The president fired the official who previously held the job and had played a key role in telling lawmakers about the whistle-blower complaint that prompted impeachment proceedings.
WASHINGTON — President Trump nominated on Wednesday a onetime aide to one of his top congressional allies to serve as the inspector general of the intelligence community, succeeding a former official who played a role in revealing the Ukraine whistle-blower complaint that prompted impeachment proceedings and was later fired.
The nominee, Allen Robert Souza, who must be confirmed by the Senate, is a senior intelligence official on the National Security Council staff who previously served on the intelligence staff of Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and one of the president’s fiercest supporters on Capitol Hill.
The inspector general is traditionally meant to be an apolitical watchdog of the nation’s spy agencies. The official who previously held the job, Michael Atkinson, was swept up in the Ukraine affair when the whistle-blower, a C.I.A. officer who anonymously raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s July 2019 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, filed his complaint to Mr. Atkinson. He then clashed with the Justice Department about whether he could legally forward the complaint to Congress. Continue reading.