Whistleblower Complaint Alleges White House Effort to Conceal Details of Trump Call With Ukraine
Complaint alleges White House effort to âlock downâ call records and describes several officials as âdeeply disturbedâ about presidentâs communications with Zelensky
Wall Street Journal - 9/26/19 2:55PM
Whistleblower Complaint Alleges White House Effort to Conceal Details of Trump Call With Ukraine
"...The whistleblower complaint alleges that there was an effort within the White House in the days following the July 25 call with Mr. Zelensky to âlock downâ all records related to it, âespecially the word-for-word transcript of the call that was producedâ by the White House Situation Room.
White House officials told the complainant they had been âdirectedâ by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system that stores those transcripts and allows for distribution to cabinet-level officials, the report said.
A call record released by the White House shows President Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to "look into" former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. WSJ reads the key moments from the rough transcript of the call.
âThis set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call,â the complaint said. The transcript was instead stored on a separate system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature, the complaint said.
In an appendix to the complaint, the whistleblower wrote that White House officials said this was ânot the first timeâ the Trump White House had put a presidential transcript âinto this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitiveârather than national security sensitiveâinformation.â
A former White House official familiar with National Security Council computer systems said it would be âhighly unusualâ for material regarding Mr. Trumpâs call with the Ukrainian leader to be put on the tightly restricted computer system reserved for the most secret material, such as information about U.S. covert actions and counterintelligence issues.
âIt is not the purpose for the additional security that system has,â the former official said. Material on the system is so sensitive, requiring code-word access and a âneed to know,â that even the highest-ranking White House officials âdonât regularly interact with it,â he said.
The whistleblowerâs complaint paints a picture of several White House officials wracked with concern about the presidentâs activities, describing them as âdeeply disturbedâ about the call."..."
Whistleblower Complaint Alleges White House Effort to Conceal Details of Trump Call With Ukraine
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