Amid House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement of an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump has the whistleblower complaint that sparked it all been revealed.
On Thursday the House Intelligence Committee released the declassified whistleblower complaint that detailed President Donald Trump’s controversial phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in July. It was this phone call that led to the complaint that now has sparked an impeachment inquiry on Trump.
The complaint accuses Trump of trying to get Ukraine to interfere with the 2020 presidential election with the White House working to cover it all up.
Trump is accused of trying to use his power as president to “solicit interference from a foreign country” into the election. The interference would include “among other things, pressuring a foreign country, Ukraine, “to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals,” which would likely be former Vice President and current Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, the complaint states.
Records show that a few days before the call, Trump ordered advisers to freeze $400 million in military aid for Ukraine. It was this move that is fueling speculation the president was withholding the money to use it as leverage for information on Biden and his son’s business dealings in Ukraine. While Trump is denying the claims, he did admit to blocking the funds that were released earlier this month, Fortune reports.
So how exactly can this whistleblower complaint lead to Trump’s possible impeachment? Here are three reasons why.
White House lawyers and political authorities believe Trump abused his office for personal gain:
The whistleblower complaint claims White House officials were “deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call.” In addition, the complaint claims White House lawyers were having an ongoing discussion about “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.”
Senior White House officials worked to ‘lock down’ records of the call
The whistleblower’s complaint claims that several U.S. officials informed them that senior White House execs had been intervening 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 the White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call,” the whistleblower wrote in the report.
White House officials were ‘directed’ to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system
The whistleblower’s complaint claims that White House officials were “directed” by the White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript of the call from the computer system. The same computer system that holds important transcripts that are stored and eventually distributed to Cabinet-level officials. Instead of using the usual computer system, the whistleblower claims the transcript was uploaded into a separate electronic system that is used to store classified information.
Now with all eyes on Trump’s possible impeachment, the president took to Twitter on Thursday to blast Democrats in all caps rants.
“THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO DESTROY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ALL THAT IT STANDS FOR. STICK TOGETHER, PLAY THEIR GAME, AND FIGHT HARD REPUBLICANS. OUR COUNTRY IS AT STAKE!”