More than a half dozen White House national security officials shared a whistleblower’s concerns about President Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine, according to the complaint released Thursday.
The unidentified whistleblower, who did not listen to the president’s July 25 call, relied on secondhand accounts from several other unnamed U.S. officials who were allegedly alarmed by the president’s behavior in seeking a Ukrainian investigation of Democratic front-runner Joseph R. Biden and his son, Hunter.
Various administration employees were providing the whistleblower with information about the president’s overtures to Ukraine for at least four months before the complaint was filed.
“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,” the whistleblower said in the complaint.
The anonymous government employee said multiple White House employees who shared information about the president’s conversation “were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call.”
Typically, several U.S. national security employees in the highly secure White House Situation Room will listen in on a president’s phone call with foreign leaders and take notes.
The whistleblower said about a dozen White House officials listened to the call, including policy aides and national security duty workers.
The complaint also identifies State Department Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl as another official believed to have been listening to the call.
The whistleblower refers to himself or herself as a “non-White House” employee.
“I was not the only non-White House official to receive a readout of the call,” the whistleblower said in the complaint.
Unnamed White House employees also told the whistleblower that they were directed by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript of the phone call from the computer system in which such information was typically stored.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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