On Politics: An Attempt to ‘Lock Down’ Ukraine Call Records

Senior White House officials scrambled to "lock down" records of the call, a whistle-blower alleged.

View in browser|nytimes.com SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

Good Friday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today.

White House lawyers allegedly told officials to move the transcript of President Trump's July 25 phone conversation with the president of Ukraine into a separate system reserved for especially sensitive classified information, according to an explosive whistle-blower's complaint released on Thursday. It was an action that the whistle-blower suggested showed that those involved "understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call."

Some former National Security Council officials noticed that the rough transcript of Mr. Trump's phone conversation was missing a standard marking, indicating that the document had not been placed into the N.S.C.'s records systems.

According to people familiar with his identity, the whistle-blower is a C.I.A. officer who was detailed to work at the White House, and the complaint demonstrated sophisticated knowledge of Ukrainian politics.

Mr. Trump told a crowd of staff from the United States Mission to the United Nations that he wants to know who provided information to a whistle-blower about his phone call, accusing that person of being a "spy" and alluding to "the old days" when spies were dealt with differently.

The intelligence community's inspector general said in a letter that he found the complaint credible and raised an urgent concern. Here are the takeaways from the newly disclosed files.

The whistle-blower's complaint gave the House Democrats the push and the investigative "road map" for their impeachment inquiry of Mr. Trump. While Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the complaint only confirmed many of her worst fears, Senate Republicans have tempered their criticism of the president.

For the first time, a presidential primary will unfold with a sitting president seeking re-election while also facing an impeachment inquiry. Many of the 2020 candidates are grappling with the possibility of falling off the radar screen.

Allies of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. are wary of his slipping poll numbers and are now weighing whether to mobilize a super PAC to support him. Every other Democratic candidate has sworn off super PACs for the duration of the primary.

The Pentagon said that the United States military is sending roughly 200 troops to Saudi Arabia after the attacks earlier this month on a Saudi oil refinery. Congress gave final approval to a short-term spending bill that would delay the threat of a government shutdown to just before Thanksgiving, giving lawmakers two months to resolve their differences over paying for Mr. Trump's policies.

Today's On Politics briefing was compiled by Alana Herlands in New York.

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