Whistleblower Complaint Says Trump Abused Power
WASHINGTON (AP) β A secret whistleblower complaint at the center of an impeachment inquiry alleges that President Donald Trump abused the power of his office to βsolicit interference from a foreign countryβ in next yearβs U.S. election. The White House then tried to βlock downβ the information to cover it up, the complaint says.
The 9-page document was released Thursday ahead of testimony to House investigators from Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence.
The whistleblower complaint is at least in part related to the July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump prodded Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden. The White House released a rough transcript of that call on Wednesday.
βIn the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to βlock downβ all the 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,β the complaint says.
The anonymous whistleblower says that despite his or her not being present for the call, multiple White House officials shared consistent details about it.
Those officials told the whistleblower that βthis was βnot the first timeβ under this 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,β the complaint said.
The document, with its precise detail and clear narrative, will likely accelerate the impeachment process and put more pressure on Trump to rebut its core contentions and on his fellow Republicans to defend him. The complaint also provides a road map for corroborating witnesses, which will complicate the presidentβs effort to characterize the findings as those of a lone partisan out to undermine him.
Still, Trump immediately tweeted, βThe Democrats are trying to destroy the Republican Party and all that it stands for. Stick together, play their game and fight hard Republicans. Our country is at stake.β The tweet was in all capital letters.
House Democrats who are now mulling Trumpβs impeachment are hoping Maguire will explain why he withheld the intelligence community whistleblowerβs complaint from Congress for weeks. Maguire will then go behind closed doors to speak to the Senate intelligence panel.
