House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff knew the details of the whistleblower's complaint against President Trump before it was filed because the CIA officer went to one of the committee aides beforehand, according to the New York Times.

Dissatisfied with the CIA's general counsel's response to his concerns, the whistleblower approached a House Intelligence Committee aide with the basic facts of what was to become his bombshell complaint.

The aide told the officer to follow the standard procedure, which includes hiring a lawyer and filing an official whistleblower complaint within the intelligence community. The aide then proceeded to inform Schiff of the conversation but left the whistleblower's identity anonymous.

“Like other whistle-blowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistle-blower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the intelligence community,” said Patrick Boland, a spokesman for Schiff.

The complaint was filed in August in regards to Trump's conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his subsequent request for the foreign leader to jump-start an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The younger Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, which was investigated for corruption, but he was not accused of any illegal activity.

Schiff has played an active role in the president's ire on the matter of the whistleblower complaint and the subsequent impeachment inquiry. The president has repeatedly called for his resignation after he read a fake copy of the president's conversation with Zelensky during acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire's testimony in front of his committee last week.