WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) - After hearing that United States President Donald Trump tried to persuade Ukraine to investigate a 2020 presidential campaign rival, senior officials at the White House scrambled to "lock down" records of the call, in particular the official complete transcript, a whistle-blower alleged in an explosive complaint released on Thursday (Sept 26).
In an attempt to "lock down" all records of the call, White House lawyers told officials to move an electronic transcript of the call into a separate system reserved for classified information that is especially sensitive, the complaint said.
During the call, Mr Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate a political rival, former vice-president Joe Biden.
These and other details surrounding the call were "deeply disturbing" to senior White House officials, according to the complaint. A day earlier, the White House released a reconstructed transcript of the July 25 call.
The whistle-blower, an unnamed intelligence official, did not personally witness the actions but heard accounts from multiple American officials.
"This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call," the complaint said.
The complaint, grippingly written to detail a pattern of behaviour by Mr Trump and his administration, was particularly damning given Mr Trump's long record of dismissing the intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit him.
House Democrats took steps to impeach Mr Trump before the contents of the call and complaint were disclosed.
The White House on Thursday dismissed the whistle-blower's allegations, with Ms Stephanie Grisham, the press secretary, describing it as "nothing more than a collection of third-hand accounts of events and cobbled-together press clippings - all of which shows nothing improper".
In the complaint, the whistle-blower wrote that the President's personal lawyer, Mr Rudy Giuliani, was involved in the pressure campaign as well as Attorney-General William Barr, though details of his role were not clear.
The whistle-blower also wrote that the unusual handling of the call was deliberate.
"They told me that 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," the whistle-blower wrote.
