AG百家乐在线官网

Donald Trump abused the power of his office to "solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 US election, according to the secret whistleblower complaint at the centre of an impeachment inquiry into the president.

The White House then tried to "lock down" the information to cover it up, the complaint by the anonymous man or woman alleges.

A nine-page declassified document of allegations from the whistleblower to the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Richard Burr, and the chairman of the House of Representatives' intelligence committee, Adam Schiff has been released, with minimal redactions.

The complaint centres in part on a phone call on 25 July between Mr Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump urged Mr Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden. Mr Trump has called the allegations a witch-hunt.

On Wednesday the White House released a memo summarising the call.

Below is the nine-page full document released on Thursday with key passages highlighted in bold:

Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff,

I am reporting an "urgent concern" in accordance with the procedures outlined in 50 USC. This letter is UNCLASSIFIED when separated from the attachment.

In the course of my official duties, 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. 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, Mr Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.

• Over the past four months, more than half a dozen US officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort. The information provided herein was relayed to me in the course of official inter-agency business. It is routine for US officials with responsibility for a particular regional or functional portfolio to share such information with one another in order to inform policymaking and analysis.
• I was not a direct witness to most of the events described. However, 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. In addition, a variety of information consistent with these private accounts has been reported publicly.

Listen to Divided States on , , and

I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute "a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order" that "does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters," consistent with the definition of an "urgent concern" in 50 USC. I am therefore fulfilling my duty to report this information, through proper legal channels, to the relevant authorities.

• I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to US national security and undermine the US government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in US elections.

To the best of my knowledge, the entirety of this statement is unclassified when separated from the classified enclosure. I have endeavoured to apply the classification standards outlined in Executive Order (EO) 13526 and to separate out information that I know or have reason to believe is classified for national security purposes.

• If a classification marking is applied retroactively, I believe it is incumbent upon the classifying authority to explain why such a marking was applied, and to which specific information it pertains.

I. The 25 July presidential phone call

Early in the morning of 25 July, the president spoke by telephone with Ukrainian President Zelenskiy I do not know which side initiated the call. This was the first publicly acknowledged call between the two leaders since a brief congratulatory call after Mr Zelenskiy won the presidency on 21 April.

Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that, 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 re-election bid. According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the president pressured Mr Zelenskiy 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 US 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 Crowdstrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the networks in 2016; and
• meet or speak with two people the president named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the president referred multiple times in tandem.

The president also praised Ukraine's Prosecutor General, Mr Yuriy Lutsenko, and suggested that Mr Zelenskiy might want to keep him in his position. (Note: Starting in March 2019, Mr Lutsenko made a series of public allegations - many of which he later walked back - about the Biden family's activities in Ukraine, Ukrainian officials' purported involvement in the 2016 US election, and the activities of the US Embassy in Kiev. See Part IV for additional context.)

The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. They told me that there was already a "discussion ongoing" with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials' retelling, that they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain.

The Ukrainian side was the first to publicly acknowledge the phone call. On the evening of 25 July, a readout was posted on the website of the Ukrainian president that contained the following line (translation from original Russian-language readout):

• "Donald Trump expressed his conviction that the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve Ukraine's image and complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the United States."

Aside from the above-mentioned "cases" purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 US election, I was told by White House officials that no other "cases" were discussed.

Based on my understanding, there were approximately a dozen White House officials who listened to the call - a mixture of policy officials and duty officers in the White House Situation Room, as is customary. The officials I spoke with told me that participation in the call had not been restricted in advance because everyone expected it would be a "routine" call with a foreign leader. I do not know whether anyone was physically present with the president during the call.

• In addition to White House personnel, I was told that a State Department official, Mr T Ulrich Brechbuhl, also listened in on the call.
• I was not the only non-White House official to receive a readout of the call. Based on my understanding, multiple State Department and Intelligence Community officials were also briefed on the contents of the call as outlined above.

II. Efforts to restrict access to records related to the call

In the days following the phone call, 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 that was produced - as is customary - by the White House Situation Room. This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in 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, finalisation, 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. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.

