26th September, 2019
President Donald Trump’s Ukraine mess got messier on Thursday with the release of the complaint by the whistleblower who alleged an attempted lockdown by Trump White House of the transcript of his conversation with Ukraine leader.
The complaint, released by the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday alleges that President Trump sought to enlist Ukraine’s help in the 2020 election by mounting a corruption investigation against former Vice President Joe Biden.
The declassified version of the whistleblower complaint details the government insider’s worries about Trump’s contacts with Ukraine’s leader, revelations of which on Tuesday triggered a formal impeachment inquiry against the president.
The complainant said “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge” described to the whistleblower the details of the July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, including that “the President used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests. Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) tweeted a release of the complaint roughly 30 minutes before acting Director of National Security Joseph Maguire was set to testify before his panel.
In the complaint, the whistleblower, who is unnamed and whose identity remains unknown, states that they had received information from multiple government officials that the president was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign government in the 2020 U.S. election.”
“The President’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General [William] Barr also appears to be involved as well,” the complaint states.
The Aug. 12 complaint says that over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials had told them of “various facts related to the affair.”
While the whistleblower says they were not a direct witness, the whistleblower found the accounts of colleagues to be credible.
The complainant said “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge” described to the whistleblower the details of the Zelensky phone call.
According to the nine-page complaint, the White House officials were “deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call” and White House lawyers were consulted out of concern that the president used his office for his own personal gain.
The whistleblower complaint says that there were approximately a dozen officials in the room during the phone call, which Trump made from the White House situation room. The officials included a mix of policy officials and duty officers, the complaint said, and participation was not reduced because it was seen as a “routine” call.
The whistleblower said that they were told that senior White House officials intervened to “lock down” records of the phone call, and that White House officials were directed by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system where they are customarily stored and put onto a separate system “that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.”
The complaint appeared to mirror the details of the phone call, as laid out in a five-page partial transcript of the call that the White House released early Wednesday morning. The memo showed that Trump encouraged Zelensky to investigate the allegations with Biden and aspects of the origins of the Russia investigation, offering to put the Ukrainian leader in contact with Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.
While Trump has admitted that he raised the prospect of investigating Biden in the phone call, he has denied that he withheld financial aid to help combat Russian aggression as leverage in his discussions with the foreign leader. Trump has insisted that the call was appropriate and that he did not pressure Zelensky to pursue the Biden allegations, calling their conversation “perfect.” At a joint news conference at the United Nations with Trump on Wednesday, Zelensky said he did not feel pressure from Trump and that he did not want to get involved in U.S. political affairs.
Revelations about the phone call have led dozens of Democrats to come out in support of impeachment.
*Read more in Thehill.com