Today, the House Intelligence Committee released a highly anticipated whistleblower complaint involving President Donald Trump and Ukraine.
The complaint’s main allegation is that Trump, with assistance from his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr, pressured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
During a phone call with Zelensky, Trump also asked the country to look into Democratic National Committee servers that the U.S. president believes, without evidence, are in Ukraine.
According to the complaint, the White House attempted to restrict access to a transcript of Trump’s call with Zelensky by placing it in a computer system typically reserved for highly classified information. Typically, similar documents are stored in another system that allows them to be distributed to cabinet-level officials.
The New York Times reported today that the whistleblower is a Central Intelligence Agency officer previously detailed to the White House. He expressed concerns in his complaint that Trump’s actions “pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government’s efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.”
Did White House staff leak information about the call to the whistleblower?
Conservatives and the far right have attacked the credibility of the complaint because of this important bit of context: The whistleblower didn’t see most of it firsthand. Instead, more than six officials passed along information that led to the complaint.
However, that information wasn’t leaked, according to the whistleblower, who wrote that it was shared with him during the regular course of his work. The complaint said such communication is routine and takes place “in order to inform policymaking and analysis.”
Is Ukraine home to the Democratic National Committee server that was hacked in 2016?
According to a memo of Trump’s call with Zelensky, the president asked Ukraine to look into CrowdStrike and the server, both of which are part of a conspiracy theory detailed here.
There’s no reason to believe the server is in Ukraine, which the whistleblower mentions in his complaint.
Is the whistleblower’s attorney also Hillary Clinton’s lawyer?
Not from what I can tell, but Trump campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany made that claim here.
Andrew Bakaj, the whistleblower’s attorney, did briefly work for Clinton, but he wasn’t her lawyer. According to Bakaj’s LinkedIn profile, he interned with Clinton’s Senate office for five months in 2001. Before that, he served as an intern for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) for five months.
Did the whistleblower’s attorney donate to Biden’s campaign?
According to the Federal Election Commission’s donor database, Bakaj gave $100 to Biden through ActBlue, a liberal online fundraising platform, and another $10 to ActBlue this year.
His co-counsel, Mark Zaid, hasn’t made donations to presidential campaigns, but from 2005 to 2014, he gave a total of $3,640 to the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee.
Contact Big If True editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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