Whistleblower says White House officials were 'deeply disturbed' by Trump's call with Ukraine's president, and worried they 'had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain'

John Haltiwanger

Sep 26, 2019, 19:38 IST

Whistleblower says White House officials were 'deeply disturbed' by Trump's call with Ukraine's president, and worried they 'had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain'

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, in New York.

White House officials worried they'd witnessed President Donald Trump "abuse his office for personal gain" in a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to a whistleblower complaint from an intelligence official released publicly on Thursday.
The officials were "deeply disturbed" by the call, the complaint said. Trump urged Zelensky to "initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden."
"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 complaint states.

White House officials were "deeply disturbed" by President Donald Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and worried they'd witnessed Trump "abuse his office for personal gain," according to an explosive whistleblower complaint from an intelligence official.

A declassified version of the complaint, which has sparked a scandal that threatens Trump's presidency, was released on Thursday morning.

"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 complaint states, going on to implicate the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as well as Attorney General William Barr.

The whistleblower, who submitted the complaint on August 12, said that over the past for mouths over half a dozen US officials "have informed me of various facts related to this effort."

Though the whistleblower said while they were not a direct witness to "most of the events described," they found their colleagues' accounts to be credible because "in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with another" and "a variety of information consistent with this private accounts has been reported publicly."

The complaint says that after Trump and Zelensky exchanged pleasantries in the beginning of the call, White House officials said the president used the remainder of the call to "advance his personal interests" and in this regard primarily "sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President's 2020 reelection bid."

In part, this involved urging Zelensky to "initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden."

"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 bout how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials' retelling, that they had witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain," the whistleblower said.

The complaint was withheld from Congress for weeks by acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning. After a tense standoff and repeated requests for the complaint, it was released to congressional intelligence committees on Wednesday and more widely released on Thursday morning ahead of Maguire's testimony.

Trump has publicly acknowledged he spoke to Zelensky about investigating Biden and his son, but has rejected the notion he pressured the Ukrainian president. A memo on his call with Zelensky released by the White House on Thursday showed Trump repeatedly pressing Zelensky to investigate Biden, a top political rival of Trump and a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Biden's son, Hunter, was from April 2014 to early in 2019 on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, that had come under investigation by a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, whom was ousted in March 2016. Biden, among many others, urged for Shokin to be pushed out amid allegations he was not doing enough to root out corruption. By the time Shokin was ousted, the investigation into the gas company was dormant. There is no evidence of wrongdoing on Biden or his son's part.

Earlier this week, as the Ukraine scandal was rapidly unfolding, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.