What did Mr. Barr say?

He endorsed Mr. Trump’s move while putting forth a dubious account of what happened. This is Mr. Barr’s statement:

“The president did the right thing in removing Atkinson. From the vantage point of the Department of Justice, he had interpreted his statute — which is a fairly narrow statute, gave him jurisdiction over wrongdoing by intelligence people — and tried to turn it in to a commission to explore anything in the government and immediately report it to Congress without letting the executive branch look at it and determine whether there was any problem. He was told this in a letter from the Department of Justice, and he is obliged to follow the interpretation of the Department of Justice and he ignored it, so I think the president was correct in firing him.”

Did Mr. Atkinson do what Mr. Barr said?

No, not when it came to an executive branch review. Mr. Atkinson tried to follow the procedures laid out in the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, which requires that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence review the complaint, then report it to Congress.

After determining that the complaint was “credible” and raised an “urgent concern,” Mr. Atkinson provided it on Aug. 26 to the acting director of national intelligence at the time, Joseph Maguire. Mr. Atkinson believed that under the whistle-blower protection law, Mr. Maguire would have seven days to review the materials and append any comments before passing on the complaint to Congress.

A senior Justice Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, defended Mr. Barr’s claim that Mr. Atkinson instead thought he could “immediately report it to Congress without letting the executive branch look at it,” arguing that a week was insufficient for the department to conduct its own review of the complaint.

But it was Congress, not Mr. Atkinson, that set the review period at one week for complaints covered by the whistle-blower law. In addition, officials at the White House and the Justice Department already knew that an intelligence official had raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s Ukraine dealings even before he filed the complaint on Aug. 12. The department ultimately decided not to open any criminal investigation.