What Went Down In Maguire’s Whistleblower Testimony

The hearing is wrapping up. The congresspeople have asked their questions, and now we’re getting a final word from Nunes and Schiff.

As this hearing begins to wrap up, I’m trying to think about what the takeaways from it will be on local newspapers and on local news broadcasts. I have to think that an exchange in which Maguire says in theory, any president soliciting help from a foreign power to interfere in a U.S. election would be troubling. I also have to think they’ll mention the fact Maguire has called this complaint “unprecedented” numerous times, as a way to explain his failure to turn over the complaint to Congress, as is typical. Aside from that, I think a continuing thread of this story will be how much Maguire deferred to the president and his lawyers in this matter. There’s a lot of surmising that Maguire talked to the president about this complaint, which think could be a factor that really lingers over all of this.

Rep. Krishnamoorthi getting at how calls are recorded/noted/transcribed with Maguire, which seems like a journalist’s approach: Ask basic questions that establish the mechanics of how something gets logged. That’s different than process, since mechanics can later be cited in order to understand the reliability of various documents.