I do not know whether similar measures were taken to restrict access to other records of the call, such as contemporaneous handwritten notes taken by those who listened in.

III. Ongoing concerns

On 26 July, a day after the call, US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker visited Kiev and met with President Zelenskiy and a variety of Ukrainian political figures. Ambassador Volker was accompanied in his meetings by US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Based on multiple readouts of these meetings recounted to me by various US officials, Ambassadors Volker and Sondland reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to "navigate" the demands that the President had made of Mr Zelenskiy.

I also learned from multiple US officials that, on or about 2 August, Mr Giuliani reportedly travelled to Madrid to meet with one of president advisers, Andriy Yermak. The US officials characterised this meeting, which was not reported publicly at the time, as a "direct follow-up" to the president's call with Mr Zelenskiy about the "cases" they had discussed.

• Separately, multiple US. officials told me that Mr Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.
• I do not know whether those officials met or spoke with Mr Giuliani, but I was told separately-by multiple US officials that Mr Yermak and Mr Bakanov intended to travel to Washington in mid-August.

On 9 August, the president told reporters: think [President 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."

IV. Circumstances leading up to 25 July presidential phone call

Beginning in late March 2019, a series of articles appeared in an online publication called The Hill. In these articles, several Ukrainian officials - most notably, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko - made a series of allegations against other Ukrainian officials and current and former US officials. Mr. Lutsenko and his colleagues alleged, inter alia:

• that they possessed evidence that Ukrainian officials - namely, Head of the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine Artem and Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko - had "interfered" in the 2016 US presidential election, allegedly in collaboration with the DNC and the US Embassy in Kiev;
• that the US. Embassy in Kiev - specifically, US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had criticised Mr Lutsenko's organisation for its poor record on fighting corruption - had allegedly obstructed Ukrainian law enforcement agencies' pursuit of corruption cases, including by providing a "do not prosecute" list, and had blocked Ukrainian prosecutors from travelling to the United States expressly to prevent them from delivering their "evidence" about the 2016 US election; and
• that former vice president Biden had pressured former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2016 to fire then Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in order to quash a purported criminal probe into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board the former vice president's son, Hunter, sat.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

2:50

In several public comments, Mr Lutsenko also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters.

The allegations by Mr Lutsenko came on the eve of the first round of Ukraine's presidential election on 31 March. By that time, Mr Lutsenko's political patron, President Poroshenko, was trailing Mr Zelenskiy in the polls and appeared likely to be defeated. Mr Zelenskiy had made known his desire to replace Mr Lutsenko as Prosecutor General. On 21 April, Mr Poroshenko lost the runoff to Mr Zelenskiy by a landslide.

• It was also publicly reported that Mr Giuliani had met on at least two occasions with Mr Lutsenko: once in New York in late January and again in Warsaw in mid-February. In addition, it was publicly reported that Mr Giuliani had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.
• On 25 April in an interview with Fox News, the president called Mr Lutsenko's claims "big" and "incredible" and stated that the Attorney General "would want to see this."

On or about 29 April, I learned from US officials with direct knowledge of the situation that Ambassador Yovanovitch had been suddenly recalled to Washington by senior State Department officials for "consultations" and would most likely be removed from her position.

• Around the same time, I also learned from a US official that "associates" of Mr Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming team.
• On 6 May, the State Department announced that Ambassador Yovanovitch would be ending her assignment in Kiev "as planned".
• However, several US officials told me that, in fact, her tour was curtailed because of pressure stemming from Mr. Lutsenko's allegations. Mr Giuliani subsequently stated in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist published on 14 May that Ambassador Yovanovitch was "removed. . .because she was part of the efforts against the president."

On 9 May, The New York Times reported that Mr Giuliani planned to travel to Ukraine to press the Ukrainian government to pursue investigations that would help the president in his 2020 re-election bid.

• In his multitude of public statements leading up to and in the wake of the publication of this article, Mr Giuliani confirmed that he was focused on encouraging Ukrainian authorities to pursue investigations into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US election and alleged wrongdoing by the Biden family.
• On the afternoon of 10 May, the president stated in an interview with Politico that he planned to speak with Mr Giuliani about the trip.
• A few hours later, Mr Giuliani publicly cancelled his trip, claiming that Mr Zelenskiy was "surrounded by enemies of the of the United States."

