A Brief Summary on the Whistleblower and Trump’s Call with Ukraine.

Published by Matt Fishman on

On August 12, 2019 the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) Michael Atkinson received a whistleblower complaint which he deemed to be an “urgent concern” that “appears credible”. Inspector General Atkinson knows the identity of the whistleblower, but the whistleblower “has requested that the ICIG not disclose [their] identity at this time.” “With respect to the urgent concern, the [whistleblower] included a letter addressed to” the U.S. Senate and House Intelligence Committees.

The letter to the committees alleges “that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” Specifically, the letter details how “the President spoke by telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy” during which he “sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid.” The whistleblower says “the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, [conduct] 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 U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC’s networks in 2016; [and] meet or speak with… Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr” to accomplish these actions. Additionally, the letter claims that following this call “senior White House officials had intervened to “lock down” all records of the phone call” after being “directed” “by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer in which such transcripts are typically stored”. “The transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.” “According to White House officials [the whistleblower] spoke with, this was “not the first time” under this Administration that a Presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive” information. “The whistleblower clarified that “more than half a dozen U.S. official have informed of various facts related to this effort” but he “was not a direct witness to most of the events described.”

On September 25, 2019 the White House released a transcript of the President’s call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. The following are quotes relevant to the whistleblower letter made by President Trump during the call:

  • “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… The server, they say Ukraine has it.. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”
  • “I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great… The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you ·can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”
  • “I will have Mr. Giuliani.give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I’m sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything.”

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