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 President Trump.
In the call, Mr Trump pushed 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.
Instead, it was stored in a separate system used for classified information.
Nancy Pelosi, the most senior Democrat, announced on Tuesday that the party was pushing ahead with a formal impeachment inquiry against the Republican president, accusing Mr Trump of seeking foreign help in the hope of smearing Mr Biden and of using military aid to Ukraine as a potential bargaining tool.
Mr Trump has acknowledged that he personally blocked nearly $400m in military aid to Ukraine around the time of his conversation with Mr Zelensky, but denied that it was to pressure the Ukrainian leader into investigating Mr Biden.
The release of the whistleblower complaint came as US lawmakers on the House of Representatives intelligence committee began a hearing to question President Trump’s top intelligence official on the issue. Acting National Intelligence Director Joseph Maguire had initially refused to share the complaint with Congress.
President Trump has dismissed the impeachment proceedings as a “hoax” and a “witch-hunt”, and angrily tweeted as the complaint was publicly released.
But under questioning by the House committee on Thursday, Mr Maguire said he believed the whistleblower had acted in “good faith” and “did the right thing”.
The whistleblower’s complaint accuses Mr Trump of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the US 2020 election”.
The now unclassified document says: “This interference includes, among other things pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the president’s main domestic political rivals.”
The complaint characterises the president’s conduct as a “serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law”.
The alleged violation concerns President Trump asking his Ukrainian counterpart on July 25, this year to “do me a favour” by investigating unfounded allegations against Mr Biden – who was then leading the polls to become Mr Trump’s Democratic opponent in 2020. -BBC