On 11 May, Mr Lutsenko met for two hours with President-elect Zelenskiy according to a public account given several days later by Mr Lutsenko. Mr Lutsenko publicly stated that he had told Mr. that he wished to remain as Prosecutor General.

Starting in mid-May, I heard from multiple US officials that they were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr Giuliani's circumvention of national security decision-making processes to engage with Ukrainian officials and relay messages back and forth between Kiev and the president. These officials also told me:

• that State Department officials, including Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, had spoken with Mr Giuliani in an attempt to "contain the damage" to US national security; and
• that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland during this time period met with members of the new Ukrainian administration and, in addition to discussing policy matters, sought 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.

Trump impeachment inquiry

What you need to know

During this same timeframe, multiple US officials told me that the Ukrainian leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the president and President Zelenskiy would depend On whether showed willingness to "play ball" on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr Lutsenko and Mr Giuliani. (Note: This was the general understanding of the state of affairs as conveyed to me by US officials from late May into early July. I do not know who delivered this message to the Ukrainian leadership, or when.)

Shortly after President Zelenskiy's inauguration, it was publicly reported that Mr Giuliani met with two other Ukrainian officials: Ukraine's Special Anti-corruption Prosecutor, Mr Nazar KholodnytAG百家乐在线官网y and a former Ukrainian diplomat named Andriy Telizhenko. Both Mr KholodnytAG百家乐在线官网y and Mr Telizhenko are allies of Mr Lutsenko and made similar allegations in the above-mentioned series of articles in The Hill.

On 13 June, the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he would accept damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign government.

On 21 June, Mr Giuliani tweeted: "New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 and alleged Biden bribery of Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Clinton people."

In mid-July, I learned of a sudden change of policy with respect to US. assistance for Ukraine.

August 12, 2019

(U) CLASSIFIED APPENDIX

(U) Supplementary classified information is provided as follows:

(U) Additional information related to Section II

"According to multiple White House officials I spoke with, the transcript of the president's call with President Zelenskiy was placed into a computer system managed directly by the National Security Council (NSC) Directorate for Intelligence Programs. This is a standalone computer system reserved for codeword-level intelligence information, such as covert action.

According to information I received from White House officials, some officials voiced concerns internally that this would be an abuse of the system and was not consistent with the responsibilities of the Directorate for Intelligence Programs.

According to White House officials I spoke with, this was "not the first time" under this administration that a presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive - rather than national security sensitive - information.

(U) Additional information related to Section IV

I would like to expand upon two issues mentioned in Section IV that might have a connection with the overall effort to pressure the Ukrainian leadership. As I do not know definitively whether the below-mentioned decisions are connected to the broader efforts I describe, I have chosen to include them in the classified annex. If they indeed represent genuine
policy deliberations and decisions formulated to advance US. foreign policy and national security, one might be able to make a reasonable case that the facts are classified.

I learned from US officials that, on or around 14 May, the president instructed Vice President Pence to cancel his planned travel to Ukraine to attend President Zelenskiy's inauguration on 20 May; Secretary of Energy Rick Perry led the delegation instead.

According to these officials, it was also "made clear" to them that the president did not want to meet with Mr. until he saw how "chose to act" in office. I do not know how this guidance was communicated, or by whom.

I also do not know whether this action was connected with the broader understanding, described in the unclassified letter, that a meeting or phone call between the president and President Zelenskiy would depend on whether showed willingness to "play ball" on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr Lutsenko and Mr Giuliani.

On 18 July, an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official informed Departments and Agencies that the president "earlier that month" had issued instructions to suspend all US. security assistance to Ukraine.

Neither OMB nor the NSC staff knew why this instruction had been issued. During inter-agency meetings on 23 July and 26 July, OMB officials again stated explicitly that the instruction to suspend this assistance had come directly from the president, but they still were unaware of a policy rationale.

As of early August, I heard from US officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that US laid might be in jeopardy, but I do not know how or when they learned of it.