Donald Trump lashes whistleblower as being ‘close to a spy’
Donald Trump has attacked the whistleblower whose complaint threatens to implode his presidency and has been reportedly revealed to be a CIA agent. SEE THE FULL COMPLAINT
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The US House Intelligence Committee has released a redacted version of a whistleblower complaint at the centre of Democrats’ impeachment probe of US President Donald Trump.
House Democrats called the document “deeply disturbing”.
The question of whether or not Mr Trump committed an impeachable offence by asking his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate the actions of his political rival is dividing America.
“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple US 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 US election,” the unidentified whistleblower wrote in the August 12 complaint.
“This inference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.”
Mr Trump has attacked the leak from the whistleblower, saying: “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. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart?”
It comes as the whistleblower whose complaint has shaken the foundations of Mr Trump’s presidency is a male officer of the Central Intelligence Agency who was seconded to the White House, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
The man “was detailed to work at the White House at one point” but has since returned to the CIA, the Times said, citing three people familiar with his identity.
The whistleblower claimed he was notified by “multiple US officials” that “senior White House officials had intervened 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.”
“This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call,” the whistleblower wrote.
The whistleblower said he was alerted by “more than half a dozen US officials … of various facts related to this effort” and was not a direct witness to most of what the complaint goes on to describe — including Mr Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The whistleblower also said that other “politically sensitive — rather than national security sensitive” calls between Mr Trump and foreign leaders have been dealt with in the same way, that there are more notes of the call which have vanished, and that “multiple US officials” expressed concern about Rudy Giuliani’s involvement in Ukraine.
Republicans and the White House brushed it off as a “nothing call”, but Mr Trump went a step further, describing the whistleblower as “almost a spy”.
“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,” the president raged in front of members of the US Mission to the UN in New York City, according to The Los Angeles Times.
“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.”
“This is nothing more than a collection of third-hand accounts of events and cobbled-together press clippings,” added White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham. “The White House will continue to push back on the hysteria and false narratives being peddled by Democrats and many in the mainstream media.”
The Democrats have accused the White House of a cover-up, saying why would they attempt to hide the documents if they weren’t concerned about them.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the White House effort to “lock down” Mr Trump’s Ukraine call shows “this is a cover up”.
“Having read the documents in there, I’m even more worried about what happened than when I read the memorandum of the conversation,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “There are so many facts that have to be examined. It’s very troubling.”
The acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified before Congress on the complaint.
Mr Maguire revealed that the whistleblower is a man and said he believes he properly handled a whistleblower’s complaint.
“I am not familiar with any prior instances where a whistleblower complaint touched on such complicated and sensitive issues, including executive privilege,” Mr Maguire told members of the House Intelligence Committee. “I believe that this matter is unprecedented. I also believe that I handled this matter in full compliance with the law at all times.”
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Mr Maguire insisted that he didn’t seek advice from the White House about whether he should stonewall Congress. He testified that the White House never advised him to prevent politicians from seeing it.
But Mr Maguire refused to say whether he ever discussed the complaint with the president.
“I will not disclose privileged conversations I have … with the president,” he said.
Mr Maguire said he was unfamiliar with any other whistleblower complaint in American history that “touched on such complicated and sensitive issues.”
He praised the whistleblower as having acted honourably, said he recognised the complaint as immediately sensitive and important and insisted the White House did not direct him to withhold it from Congress.
“I believe that everything in this matter here is totally unprecedented.”
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter that Mr Trump “solicited foreign interference in our elections from the Oval Office.”
“He attempted to cover up his actions. And his appointees intervened, against the law, to attempt to suppress this whistleblower complaint,” she said.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said the whistleblower complaint “is only the tip of an iceberg of corrupt, illegal and immoral behaviour by this president.”
“What the House must do is thoroughly investigate Trump’s cover-up of this call and his other attempts to use government resources to help his re-election campaign,” Sen. Sanders said in a statement.
Julian Castro, another 2020 Democratic candidate, also accused the White House of a cover up.
