The second item was “efforts to restrict assets related to the call.” In this section, the whistleblower says that White House officials removed the transcript of the call and other documents from the server where such documents are usually kept to provide access to Cabinet-level officials. Instead, the documents were sent to a special server for “classified information of an especially sensitive nature.”
If you want to hear an audio recording of the whistleblower complaint, click here.
At the house hearing today, the first things that was clearly established was that Acting DNI Maguire took the whistleblower complaint directly to the subject of the complaint, Donald Trump's White House, for advice on how to proceed with the complaint. I'm sure most people don't have to be a lawyer to know that is clearly NOT the right thing to do.
Acting DNI Maguire also testified, "Election security is my most fundamental priority." Maguire's assertion completely destroys the logic behind the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel opinion reasoning that the DNI shouldn't relay the complaint to Congress because election security didn't fall within his purview.
Maguire said several times that the whistleblower acted in good faith and adhered to the law in making the complaint. This entirely refutes Trump’s maligning of the whistleblower as an unpatriotic partisan with an axe to grind.
Maguire also said he sought advice from the Office of Legal Counsel, which reports to the Department of Justice and Attorney General Bill Barr, who is also a subject of the complaint.
An explosive letter from an unnamed intelligence official was later released detailing attempts by the White House to cover up Trump’s wrongdoing. On more than one occasion, White House officials put transcripts of Trump’s conversations into a “standalone computer system” that was meant for storing sensitive and classified intelligence information.
Officials were abusing that system, the letter says. They used it to protect politically sensitive conversations, rather than national security secrets. It’s the place they put the transcript of Trump’s conversation with the president of Ukraine when he asked for foreign help in going after former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Hiding this transcript was deliberate. According to the whistleblower’s letter, White House officials said they were “directed” by White House lawyers to move it there, away from the regular computer system that holds other call transcripts that are distributed to Cabinet-level officials.
The whistleblower complaint also named Attorney General William Barr as being part of the alleged misconduct that sparked the complaint. The Justice Department attempted to suppress the whistleblower complaint by advising the acting director of national intelligence that the document should not be disclosed to Congress. The problem is that Barr himself was directly involved in the effort from Trump to “solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” The complaint states: “This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the president’s main domestic political rivals. The president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.” The complaint states Trump instructed the Ukrainian president to follow up on the requests he'd made with Giuliani and Barr.
An interesting (and chilling) postscript to today's events (which Daily Kos’ Kerry Eleveld wrote about that here)-- At a private breakfast this morning in New York City, Donald Trump discussed the whistleblower complaint, telling attendees that the person who leaked information to the whistleblower was “close to a spy”; and then he shockingly alluded to execution as he went on to say, “You know what we used to do in the old days.” It doesn't take a lawyer to know that this sounds like witness intimidation-- I sure hope that the media helps to protect the identity of the whistleblower.
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