Trump-Putin phone calls in U.S. Democrats’ sights -Schiff

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - Congress is determined to get access to Donald Trump’s calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee’s chairman said today, citing concerns that the Republican president may have jeopardized national security.

“I think the paramount need here is to protect the national security of the United States and see whether in the conversations with other world leaders - and in particular with Putin - that the president was also undermining our security in a way that he thought would personally benefit his campaign,” Democrat Adam Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The Democratic-led House last week launched an official impeachment inquiry into Trump in the aftermath of a whistleblower complaint from an individual within the U.S. intelligence community that Trump solicited interference by Ukraine in the 2020 election for his own political benefit.

The whistleblower’s complaint cited a telephone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a leader among Democratic candidates seeking to challenge Trump in 2020, and his son Hunter. Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Trump, in a series of Twitter posts on Sunday evening, said he wanted to “meet” the whistleblower, who he called “my accuser,” as well as “the person who illegally gave this information” to the whistleblower.

“Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!” wrote Trump, who added without providing evidence, “I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.”

The CBS program “60 Minutes” reported that the whistleblower is under federal protection after receiving threats.

Trump’s July 25 phone call came shortly after the United States froze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine, prompting concern that the president was using the taxpayer money approved by Congress as leverage for his personal political gain.

The complaint said White House lawyers directed that an electronic summary of the call be moved from the place where such things are usually kept to a separate electronic system reserved for classified and especially sensitive material - a move Democrats have called part of a cover-up.