WASHINGTON _ The whistleblower whose allegations of improper conduct by President Donald Trump toward Ukraine kicked off House Democrats' impeachment effort feared that the White House was trying to "lock down" records of the president's actions to shield them from scrutiny.
In the days after Trump's July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, White House officials took unusual steps to secure the transcript of the call, the whistleblower said in the written complaint, a redacted version of which was released Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee. In the call, Trump asked Zelenskiy to do him a "favor" and help investigate his political opponents, especially former Vice President Joe Biden.
The whistleblower's allegation about the effort to lock up documents was one piece of a wide-ranging complaint that expressed fears Trump was hijacking U.S. foreign policy for personal gain. Its public release Thursday morning further cranked up the intensity of the Democratic impeachment effort.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., characterized the whistleblower's account as evidence of a White House "cover-up" as she said the allegations about Trump's contacts with Ukraine would now be the central focus of the Democrats' impeachment inquiry.
"Their actions are a cover-up," Pelosi said at her weekly press briefing Thursday. "It's not only happened that one time. My understanding is it may have happened before."
Pelosi did not give any timeline for the impeachment inquiry, saying "there is no rush to judgment." But, she added, the allegations about Ukraine go significantly beyond previous accusations against Trump.
"We are at a different level of lawlessness that is self-evident to the American people," she said.
The opening of impeachment hearings in the House Intelligence Committee drew a furious rejoinder from Trump, who repeated that his call with Zelenskiy was "perfect."
"It shouldn't be allowed. There should be a way of stopping it. Maybe legally through the courts," he told reporters as he returned to Washington from New York, where he had been attending the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
A few Republican lawmakers said they found the allegations about Trump's conduct troubling, although most continued to defend the president.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for example, labeled the complaint part of a "coordinated effort to take secondhand information to create a narrative damaging to the president."
Earlier, Trump lashed out at the still-unidentified whistleblower and those who relayed the details of his July conversation with Ukraine's president.
"They're almost a spy," he said in comments to members of the U.S. mission to the United Nations.
"I want to know who's the person, who's the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that's close to a spy," he said. "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now."
Trump also referred to Biden as "Sleepy Joe" and said he was "dumb as a rock" and denounced "press scum." He expressed confidence about his chances in 2020 and beyond: "We're looking good for another four years and then if we want to, another four and another four," he said, drawing laughter from some of those in the room.
White House officials said the effort to keep the Ukraine call under wraps was "not the first time" extra steps had been taken "for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive _ rather than national security sensitive _ information," the whistleblower wrote.
"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," the complaint said. "The transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature."
According to the whistleblower, one official described this as "an abuse" because the call "did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective."
The redacted version of the complaint was released shortly before the House Intelligence Committee was scheduled to begin a public hearing with Joseph Maguire, the director of national intelligence.
Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and the chair of the Intelligence Committee, opened the hearing by calling the whistleblower's complaint and the White House account of Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian leader "the most graphic evidence yet that the president of the United States has betrayed his oath of office. Betrayed his oath to defend our national security. And betrayed his oath to defend our Constitution."
Trump "sacrificed our national security and the Constitution for his personal political benefit," Schiff said.
Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, a Republican member of the committee and former CIA official, said in a statement on Twitter that "there is a lot in the whistleblower complaint that is concerning. We need to fully investigate all of the allegations addressed in the letter, and the first step is to talk to the whistleblower."
The whistleblower has agreed to testify provided that a lawyer can be present. White House officials have not made clear whether they would attempt to place any limits on the testimony.
Although the whistleblower complaint is centered on the July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy, it includes broader concerns about Trump's actions and his allies.
The whistleblower did not personally witness or listen to Trump's call with Zelenskiy _ a point some Republicans seized on to characterize the complaint as "hearsay" _ but the complaint's description of Trump's conversation closely mirrored the account of the call released by the White House on Wednesday.
"The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call," the complaint said. "They told me 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."
The whistleblower said there was no explanation given to national security officials for why Trump was delaying critical military aid for Ukraine at the same time he was pushing Zelenskiy to help investigate Biden.
"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," the whistleblower wrote in the complaint.
The complaint provides a more wide-angle view of the scandal than the memorandum of Trump's call that the White House released. It discussed attempts by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, to network with Ukrainian officials.
"I heard from multiple U.S. officials that they were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani's circumvention of national security decision making processes to engage with Ukrainian officials and relay messages back and forth between Kyiv and the president," the whistleblower wrote.
Kyiv, formerly known as Kiev, is the capital of Ukraine.
The whistleblower's complaint went initially in late August to the intelligence community's inspector general, Michael Atkinson, who wrote in an Aug. 26 letter to Maguire that the allegations could create "serious national security and counterintelligence risks."
Atkinson also determined that the complaint was an "urgent concern," which by law required notifying Congress. In justifying his assessment, Atkinson used Trump's executive order on foreign election interference. In that order, Trump wrote that foreign interference constituted "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."
Atkinson expressed concern that the president's request for Ukraine to investigate Biden could violate campaign finance laws, which bar contributions of money or services from foreign nationals. A spokeswoman for Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday that the Justice Department reviewed that claim but determined no laws were broken.
Atkinson found the complainant to be credible, given the whistleblower's "official and authorized access" and "subject matter expertise" as well as other information the inspector general gathered during a preliminary review.
Atkinson noted that the whistleblower had "some arguable political bias ... in favor of a rival political candidate," but added that it didn't change his assessment that the person was credible.
The inspector general, who was appointed by Trump, also said he had sent requests to agencies in the intelligence community for access to and "the preservation of any and all records related to the president's telephone call" and related efforts to allegedly solicit Ukrainian help in the U.S. election.
