US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo looks on as Donald Trump speaks (File)
UPDATE 1145 GMT:
In addition to withdrawing the record of the July call between Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodmyr Zelenskiy, Trump’s staff concealed other reconstructed transcripts of calls with foreign officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The revelations from “current and former officials” bolster the formal complaint over pressure by Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani on the Ukraine Government to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden. The complaint, drawing from conversations with multiple White House officials, said Trump’s aides — concerned after the call about its implications for Trump compromising US foreign policy for personal gain — ordered the move of the transcript to highly-secured storage with access restricted to a few officials (see below).
Administration officials said John Eisenberg, the White House deputy counsel for national security affairs and a national security legal adviser, directed the move of the Ukraine transcript.
On August 14, two days after the complaint was filed, Eisenberg discussed the matter by phone with the CIA’s general counsel and Assistant Attorney General John Demers. Eisenberg arranged for Demers to review the transcript, but the CIA counsel declined the invitation.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: In the first subpoena over Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden, House committees seek documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The formal complaint by a US intelligence official details a campaign by Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani since late 2018 to get Ukraine officials to produce political “dirt” on Biden. It was spurred by the unease of White House officials over a late July call from Trump to the new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The concerns over Trump’s campaign include Administration action against State Department officials, such as the recall of the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. It details Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani meeting former and current Ukrainian officials to seek the investigation into Biden, Vice President under Barack Obama and a Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 2020. And it explains how Kurt Volker, the US Special Envoy to Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, the Ambassador to EU, traveled to Kiev to ensure that Giuliani’s efforts did not compromise American foreign and military policy.
The letter to Pompeo was signed by Rep. Eliot Engel, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the Intelligence Committee; and Rep. Elijah Cummings, chair of the Oversight and Reform Committee.
The committees are investigating the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression.
The House Intelligence Committee told legislators that it will hold hearings during a scheduled two-week Congressional recess, with a public hearing and a private briefing on Friday by the intelligence community’s Inspector General Michael Atkinson,.
Atkinson found that the US intelligence official’s complaint was “credible” and of “urgent concern”. Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire initially refused to provide the complaint to Congress, but the White House finally relented on Wednesday and released a redacted version.
The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to the subpoena of Pompeo to produce the documents within one week. Instead, Donald Trump spent the day hurling Twitter insults at Rep. Schiff, and insisting:
“IT WAS A PERFECT CONVERSATION WITH UKRAINE PRESIDENT!”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2019
US Envoy to Ukraine Resigns
US envoy Volker suddenly resigned on Friday, as House Democrats issued a request for his deposition about the Trump-Ukraine events.
The official complaint, from the CIA liaison with the White House over Ukraine, said Volker and US Ambasssador Sondlund, troubled by Giuliani’s efforts, met with Trump’s attorney to “contain the damage” to national security.
At the request of the Ukrainians — concerned that Giuliani was seeking information about Biden and other Democrats and had denounced top Ukrainian officials as “enemies of the President” — Volker arrange meetings between Trump’s attorney and contacts like Zelenskiy’s aide Andriy Yermak, both before and after the Trump-Zelenskiy call.
But Volker and Sondlund also spoke with members of Zelenskiy’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”.
The House Democrats also issued requests for statements from Marie Yovanovitch, the Ambassador to Ukraine forced out by the White House; George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs; and Ulrich Brechbuhl, a State Department counselor.
White House Locked Up Transcript of Trump’s 2017 Meeting with Russians
More support for the whisteblower’s complaint came Friday with revelations of Trump Administration officials, so troubled by Trump’s conversation with foreign representatives, that they withdrew transcripts from circulation.
The US intelligence official, cited multiple White House personnel, said staff “were directed by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript” of the Trump-Zelenskiy call “from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials”.
The document was put into top-secret storage normally reserved for national security material.
The White House confirmed on Friday that the Trump-Zelenskiy transcript had been withdrawn.
“Three former officials with knowledge of the matter” said other transcripts had been hastily locked away. In one of them from May 2017, Trump told Russian Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 US Presidential election.
Trump told Lavrov and Kislyak — implicated in meetings and phone calls with Trump staff during 2016 — that the US carried out the same activities in other countries.
A memorandum summarizing the meeting was limited to a few officials with the highest security clearances.
The encounter on May 10, 2017 was already notorious for Trump’s boast to the Russians that he had fired “crazy…nutcase” FBI Director James Comey, relieving “great pressure” on Trump over the inquiry into Russia’s interference.
The White House had begun limiting the records of Trump’s calls, after news reports of his false and provocative remarks to the leaders of Mexico and Australia, just after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. The Lavrov memo was restricted to an even smaller group of officials.
The former officials, who spoke to The Washington Post, said White House staff were distressed that Trump appeared to forgive Russia for an attack seeking to get him into the Presidency. They also assessed that Trump appeared invite Russia to interfere in other countries’ elections.
