the current administration treat these referrals with the same urgency it brought to the impeachment itself? And will the declassified transcripts and documents hold up under independent scrutiny, or will they be dismissed as politically motivated counter-narrative?

The broader question of whether Trump has been vindicated in legal battles originally framed as existential threats to democracy continues to play out across multiple fronts, including the appeal of the New York fraud case brought by Attorney General Letitia James.

For five years, the 2019 impeachment was treated as settled history, a president caught abusing his power, checked by brave whistleblowers and diligent inspectors general. The criminal referrals don't rewrite that history yet. But they do suggest that the people who wrote the first draft may have some explaining to do.