White House accused of cover-up

The whistleblower's complaint that sparked an inquiry into US President Donald Trump's phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart took center stage on Thursday during a heated congressional hearing.

An unclassified version of the complaint was publicly released on Thursday shortly before Acting Director of US National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified before the House Intelligence Committee about his handling of the complaint.

Filed in mid-August with the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, the complaint by an unnamed intelligence official centers on Trump and his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that has ignited Democrats' call for House impeachment hearings.

During the call with Zelenskiy, Trump expressed his wish for an investigation of Joe Biden, former vice president and current Democratic presidential candidate, and of the business dealings of Biden's son Hunter in Ukraine. On Wednesday, the White House released a reconstructed transcript of the call.

The whistleblower, The New York Times reported, citing three people familiar with him, is a CIA officer who once was assigned to the White House. He wrote in a nine-page complaint that Trump "used the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election" in the phone call and that the complainant and administration officials were "deeply concerned" about the behavior.

'Lock down' all records

"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," the whistleblower wrote.

"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. 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."

"This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call," the complainant wrote.

The whistleblower said that he didn't personally witness the actions he wrote about, but said he heard accounts from multiple US officials.

Maguire faced more than three hours of intense questioning during the public House hearing before appearing at closed hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Before the House panel, he defended his original decision not to share the complaint with Congress, saying it may have been covered by executive privilege.

Maguire said he consulted with officials at the US Justice Department and the White House about the complaint to get an answer.