Whistle-Blower Says White House Sought to Lock Down Call Records
Administration attempted to “lock down” records of Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president, according to a whistle-blower.
(Bloomberg) -- Multiple White House officials were “deeply disturbed” by President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president and the administration attempted to “lock down” records of the interaction, according to a whistle-blower’s complaint made public Thursday.
The information in the complaint was gathered from multiple U.S. officials, according to the whistle-blower’s account, which the intelligence community’s inspector general said “appears credible.”
“The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. 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,” according to the complaint.
The whistle-blower said that senior White House officials used unusual procedures when handling the records of Trump’s July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. They said it wasn’t the first time that a presidential transcript was put into a “code word-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive -- rather than national security sensitive -- information.”
The redacted complaint and a letter from the inspector general to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire were declassified and released ahead of a hearing Thursday morning of the House Intelligence Committee.
The whistle-blower’s complaint points to possible violations of campaign finance law as well as an attempt to seek foreign assistance to interfere in or influence a federal election. It implicates Trump’s lawyer as well as Attorney General William Barr.
“This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the president’s main domestic political rivals,” the complaint says, referring to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. “The president’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”
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Several White House aides and Trump loyalists expressed skepticism about the whistle-blower’s credibility, because the person said they learned of the allegations in the complaint second-hand and didn’t identify any sources. One aide questioned what crime the president had allegedly committed.
“Nothing has changed with the release of this complaint, which is nothing more than a collection of third-hand accounts of events and cobbled-together press clippings—all of which shows nothing improper,” White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
At the Intelligence hearing, the committee’s top Republican, Devin Nunes, said the complaint relies on “hearsay evidence” and called the controversy ”a fake news story” from Democrats and their “media assets.”
But multiple Trump advisers described the president’s situation as dire and fretted that the White House is unprepared to confront impeachment. Former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment took about four months from articles being introduced in the House to his trial in the Senate; a similar timeline would place Trump’s Senate trial in early 2020, in the midst of presidential primary elections.
Maguire told the House panel in public testimony that he believes that the whistle-blower and the intelligence community’s inspector general acted in “good faith.”
“I think the whistle-blower did the right thing. I think he followed the law every step of the way,” Maguire said.
He declined to say whether he spoke with Trump about the complaint, saying such conversations “are privileged.” He also said that once security clearance issues are worked out, the whistle-blower will be able to “testify fully, and freely, and enjoy the protection of the law” to Congress.
Impeachment Inquiry
The complaint from an unnamed intelligence official concerns a sequence of events including Trump’s call with Zelenskiy. That call and the complaint moved House Democrats to go forward with an impeachment inquiry against Trump this week.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at a news conference Thursday, said she hasn’t set a timeline for any potential impeachment vote. She pointed to the section of the whistle-blower’s account alleging that White House officials sought to restrict access to records of the call between Trump and Zelenskiy.
“This is a cover-up,” she said.
Congressional investigators are still trying to ascertain whether Trump explicitly threatened to cut off U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless Zelenskiy re-opened investigations into the Bidens. Trump ordered a halt to about $250 million in aid provided by Congress at least a week before the July 25 call, a person familiar with the matter has said.
Aid Frozen
The whistle-blower’s complaint more specifically describes the timing of Trump’s freeze of the aid. According to the complaint, an unnamed Office of Management and Budget official informed government agencies on July 18 that Trump had “earlier that month” issued instructions to suspend all U.S. security assistance to Ukraine.
OMB reiterated those instructions in “interagency meetings” on July 23 and July 26, the whistle-blower said -- two days before Trump’s call and one day afterward. In those meetings, OMB officials “explicitly” said again that “the instruction to suspend this assistance had come directly from the president,” the whistle-blower said.
The whistle-blower lays out a series of events going back months involving Giuliani publicly and privately trying to get Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
The whistle-blower complaint recounted learning from multiple U.S. officials that Giuliani traveled to Madrid in early August to meet with one of Zelentskiy’s advisers, Andriy Yermak. It says U.S. officials characterized the trip as a follow-up to Trump’s conversation with Zelenskiy about the “cases” they discussed.
--With assistance from Chris Strohm, Erik Wasson and Steven T. Dennis.
To contact the reporters on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net;Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann
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