Along with the full transcript of President Trump’s phone call with President Zelensky of the Ukraine, which the White House released yesterday, Democrats in Congress have been attempting to get hold of the whistleblower complaint. The White House’s refusal to release it led Nancy Pelosi to launch an impeachment inquiry on Tuesday. Late Wednesday, the White House complied, and the intelligence committees in both the Senate and the House now have the complaint. And as of this morning, so do we.
The document begins:
In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals. The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.
This goes beyond the phone call between Trump and Zelensky from July, and is sourced by “half a dozen officials.” The reaction to the call tells a story of an attempted cover-up:
In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. 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. This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.
White House officials told me that they were “directed” by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.
What’s more, Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials in what the whistleblower describes as a “follow-up” to the call:
I also learned from multiple U.S. officials that, on or about 2 August, Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Madrid to meet with one of President Zelenskyy’s advisers, Andriy Yermak. The U.S. officials characterized this meeting, which was not reported publicly at the time, as a “direct follow-up” to the President’s call with Mr. Zelenskyy about the cases” they had discussed.
Separately, multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelenskyy advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.4 I do not know whether those officials met or spoke with Mr. Giuliani, but I was told separately by multiple U.S. officials that Mr. Yermak and Mr. Bakanov intended to travel to Washington in mid-August.
Again, read the entire document here or in the embed above. If the allegations can be corroborated, it will—at the very least—greatly strengthen the case for impeachment.