White House 'tried to hide Trump call details in top secret computer system'

White House 'tried to cover up Trump call details'
REUTERS
Rebecca Speare-Cole27 September 2019

Senior White House officials tried to "lock down" all details of a phone call between Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president, according to a whistleblower complaint against the US president.

In the call, Mr Trump pressured Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his leading domestic political rival, Joe Biden.

The newly released complaint says the call transcript was not stored in the usual computer system but a separate "top secret" system used for classified information.

It comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the party was launching a formal impeachment inquiry against the Republican president.

Mr Trump and presidential hopeful Joe Biden have been locked in a fierce row
Getty Images

Mr Trump is accused of seeking foreign help in the hope of smearing 2020 presidential candidate Mr Biden and using $400m in military aid to Ukraine as a bargaining tool.

The president acknowledged that he personally blocked nearly $400m in military aid to Ukraine days before he spoke to Mr Zelensky, but denied that it was to pressure the Ukrainian leader into investigating Mr Biden.

However, the whistleblower alleges that several White House officials became so concerned about the content of the call that they intervened to "lock down" all records of it.

The whistleblower claimed that they especially wanted to hide the word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced by the White House Situation Room.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was allegedly pressured to investigate Joe Biden.
AFP/Getty Images

"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," the whistleblower said in the complaint.

They added that the transcript was loaded into the system reserved for the most sensitive information, describing that as "an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective."

Nate Jones, who served as director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, said the highly sensitive system has severe limitations on access.

"It is a very exclusive system," said Mr Jones, who founded Culper Partners, a consulting firm. He said the transfer of the transcript "didn't happen by accident. Somebody had to do it."

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, said the concern is that placing the Zelenskiy call records on the more restricted server was an irregular practice that could be a prelude to record destruction.

"It also may have signaled an awareness of misconduct," he said.

It's not known when the information about the call was moved to the more highly classified system.

Some intelligence officials have speculated that it's possible that White House officials ordered it placed on the higher classified system as a way of preserving, not covering up, the record of the call.

President Trump has dismissed the impeachment proceedings as a "hoax" and "another witch-hunt".

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