Turnbull phone call linked to Trump impeachment inquiry: Bannon
Turnbull and Trump’s leaked call to become part of impeachment hearings, says Steve Bannon.
The leaked phone call between Malcolm Turnbull and Donald Trump in 2017 will become an important part of the looming presidential impeachment hearings in Washington, according to Mr Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
“They are inextricably linked,” Mr Bannon told The Australian.
READ MORE: US House vote advances Trump impeachment | Bannon takes battle to the radio waves
He said Republicans planned to argue that the leaking of the Turnbull-Trump phone call — which embarrassed both countries by revealing an argument between the leaders — was the reason the White House moved to restrict the records of conversations between the US President and foreign leaders.
Mr Bannon, who was the President’s chief strategist at the time, said the leak led the White House to place the record of such conversations in secure online servers.
A key part of the Democrat-led impeachment investigation is why the record of the controversial phone call between Mr Trump and Ukraine’s President in July was placed in a classified server, limiting access to it.
Democrats argue the move was an attempt to hide the call, the contents of which triggered the impeachment inquiry. But Mr Bannon said it was simply a matter of following the rules put in place after the Turnbull call: “100 per cent, it comes directly from the Turnbull phone call”.
Mr Bannon said the leaking of the contents of the Turnbull-Trump phone to The Washington Post in January 2017 shocked the White House because it realised far too many people had access to records of the call.
“Hundreds of people got access to this because the bureaucracy had expended,” Mr Bannon said. “So we said at that time ‘this has to be really restricted for people like Malcolm Turnbull to feel that they can have an open and direct conversation with the President’.
“That’s what started people looking at these other (more secure) servers. You’ll see this will be part of the (White House) defence as to why this (Ukraine phone call) was shifted over to another server.”
Mr Bannon said the Turnbull-Trump leak also led to restrictions on the number of those who listened to such calls. “How could Trump trust any of these people when for the first time in American history they leaked two entire transcripts with foreign leaders (Australia and Mexico),” he said.
In their 2017 phone call, Mr Turnbull clashed with Mr Trump, who had been in office for less than two weeks, over a deal to resettle refugees from Nauru and Manus Island in the US.
The President called the deal, which had been negotiated under Barack Obama, a “terrible” one that would make Mr Trump look “weak”, “foolish” and “ineffective” given he had campaigned on a platform of being tough on immigration.
“I thought it was actually a very good call,” Mr Bannon said. “I thought that Turnbull laid out his case, Trump was very blunt, but it set up the ability for us to work at a more junior level with your ambassador and other people to work through the issues.
“But 48 hours later it’s on the front page of The Washington Post. Here’s the point, that was leaked by someone to (try to) humiliate and show the President is a racist and a xenophobe, right? And that even (with) a reasonable guy like Turnbull, Trump is going to double over.”
Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia
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