The whistleblower complaint revealing president Donald Trump abused the power of his office by cajoling Ukraine into helping his re-election bid in violation of U.S. laws will be the focus of the impeachment inquiry launched by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Some political observers say this complaint -- which was written by a CIA officer assigned to the White House -- represents the gravest threat to Trump's presidency yet. They assert the complaint's potential to oust Trump by impeachment exceeds that of the investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller since it reveals criminal activity on the part of Trump.
Sources cited by CNN said the House committees tasked with moving the impeachment inquiry forward are focusing their efforts on the whistleblower complaint. The complaint is now declassified and is open to the public as an eight page-long redacted version.
The redacted version published by various U.S. media outlets also reveals shocking details of how White House officials covered-up Trump's latest scandal by locking-down or hiding the whistleblower complaint in a secure computer system reserved only for top-secret documents. This action was apparently taken because of the belief of these officials that they had seen Trump abuse his office for personal gain.
The House Intelligence Committee released the redacted version of the whistleblower complaint on Thursday before it received testimony from Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire as to actions he took upon learning of this complaint.
The document details an "urgent concern" Trump is "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." It reveals the contents of Trump's now-infamous July 25 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
It was during this phone call that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate presidential contender Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who once sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm.
The unsaid quid pro quo to Trump's request was the release of $400 million in military aid to Ukraine Trump had prevented from being released.
The document also reveals the Trump administration's efforts to "lockdown" records of the conversation by transferring this data to a secure computer.
The complaint also takes aim at Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who it says is a "central figure" in the effort to pressure Zelensky. It also says Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, "appears to be involved as well."
It's also been revealed Giuliani flew to Madrid, Spain where he met with Ukrainian officials to follow-up Trump's request Zelensky investigate the Bidens.
"The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. They told me that there was already a "discussion ongoing" with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials' retelling, that they had witnessed the President abuses his office for personal gain," wrote the whistleblower.
The whistleblower also wrote, "I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to 'lockdown' 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."
White House lawyers "directed" them to pull the electronic transcript of the call from the computer system where it is typically stored and put into a "separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature."
"One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective," the author of the complaint writes.
The whistleblower revealed other concerns. These include a meeting between U.S. officials and Zelensky and his advisors that took place a day after Trump's call with Zelensky. He also said Giuliani met with one of Zelensky's advisors in Madrid on Aug. 2 in what is being called a "direct follow-up" to Trump's phone call with Zelensky.
The whistleblower also said White House officials admitted it was "not the first time" the Trump administration protected a presidential transcript in that manner even though it did not contain information sensitive to national security.
