Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani: “Using the power of President’s office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election”

Citing multiple White House personnel, the complaint of a US intelligence official details months of pressure by Donald Trump and his inner circle on Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden, and the White House attempt to cover up Trump’s late July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The Trump Administration tried for weeks to withhold the complaint, filed on August 12, despite a legal requirement to provide it to Congressional committees. But facing more pressure and the launch of an impeachment inquiry, the White House released both a reconstruction of the Trump-Zelenskiy call and a redacted version of the intelligence official’s memorandum.

The intelligence official — who is reportedly a CIA liaison with the White House on Eastern European matters, including developments in Ukraine — explained, “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 official made clear, “I was not a direct witness to most of the events described”, but he then established the authority of his information:

Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort. The information provided herein was relayed to me in the course of official interagency business….

I found my colleagues’ accounts of these events to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another.

The official’s description of the Trump-Zelenskiy call matches the White House reconstruction that was released on Wednesday:

After an initial exchange of pleasantries, the President used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests. Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid. According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, inter alia:

*initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden

*assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine, with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the US cyber security firm Crowdstrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC’s networks in 2016

*meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, [Trump’s attorney Rudy] Giuliani and Attorney General [William] Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem.

See also TrumpWatch, Day 979: Transcript Confirms Trump Pressure on Ukraine to Investigate Biden

The complaint summarizes, “The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call.”

The officials explains that about a dozen White House staff listened to the Trump-Zelenskiy conversation.

Days before the call, Trump personally ordered the suspension of almost $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, despite the Russian military and political pressure on Kiev.

In the reconstruted transcript, there is an implicit link between the aid and Trump’s request for an investigation into Biden, but the US intelligence official does not mention this.

Attempted Cover-Up

However, the complaint details Trump’s inner circle, disturbed by what had transpired in what was supposed to be a “normal” discussion between Presidents, trying to prevent the transcript from circulating.

I learned from 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….

White House officials told me that they were “directed” by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.

Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.

Wider Trump-Giuliani Pressure on Ukraine

But the call and the cover-up are only part of the complaint. The document sets out the campaign, pursued by Trump’s attorney Giuliani since late 2018, to press Ukrainian officials to produce information damaging Joe Biden.

Giuliani spoke to former Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, dismissed by Parliament in March 2016 for corruption, in late 2018. He met Shokin’s successor Yuriy Lutsenko, who asserted that Ukrainian officials had interfered in the 2016 US election, in New York in late January and in Warsaw in mid-February.

Believing that he had secured damaging information Biden, Trump said on April 25 that Lutsenko’s claims were “big” and “incredible” and Attorney General Barr “would want to see this”.

The Trump camp removed Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had criticized Lutsenko for failing to fight corruption s organization for its poor record on fighting corruption, because — in Giuliani’s words — “she was part of the efforts against the President [Trump]”.

Giuliani planned a trip to Ukraine in May, but postponed it at the last minute after public revelations about his mission on behalf of Trump.

In a pointed message to Zelenskiy, Trump instructed Vice President Mike Pence to cancel his attendance at the Ukraine President’s inauguration on May. White House officials said it was “‘made clear’ to them that the President did not want to meet with Mr. Zelenskiy until he saw how Zelenskiy ‘chose to act’ in office”.

US diplomats were so disturbed by the campaign, and its effect on relations with the Ukraine Government, that they arranged meetings to maintain Washington’s official line.

US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker and US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland met with Giuliani to “contain the damage” to national security. They met members of Zelensky’s administration, which took office in May, “to help Ukrainian leaders understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving from official US channels on the-one-hand, and from Mr. Giuliani on the other”.

A day after the Trump-Zelensky call, Volker and Sondland visited Kiev met Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian political figures. They “reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to ‘navigate’ the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskiy”.

However, Giuliani continued his efforts, meeting Zelenskiy advisor Andriy Yermak at the start of August. Multiple US officials said there was discussion Yermak and the head of Ukraine’s Security Service, Ivan Bakanov, visiting Washington in mid-August.

The document notes that Trump told reporters on August 9:

I think [Zelenskiy] is going to make a deal with President Putin, and he will be invited to the White House. And we look forward to seeing him. He’s already been invited to the White House, and he wants to come. And I think he will. He’s a very reasonable guy. He wants to see peace in Ukraine, and I think he will be coming very soon, actually.