The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department targeting the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint triggered President Donald Trump's first impeachment and the former inspector general who shepherded that complaint to Congress, Fox News Digital reported after reviewing the referral documents.
The referrals name former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson and the still-unidentified CIA analyst who filed the 2019 complaint about Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The move follows Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's release of declassified records she says expose misconduct and procedural failures at the heart of the impeachment effort.
If the Justice Department acts on the referrals, it would mark the first formal criminal accountability for officials whose actions helped launch a constitutional crisis, one that consumed Washington for months, divided the country, and ended with Trump's acquittal in the Senate in February 2020.
The ODNI general counsel's referral, reviewed by Fox News Digital on Wednesday, states plainly what it seeks. The language from the document reads:
"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 referral ties the alleged criminal conduct directly to two closed-door congressional briefings from 2019, a "Discussion with Intelligence Community Inspector General" and a separate "Briefing by the Intelligence Community Inspector General," both before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during the 116th Congress.
An intelligence official told Fox News Digital the referral was specifically directed at Atkinson and the whistleblower. The New York Post reported that an ODNI spokesperson confirmed the referral, saying it was "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 language reviewed by Fox News Digital. The Justice Department had not responded to a request for comment as of Wednesday afternoon.
The criminal referrals followed Gabbard's release earlier this week of a batch of declassified documents she says undercut the foundation of the 2019 impeachment. Among the materials were transcripts from Atkinson's closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, transcripts that, according to Fox News Digital, were withheld from the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment trial.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Ark., led a vote in March to release those transcripts. Their contents, combined with Gabbard's other declassified materials, form the basis for the ODNI's referral.
On Monday, Gabbard posted on X, framing the newly released records in blunt terms:
"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."
When Fox News Digital asked ODNI for comment on the referrals, the office directed the outlet to that post. Gabbard, who has faced her own turbulence inside the administration, including reports that Trump weighed replacing her after an Iran intelligence dispute, appears to have staked significant political capital on this accountability push.
The chain of events that led to Trump's first impeachment began in the summer of 2019. In July of that year, Trump spoke by phone with Zelenskyy. The call became the subject of a complaint filed with Atkinson in August 2019 by a CIA analyst whose identity remains officially undisclosed.
The complaint alleged Trump had pressed Zelenskyy to launch investigations into the Biden family's actions and business dealings in Ukraine, specifically, Joe Biden's successful effort to have then-Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin removed, and Hunter Biden's lucrative board position at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas firm.
But the whistleblower's own complaint acknowledged a critical limitation. The declassified version of the document, released by the White House during Trump's first term, included this admission:
"I was not a direct witness to most of the events described. However, I found my colleagues' accounts of these events to be credible, because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another."
The complaint was built on secondhand accounts from "more than half a dozen U.S. officials," not firsthand knowledge. That distinction mattered then. It matters more now.
ODNI's current assessment is 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." The Washington Times reported that Gabbard said Atkinson interviewed only four people, relied on secondhand information, did not obtain the Trump-Zelenskyy call transcript before acting, and ignored DOJ guidance that the matter did not qualify as an "urgent concern."
The ODNI's office went further, stating that "despite a lack of any firsthand evidence, IC IG Atkinson proceeded to take actions to weaponize the Whistleblower process and exceed his statutory jurisdiction." Just The News reported that Gabbard said Atkinson used his office to "manufacture a conspiracy that was used as the basis to impeach President Trump."
Atkinson himself found that the whistleblower showed indications of "political bias" and was "in favor of a rival political candidate." Despite that finding, he still deemed the complaint a matter of "urgent concern" and forwarded it to Congress, a decision now at the center of the criminal referral.
Republicans at the time complained the whistleblower had made contact with the staff of then-Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., before filing the formal complaint. Schiff downplayed the nature of that contact. The Washington Times added that Gabbard said the whistleblower was an anti-Trump registered Democrat who misled investigators about collaborating with Democrats and had contacted Congress before filing.
During Trump's first term, whistleblower-related accountability efforts gained traction among House Republicans, who sought to refer both Atkinson and the whistleblower to the Justice Department for investigation. Those efforts stalled. The referrals now on DOJ's desk represent the first time the executive branch itself has formally pushed the matter forward.
The impeachment saga always had a second layer: the Biden family's own entanglements in Ukraine. Trump's call with Zelenskyy touched on Joe Biden's role in pressuring Ukraine to fire Shokin, who at the time was investigating Burisma Holdings, the same company paying Hunter Biden thousands of dollars per month to sit on its board.
Biden himself described the pressure campaign during a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event, recalling his conversation with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko:
"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.' Well, son of a b----, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time."
Hunter Biden was under federal investigation beginning in 2018. Trump's suggestion that Zelenskyy look into the Biden family's Ukraine dealings became the basis for an impeachment built on the claim that Trump was soliciting foreign interference for personal political gain. The House impeached Trump in December 2019. The Senate acquitted him in February 2020.
The broader question, whether Biden's own conduct in Ukraine warranted scrutiny, was treated as irrelevant by impeachment proponents. The new referrals reopen that question from a different angle: not whether Trump's call was improper, but whether the intelligence officials who turned it into a constitutional crisis acted lawfully themselves.
A criminal referral is not a charge. It is a formal request that prosecutors evaluate evidence and decide whether to pursue a case. The Justice Department has full discretion over whether to open an investigation, convene a grand jury, or decline the matter entirely.
Newsmax noted that any prosecution decision rests solely with DOJ, and that the referrals followed declassified materials Gabbard says raise concerns about bias, misleading statements, and deviations from standard procedures. Fox News Digital reported it reached out to both the Justice Department and the White House for comment on Wednesday; neither had responded at the time of publication.
The open questions are significant. What specific criminal statutes does ODNI believe were violated? Will the Justice Department act, or will the referrals gather dust? And will Atkinson or the whistleblower face the kind of legal pressure that Trump himself endured for years based on their work?
Gabbard's standing within the administration has itself been a subject of speculation. Trump publicly shut down resignation rumors and praised her work, and the White House affirmed full confidence in the intelligence chief. The criminal referrals suggest she intends to use that backing to press the accountability case as far as it will go.
For six years, the people who built the first impeachment faced no consequences for what they got wrong, or what they may have done wrong. That era may be ending.
