Agent’s complaint an act of ‘treason’
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump slammed officials who reported the controversial phone call to a whistleblower that kicked off the Ukraine controversy as “scum”, likening them to spies who had committed “treason”.
In another dramatic day playing out against the backdrop of United Nations Ieaders’ week in New York, White House officials and the President were accused of trying to bury evidence of Mr Trump’s request for Ukraine to probe his main political rival, Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter.
The allegations were contained in an explosive complaint made by an anonymous CIA agent working in the White House, detailing his concerns about the July 25 call between Mr Trump and newly installed Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky and subsequent efforts by officials to obscure its contents.
“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple US government officials that the President of the US is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election,” the man wrote.
“This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.”
The complaint, which was written in August but released yesterday, said it drew from the accounts of several White House officials who told of being so concerned about the call there was an effort to “lock down” all records of it “especially the word-forword transcript of the call that was produced”.
“This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in that call,” he wrote.
“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.”
“This is a cover-up,” Democrat house speaker Nancy Pelosi said of the complaint.
In response, Mr Trump threatened “the person” who he said gave information to the whistleblower.
“Who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy,” Mr Trump said in audio posted by The Los Angeles Times. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”