5 Things We Learned From the Declassified Whistleblower Complaint

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released the declassified whistleblower complaint about President Donald Trump’s controversial phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in July that is sparking an impeachment inquiry on Trump.

In short, the complaint alleges that Trump tried to get Ukraine to interfere with the 2020 presidential election and the White House tried to cover it all up.

Here are three allegations that were made in the declassified whistleblower complaint:

1. White House lawyers believed Trump abused his office for personal gain

According to the whistleblower’s complaint, White House officials were “deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call.”

The complaint said that White House lawyers were having an ongoing discussion 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.”

2. Senior White House execs had intervened to ‘lock down’ records of the call

In the days after the call, the whistleblower apparently learned from several U.S. officials that senior White House execs had been intervening 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,” the complaint said.

“This set of actions underscored to me that the White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call,” the whistleblower wrote in the report.

3. White House officials were ‘directed’ to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system

The whistleblower also said that White House officials were “directed” by the White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system where such transcripts are stored for coordination, finalizing, and eventually distributed to Cabinet-level officials.

Instead, the whistleblower said, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that’s typically used to store and handle classified information of a sensitive nature.

The whistleblower said one White House official described the act as an abuse of the electronic system because the call didn’t have anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.

4. Giuliani was sent to Madrid to meet with a Zelensky aide

According to the complaint, the whistleblower discovered from U.S. officials that Giuliani’s visit to Madrid in August to meet with an aide of Zelensky was a “direct followup” to Trump’s call in July with Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. Giuliani also connected with “a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov,” the complaint said.

After that meeting in August, the whistleblower wrote that two U.S. ambassadors advised Ukranian leaders on “how to ‘navigate’ the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelensky.” The ambassadors also spoke with Giuliani to “contain the damage” potentially to national security, according to the complaint.

5. Trump and Giuliani may have conducted a quid pro quo with Zelensky

According to the complaint, the whistleblower alleges that Ukrainian leaders may have thought Zelensky would get a meeting or a phone call from Trump if they “play ball” regarding the investigations Giuliani wanted.

Also, the whistleblower alleges that the president told Vice President Mike Pence to cancel plans to travel to Ukraine for the newly-elected Zelensky’s inauguration festivities in May, sending the Secretary of Energy Rick Perry instead. The complaint said it was “made clear” to U.S. officials that the president didn’t want to meet with Zelensky until he saw how Zelensky “chose to act” during his early days in office.

The whistleblower wrote that the information in the complaint was compiled while conducting “official interagency business.”

“It is routine for U.S. officials with responsibility for a particular regional or functional portfolio to share such information with one another to inform policymaking and analysis,” the complaint said.