Democrats have commenced a formal impeachment investigation into Mr Trump’s actions, setting in train the first such proceedings in the US since the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
But while the transcript, recreated through a combination of voice recognition software and the recollections of notetakers in the White House situation room who listened-in to the July 25 call, confirmed the pair discussed the Bidens, it does not appear to deliver the smoking gun that Democrats had promised.
Mr Trump had been accused by Democrat leadership of threatening to withhold US aid and military spending if the Biden probe didn’t go ahead.
While Mr Trump had suspended almost $US600 million ($A886 million) of funding to Ukraine about a week before the conversation, he said this was because he believed Europe needed to do more to prop up the nation, an argument he regularly makes.
He also reminded Mr Zelensky “we do a lot for Ukraine”, which the Trump opposition seized on as evidence of a quid pro quo.
But while Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky to “look into” Hunter Biden’s actions in the lead up to the 2016 election, he did not threaten to withhold US aid if the investigation were not to go ahead.
Speaking at the United Nations in New York between meetings with world leaders on Wednesday, Mr Trump said the transcript confirmed he had done nothing wrong, slamming Democrats for launching a “political war”.
Mr Zelensky said as he sat alongside Mr Trump at a press conference that he did not feel pressured during his phone call with the US president.
“We had — I think good phone call. It was normal. We spoke about many things, and I — so I think and you read it that nobody pushed me,” he said.
However, Republican Senator Mitt Romney said he was concerned about the president’s conversation.
“This remains deeply troubling and we’ll see where it leads. But the first reaction is troubling,” said Sen. Romney, his party’s 2012 presidential nominee.
Republican Congressman Will Hurd broke ranks with the party and called the whistleblower complaint “concerning” even as one of the president’s most loyal allies called it a “spectacle.” “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,” he said.
Nebraska Senator, Republican Ben Sasse, who is up for election in 2020, echoed those thoughts after reading the complaint.
“This (is) going to take a long time but there’s obviously some very troubling things here. But I think the partisan tribalism that’s always insta-certain is a terrible idea. There are real troubling things here. Republicans ought not just circle the wagons and Democrats ought not be using words like ‘impeach’ before they knew anything about the actual substance.”
Other senators had criticisms of the president as well.
Republican Senator Pat Toomey called Mr Trump’s conversation with Mr Zelensky “inappropriate” in a statement earlier in the day.
Top Democrat Adam Schiff said the notes of the call “reflect a classic mafia-type shakedown of a foreign leader.”
“This is how a mafia boss talks: ‘What have you done for us? We’ve done so much for you but there’s not much reciprocity. I have a favour to ask you,’” Mr Schiff said.
The five-page transcript of the 30-minute call was released with the approval of Ukraine’s leader.
During the call, the pair trade pleasantries and congratulations for recent political victories, agreeing with each other that Europe should do more to financially support Ukraine.
Mr Trump asks Mr Zelensky to discuss some of the findings of the probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian efforts to sway the 2016 election with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani and US Attorney-General Robert Barr. Mr Mueller had the day before testified about his findings.
“I would like you to do us a favour, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” Mr Trump says, going on to refer to a Ukraine based software company retained by the Democrat leadership which the US President said was involved with Russian hackers.
“Whatever you can do with the attorney-general would be great,” Mr Trump says, in a reference to US Attorney-General William Barr.
The discussion then moved to the Biden family, with Mr Trump raising unproven allegations that Joe Biden, as Barack Obama’s vice president and charged with heading diplomatic relations with Ukraine, had tried to interfere with a Ukrainian prosecutor’s investigation of the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that,” Mr Trump said.
“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it.”
Mr Zelensky, whose government had just won a majority, promises his new prosecutor general will “look into the situation”.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday that Mr Trump had violated the law and the constitution by asking the Ukrainian President to probe the actions of a political rival.
Ms Pelosi said that by asking a foreign government to help him politically, and by refusing to release information about a whistleblower complaint involving the controversy, Mr Trump had “betrayed the constitution”.