WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday confirmed a key detail in the intelligence whistleblower’s complaint alleging that President Donald Trump abused the power of his office.
A senior
administration official acknowledged that the rough transcript of Trump’s July
25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was moved to
a highly classified system maintained by the National Security Council at the
direction of attorneys. The motivation and timing of the move remained unclear.
The
whistleblower complaint, which is at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment
inquiry, said the move to “lock down” details of the call suggested that “White
House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.”
Trump has argued everything was “appropriate.”
White House
attorneys were made aware of concerns about Trump’s comments on the call before
the intelligence community whistleblower sent his allegations to the inspector
general.
The
official was granted anonymity Friday to discuss sensitive matters.
Confirmation
of the detail came as Trump stepped up his campaign against the anonymous
whistleblower and the unnamed “White House officials” cited in the complaint,
drawing a warning from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi against retaliation.
The
complaint alleges that Trump abused the power of his office to “solicit
interference from a foreign country” in next year’s U.S. election. In the July
25 phone call, days after ordering a freeze to some military assistance for
Ukraine, Trump prodded the new Ukrainian president to investigate Democratic
rival Joe Biden and volunteered the assistance of both his personal attorney,
Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr.
Late
Thursday, Trump denounced people who might have talked to the whistleblower as
“close to a spy” and suggested they engaged in treason, an act punishable by
death. Then on Friday, he targeted the complainant, a CIA officer,
tweeting, “Sounding more and more like the so-called Whistleblower isn’t a
Whistleblower at
all.”
He also
alleged without evidence that information in the complaint has been “proved to
be so inaccurate,” though none of the allegations have been demonstrated to be
incorrect.
Pelosi told
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, “I’m concerned about some of the president’s
comments about the whistleblower.”
She said
the House panels conducting the impeachment probe will make sure there’s no
retaliation against people who provided information in the case. On Thursday,
House Democratic chairmen called Trump’s comments “witness intimidation” and
suggested efforts by him to interfere with the potential witness could be
unlawful.
Trump’s
Friday comment questioning the whistleblower’s status could foreshadow an
effort to argue that legal protection laws don’t apply to the person, opening a
new front in the president’s battles with Congress. The intelligence
community’s inspector general found the whistleblower’s complaint “credible”
despite finding indications of the person’s support for a different political
candidate.
As more
Democrats have lent support to investigations that could result in the removal
of the president, Pelosi has moved to focus the probe on the Ukraine matter,
rather than the array of other open inquiries.
“I think we
have to stay focused, as far as the public is concerned, on the fact that the
president of the United States used taxpayer dollars to shake down the leader
of another country for his own political gain,” she said Friday.
Pelosi
declined to provide a timeline for the House impeachment investigation.
“They will
take the time that they need, and we won’t have the calendar be the arbiter,”
she said. But she added, “It doesn’t have to drag on.”
Meanwhile,
Republicans were straining under the uncertainty of being swept up in the most
serious test yet of their alliance with the Trump White House.
“We owe
people to take it seriously,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a onetime Trump
rival who is now a member of the intelligence committee.
“Right now,
I have more questions than answers,” he said. “The complaint raises serious
allegations, and we need to determine whether they’re credible or not.”
Legal
experts said that by following proper procedures and filing a complaint with
the government rather than disclosing the information to the media, the person
is without question regarded as a whistleblower entitled to protections against
being fired or criminally prosecuted.
“This
person clearly followed the exact path he was supposed to follow,” said Debra
D’Agostino, a lawyer who represents whistleblowers. “There is no basis for not
calling this person a whistleblower.”
Lawyers say
it also doesn’t matter for the purposes of being treated as a whistleblower if
all of the allegations are borne out as entirely true, or even if political
motives or partisanship did factor into the decision to come forward.
“What a
whistleblower needs to have is a reasonable belief that the information they’re
disclosing and complaining about could be a violation of a law, rule or
regulation,” said Eric Bachman, another Washington lawyer who represents
whistleblowers. “They do not need to be certain that there is a violation. It
does not need to be proven in a court of law that there is a violation.”
Fresh
questions were raised late Thursday about how the White House and the Justice
Department handled the whistleblower complaint. The administration initially
blocked Congress from viewing it, and only released a redacted version to
lawmakers this week after the impeachment inquiry had begun.
White House
and Justice Department attorneys were aware of the concerns about Trump’s call
with Zelenskiy before the complaint was filed, according to a U.S. official and
a person familiar with the matter. The intelligence official initially filed a
complaint about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine with the CIA, which then alerted
the White House and the Justice Department, before filing with the intelligence
community’s inspector general, a process that granted the individual more legal
protection.
The person
familiar with the matter, as well as another person with knowledge of the case,
confirmed that the whistleblower was a CIA officer.
The
Associated Press is publishing information about the whistleblower’s background
because the person’s credibility is central to the impeachment inquiry into the
president. The New York Times first reported that the individual was a CIA
officer.
The U.S.
official and the two people familiar with the matter spoke to the AP on the
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The
whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Zaid, said publishing details about the
individual places the person in a dangerous situation, personally and
professionally. The CIA referred questions to the inspector general.
***AP
writers Lisa Mascaro and Laurie Kellman contributed.
***More: https://apnews.com/ec576ac2faa942d18450f7bdfac0ef24
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