Whistleblower Complaint Alleges White House Effort to Conceal Details of Trump Call With Ukraine
Complaint alleges White House effort to ‘lock down’ call records and describes several officials as ‘deeply disturbed’ about president’s 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 “lock down” all records related to it, “especially the word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced” by the White House Situation Room.
White House officials told the complainant they had been “directed” 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.
“This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call,” 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 “not the first time” the Trump White House had put a presidential transcript “into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive—rather than national security sensitive—information.”
A former White House official familiar with National Security Council computer systems said it would be “highly unusual” for material regarding Mr. Trump’s 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.
“It is not the purpose for the additional security that system has,” the former official said. Material on the system is so sensitive, requiring code-word access and a “need to know,” that even the highest-ranking White House officials “don’t regularly interact with it,” he said.
The whistleblower’s complaint paints a picture of several White House officials wracked with concern about the president’s activities, describing them as “deeply disturbed” about the call."..."
Whistleblower Complaint Alleges White House Effort to Conceal Details of Trump Call With Ukraine
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