Senate Intel chair: Whistleblower hasn’t agreed to testify before panel

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) on Wednesday told reporters that a whistleblower at the center of the House impeachment inquiry hasn’t yet agreed to meet with his Senate panel.

Asked if his panel would look into the content of the whistleblower’s complaint — which is focused on President Trump’s attempts to get the Ukraine government to investigate the Bidens — Burr said he first had to “go through the process of the whistleblower complaint.”  

{mosads}”I don’t know,” he added, asked how long that would take. “Tell me when I’m going to get access to a whistleblower who has not made themselves available.” 

Pressed if the whistleblower was refusing to testify, Burr added that the individual “hasn’t agreed to yet.”

Burr said that he had “no idea” what was delaying getting an interview with the whistleblower. Asked what he was being told, Burr added that “they’re not interested.”

An attorney for the whistleblower didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Senate Intelligence Committee began its own closed-door investigation last month into the whistleblower complaint that is driving the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. 

Members said before the two-week recess that they wanted to meet with the whistleblower, and Burr said on Wednesday that they had reached out. 

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sunday said that testimony from the intelligence community whistleblower may no longer be necessary. 

“Given that we already have the call record, we don’t need the whistleblower who wasn’t on the call to tell us what took place during the call,” he told Margaret Brennan during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Trump knocked Schiff on Monday and argued that the whistleblower must testify.  

“Adam Schiff now doesn’t seem to want the Whistleblower to testify. NO! Must testify to explain why he got my Ukraine conversation sooo wrong, not even close. Did Schiff tell him to do that? We must determine the Whistleblower’s identity to determine WHY this was done to the USA,” Trump tweeted.