White House tried to “lock down” Zelensky call records, whistle-blower says

The whistle-blower complaint that triggered the
political scandal over which House Democrats are pursuing impeachment of U.S. President
Trump was made public by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Sept. 26. The
nine-page document alleges evidence of a four-month campaign by Trump and his
personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to solicit interference from Ukraine in the
2020 presidential election, according to its author, reported to be a CIA
officer by the nytimes.com news site. In particular, the interference involved
pressuring Ukraine to investigate former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, among
Trump’s leading rivals. The key evidence of this interference was a transcript
of a July 25 telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky,
which was published the prior day.

The complaint also alleges that senior White House
officials had to intervene to “lock down” all records of the phone call,
“especially the 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, the complaint’s author 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 for coordination,
finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials. Instead the
transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used
to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature,”
the complaint said. One White House official described this act as an abuse of
the electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely
sensitive from a national security perspective, the complaint said.

The same day, Trump’s political and media allies
launched into a campaign of discrediting the complaint, citing the author’s
admission of being “not a direct witness to most of the events described,” but
relying on multiple second-hand sources who are kept anonymous. They also
alleged the author’s political bias, repeatedly using the term “purportedly”
when referring to claims against Biden, and the author’s use of sources of
Soros-funded organizations, such as the Organized Crime and Corruption
Reporting Project, as reported by the breitbart.com news site. It also alleged
factual errors, such as the claim that Counsel to the U.S. State Department
Ulrich Brechbuhl listened in on the July 25 call.