All hell just broke loose, and no one has any idea what’s about to happen next

| 11:09 pm EDT September 18, 2019
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House Democrats demanded that Donald Trump’s Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire come in and testify on September 19th, about the whistleblower report which documented someone in the Trump regime having given out classified information. It was reported earlier this evening that he had ultimately agreed to publicly testify on September 26th instead. That left plenty of questions about just how much or little Maguire might actually say in front of the cameras. Then all hell broke loose.

Barely an hour after the news broke that the Acting DNI was going to show up and testify next week, the news broke about the true nature of the whistleblower report in question. The Washington Post exposed that it documented Donald Trump making a profoundly disturbing, yet unspecified, promise to a foreign leader while on the phone. Further poking around has strongly suggested that the phone call was with Vladimir Putin. So now what?

This is scandal of the century territory, even by Trump era standards. It’s also smoking gun territory, due to the amount of documentation involved. Now that tonight’s bombshell has broken, do we really expect the Acting Director of National Intelligence to show up and publicly testify about this whistleblower report? Then again, if he refuses to show up, House Democrats will hold a hearing without him, and use it to push this scandal even more firmly into the top of the headlines.

What’s remarkable is that Joseph Maguire is a relative nobody who recently ended up with the Acting DNI job by default after the departures of Dan Coats and Sue Gordon, and Trump’s failure to get his loyalist John Ratcliffe confirmed to the position. Maguire is way in over his head. Did he know what he was signing up for? Is he willing to risk getting locked up to protect Trump? Will he show up next week? Will he resign and let it be someone else’s problem? Stay tuned.