Since the day he took office, Donald Trump has blamed a “deep state” for trying to undermine his Presidency. This morning, the American people have an opportunity to judge the so-called deep state themselves. A meticulous nine-page whistle-blower complaint was released this morning by the House Intelligence Committee. In the document, an unnamed U.S. intelligence official describes an apparent effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to pressure Ukraine to launch a criminal inquiry into a political rival, Joe Biden. Furthermore, the whistle-blower alleges that White House officials then covered up the President’s actions. The White House and the Department of Justice then delayed Congress from seeing the whistle-blower complaint. In all, the actions taken by the President, White House officials, and the Justice Department surrounding the complaint threaten the checks and balances between the President and Congress, which define and protect American democracy.

We have now seen the White House summary of the call between Trump and the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump pressures Zelensky to launch an investigation of Biden and his son. The whistle-blower accurately described the summary, based on conversations with several White House officials. The whistle-blower wrote, “The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call.”

Read More Susan B. Glasser on the forty-eight hours that sealed Trump’s impeachment.

Normally, the call memorandum would have been shared with Cabinet members. Instead, according to the complaint, it was transferred into a separate system that is normally reserved for documents involving sensitive national-security information, where far fewer officials would see it. The whistle-blower describes these acts as evidence that White House officials understood the “gravity” of what had occurred on the call.

Watch: Joseph Maguire testifies on Trump, the Ukraine call, and the whistle-blower.

In other ways, the system worked. As the whistle-blower was supposed to do under the law, he or she filed the complaint directly to the inspector general of the Intelligence Community. After Watergate, Congress created the inspector general offices as independent watchdogs that did not report to the President; they reported to Congress and promised to protect whistle-blowers from retaliation. The offices were established to allow government employees to report abuse, corruption, and waste across the executive branch, from low-level employees to the President.

The Intelligence Community’s inspector general deemed the whistle-blower’s complaint “credible and urgent” and, again following the law, forwarded it to the director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire. The system worked again. Maguire, a former Navy SEAL, agreed with the inspector general that the complaint was credible. He demurred on the issue of urgency.

When Maguire took the next step in the process, he was blocked by the White House and the Justice Department. Maguire, concerned that the material fell under executive privilege, had requested approval from the White House and the Justice Department to forward the complaint to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. In the second deeply disturbing part of the process, Justice Department lawyers overseen by Attorney General William Barr deemed that the complaint should not be turned over to Congress. One of the many reforms enacted after Watergate was that the Attorney General, as much as possible, should act in an apolitical manner and interpret the law in a neutral fashion. During the Nixon Administration, Attorney General John Mitchell had improperly targeted leading politicians who were seen by the White House as critics of the President, as well as Vietnam War protesters. Since then, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have generally agreed that it is vital for the American public to feel that the Justice Department administers the law equally and equitably.

Read More Early facts about the whistle-blower complaint.

In an interview on Thursday morning, Angus King, an independent from Maine and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the Justice Department’s legal interpretation. King said that under the whistle-blower law the document should have been forwarded to Congress. “They misapplied the statute,” King told me. “That’s a disingenuous verging on dishonest reading of the statute.”

Earlier this week, the President dismissed the whistle-blower as a “political hack” and questioned whether the person was “on our country’s side.” When, on Thursday morning, Maguire testified before the House Intelligence Committee, Republicans downplayed or dismissed the seriousness of the complaint. If this scandal follows the pattern of past ones, President Trump and his allies will likely declare the whistle-blower and the inspector general members of the deep state. In the hours and days ahead, the two intelligence officials will likely be accused of mounting a coup to force Trump from office.

In his testimony, Maguire praised the whistle-blower. “As public servants, we have a solemn duty to report waste and abuse,” he said. So far, the whistle-blower and the inspector general appear to be committed public servants. Both learned of potential abuse and reported it. Both appear to have followed the law. The whistle-blower system worked.

The checks and balances also appear to be working. When threatened with impeachment by the House, the President released a summary of his call, as well as the full whistle-blower complaint. In the weeks ahead, transparency should be increased, not decreased. When grave abuses of power are alleged, information should be made public, not kept secret. Citizens should read the call summary and the whistle-blower complaint themselves, and make their own judgments. This is not a deep state. This is American democracy.