Trump impeachment inquiry: What the whistleblower says

Here’s the Associated Press' lead:

 

"White House officials took extraordinary steps to 'lock down' information about President Donald Trump’s summertime phone call with the president of Ukraine, even moving the transcript to a secret computer system, a whistleblower alleges in a politically explosive complaint that accuses the administration of a wide-ranging cover-up."

I’d encourage you to read for yourself, if you haven’t already, the 9-page complaint that was released Thursday, given all the noise.

 

(As impeachment looms, disinformation experts are bracing for a cyclone of chaos, complete with fast-twitch media manipulation, droves of false and misleading claims, and hyper-polarized audiences fiercely clinging to their side’s version of reality, says a New York Times article. 

 

And here’s another article from the Times on how pro-Trump media are constructing their version of the events about Ukraine.)

 

In the aftermath of the call, according to the whistleblower, White House lawyers were concerned that “they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain,” the complaint says.

 

In addition, officials told the whistleblower that “this was ‘not the first time’ 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,” the complaint says.

 

In this case, the complaint says, the officials told the whistleblower they were “directed” by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts typically are stored for coordination, finalization and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.

 

The complaint has revived questions about the activities of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who it says alarmed government officials by circumventing “national security decision making processes.” Giuliani, who represented the president in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, repeatedly communicated with advisers of Ukraine’s president in the days after the phone call.

 

Here is another AP article on the government computer systems that White House and other government employees use to share and manage classified information day-to-day.