US president Donald Trump used the power of his office to try to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election to investigate a political rival “for personal gain”, according to an explosive whistleblower complaint released on Thursday after days of damning revelations about Mr Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The US House intelligence committee on Thursday released a declassified version of the whistleblower report, which alleges that Mr Trump used his office to solicit interference in the 2020 presidential election from a foreign country.
Attorney general William P Barr and the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani were central to the effort, the complaint said.
In addition, the complaint says that the whistleblower, an intelligence officer, learned from multiple American officials that “senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced as is customary by the White House Situation Room”.
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The complaint relates to a phone call on July 25th about Ukraine’s need for more American financial aid, during which Mr Trump urged Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to pursue an investigation into Mr Trump’s political rival, former Democratic vice-president Joe Biden. It was filed in August.
The whistleblower’s report claims that White House lawyers directed that an electronic transcript of the Trump-Zelenskiy call be removed from a computer system and moved to a different, “codeword-level” system.
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“This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call,” the complaint said. “According to White House officials I spoke with, this was ‘not the first time’ under the administration that a presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive – rather than national security sensitive – information.”
The whistleblower’s complaint was based on accounts from multiple White House officials who were “deeply disturbed” by what they heard on the call, the complaint said.
“They told me that there was already a discussion ongoing with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials’ retelling, that they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain,” the whistleblower wrote in the complaint.
The complainant asserted that multiple officials said a subsequent meeting or phone call between Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskiy would depend on whether the Ukrainian president was willing to “play ball” on investigating Mr Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and other matters.
More than six US officials were said to have contacted the whistleblower regarding Mr Trump’s effort to seek Ukrainian interference.
“I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute ‘a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or executive order’ that ‘does not include differences of opinion concerning public policy matters’, consistent with the definition of an ‘urgent concern’,” the beginning of the report said.
House hearing
The unclassified version of the complaint was released ahead of the House intelligence committee hearing on the allegations on Thursday, where the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, testified. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence provided politicians with an unclassified version of the whistleblower complaint so that it could be discussed in the open hearing.
At the hearing Mr Maguire said he believed that the whistleblower and the intelligence community’s inspector general had acted in “good faith” on the issue. “I believe that this matter is unprecedented,” Mr Maguire said.
Asked why he went to the White House to ask whether the complaint should be turned over to Congress, Mr Maguire said that because the matter involved issues of executive privilege, it “seemed prudent” to check with the administration.
Mr Maguire said “emphatically, no”, when asked by Democrat Jackie Speier whether Mr Trump ever asked him to find out the whistleblower’s identity. He also said nobody else in the White House asked him to do so.
He wouldn’t say whether he had discussed the whistleblower’s complaint with Mr Trump, saying such conversations are “privileged”, but he said he wasn’t told by the White House not to turn over the whistleblower complaint to Congress.
He also said that after security clearances are finalised with the whistleblower’s lawyer, the whistleblower will be able to give full testimony to politicians.
Democrat Adam B Schiff, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, said at the hearing that the whistleblower complaint brought to light “gross misconduct” by the president. Mr Schiff questioned why Mr Maguire didn’t provide the complaint to the committee and “stood silent when an intelligence professional under your care and protection was ridiculed by the president, was accused of potentially betraying his or her country”.
Amid the hearing, House speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters the whistleblower’s allegation that the White House tried to “lock down” the phone records amounted to a “cover-up” by the administration. She said the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry launched this week would focus narrowly on the Ukraine episode and that other instances in which Mr Trump may have abused the power of his office would be considered later.
Speaking following the hearing, Mr Trump said there should be a way of stopping the impeachment inquiry, perhaps through the courts.
At the same time, reports emerged that on Thursday morning he told a crowd of staff from the US mission to the UN that he wants to know who provided information to the whistleblower, saying that whoever did so was “close to a spy” and that “in the old days” spies were dealt with differently.
The New York Times also revealed on Thursday that the whistleblower is a CIA officer who was detailed to work at the White House at one point, according to three people familiar with his identity.
Reconstructed transcript
Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees and a group of senior politicians from both parties, including senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, were permitted to review the classified complaint on Wednesday, just hours after the White House released a reconstructed transcript of the phone call.
Though the reconstructed transcript of the call has been released, the complaint contains more details than the phone call, including the names of White House officials who may have witnessed presidential misconduct and other actions.
House Democrats have said that Mr Trump violated his oath of office when he pressured a foreign leader to investigate one of his political rivals. The White House initially refused to provide Congress with the complaint or to reveal what was said on the call. After Democrats took the first steps to impeach Mr Trump, the administration disclosed details of the call and shared the classified complaint with politicians.
The allegations it contained were “deeply disturbing” and “very credible”, Mr Schiff said Wednesday after reviewing the complaint.
Mr Trump has dismissed the allegations that he acted improperly. Early Thursday morning, the president was busy sharing on Twitter praise from some of his allies. – New York Times/Bloomberg/Guardian/Reuters