A whistleblower complaint alleging Donald Trump sought to pressure the president of Ukraine in an official government call to investigate a key political rival has been made public, just days after the House opened a formal impeachment hearing against the president over those claims.
A redacted version of the document – which Democrats have described as “explosive” and “deeply disturbing” – was made public Thursday morning, and claims that the White House may have regularly moved records of the president’s calls into a keyword classified database for political reasons, instead of serious national security concerns.
Acting national intelligence director Joseph Maguire has testified to the House Intelligence Committee about his handling of the complaint, and has called the situation “unprecedented”.
As the impeachment calls have grown, polls show that the American people are hearing the message, with a significant growth in the number of Americans who say they support the measure since this weekend, according to Morning Consult.
Mr Trump has maintained that the whole thing is a witch hunt intended to undermine his presidency, and it appears as though the president can rely on his Republican colleagues in the Senate to thwart any effort to remove him from office — at least for now.
Elsewhere, the offices of Bernie Sanders were evacuated on Thursday afternoon after a suspicious package was found in Vermont. It was not immediately clear what the package was.
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Good morning and welcome to The Independent's live updates on Donald Trump's administration, on what promises to be a compelling day in already dramatic week in Washington.
We are expecting today to see the full details of a whistleblower complaint that has left the US president facing a formal impeachment probe.
Members of congress have already seen the document after it was declassified on Wednesday, and it does not sound good for Trump. Democrats who have read the complaint say it is "explosive", while even one Republican admitted it was "troubling".
Centre to all this is a phone call the president made to his Ukrainian counterpart earlier this year. As the transcript published yesterday shows, Trump pressured VolodymyrZelensky to investigative his political rival Joe Biden over unsubstantiated claims of corruption.
The contents of the whistleblower complaint about Donald Trump’s call to Ukrainian president are “deeply disturbing”, according to politicians who have read the document.
Senior members of the Senate and the House of Representatives received copies of the complaint, filed by a member of the US intelligence community, on Wednesday.
House Democrats emerging from the secure room in they read the complaint did not divulge details of the complaint but described it as troubling and urgent.
Intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff said it "exposed serious wrongdoing" and "certainly provides information for the committee to follow up with other".
My colleague Andrew Buncombe has rounded up the initial reaction on Capitol Hill:
Republicans who have seen the whistleblower complaint have been, unsurprisingly, less damning in their assessment.
Most remained silent or defended the president as they left the secure reading rooms yesterday.
Missouri senator Roy Blunt said he was no more concerned than before he read the document.
John Ratcliffe said the transcript of Trump's call to the Ukrainian president was better evidence than "an accounting of the conversation from someone who wasn't there".
But at least one Republican admitted he was concerned by what he had read.
Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, who sits on the Senate intelligence committee, told reporters: "Republicans ought not to be rushing to circle the wagons and say there's no 'there there' when there's obviously a lot that's very troubling there."
However, he also said "Democrats ought not to be using the word impeach before they have the whistleblower complaint".
The whistleblower complaint reveals that multiple White House aides were involved in Trump's attempt to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden, one member of congress has told CNN's Jim Acosta:
The details of the Ukraine whistleblower complaint are "nothing short of explosive", according to one Democrat.
Jackie Speier, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC she was "stunned by the breadth of the complaint and the details with which the whistleblower expressed concerns".
Members on both sides of congress are urging that the whistleblower complaint is released as soon as possible so the public can read it:
As details of the whistleblower report emerge, Donald Trump's top intelligence official is to be grilled by congress over the administration's handling of the complaint.
Acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, will testify to the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee this morning.
He is certain face questions about his initial refusal to share the complaint with congress, as was legally required after an inspector general's determination that it was urgent and credible.
Maguire, who has been in his position for less than two months, reportedly threatened to resign over concerns the White House may try to restrict his testimony to congress.
According to The Washington Post, which cited current and former US officials, made it clear to the Trump administration he was not willing to withhold information from the committee.
Both Maguire and the White House denied the newspaper's report.
Trump claims the transcript released yesterday exonerates him, but the document gives the House committees investigating him plenty to pick over, says Chris Stevenson in this analysis:
Parts of the whistleblower report will be redacted, according to reporter at The Hill:
As the details of their July phone conversation dominate talk in Washington, Donald Trump and Ukranian president VolodymyrZelensky had their first official meeting yesterday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
They were, of course, asked about the call that has left the US president facing an impeachment probe.
My colleague Andrew Buncombe reports on how that played out:
Ukraine's president has said the transcript of his conversation with Donald Trump should not have been made public.
Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters at the UN General Assembly in New York: "I think such things, such conversations between heads of independent states, they shouldn't be published".
But he insisted he was "not afraid" of the release of the transcript, which was published by the White House yesterday.
He also played down talk of Ukraine investigating Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, describing it as "just one of "many cases that I talk about with leaders of other countries".
The transcript probably doesn't show Zelensky, a former comic actor who was elected in July with nearly 73 per cent of the vote, as he would wish to be seen at home.
He adopts a deferential and at times flattering tone towards Trump, parroting his language ("drain the swamp"), mentioning that he has stayed at Trump Tower in New York, and even suggesting the US presidential plane is "probably much better than mine".
A Ukrainian opposition MP has called on Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office to release a full transcript of the president's July call with Donald Trump.
Oleksiy Goncharenko demanded a full record of the conversation, translated into Ukrainian, the news agency Interfax Ukraine reported.
The White House has acknowledged that the transcript it released yesterday was not a verbatim record of the call and was instead based on "the notes and recollections" of staff assigned to listen to and "memorialise" the conversation.
Indeed, the White House may well not have an actual recording of the conversation as presidential calls have not been routinely taped by at the Oval Office since the 1970s.
There is no word yet on when the whistleblower's complaint about Trump's Ukraine call will be made public.
But Chris Stewart, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN he expected it will be released this morning.
He said it had been declassified "with minimal redactions".
Donald Trump logged on to Twitter and - reading between the lines - does not seem too happy about something:
The House Intelligence Committee will convene in about an hour for a hearing in which Donald Trump's acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire will speak publicly for the first time about the Ukraine whistleblower complaint.
Maguire will then go behind closed doors to speak to the Senate intelligence panel.
The unidentified whistleblower first submitted a complaint to Michael Atkinson, the US government's intelligence inspector general, in August.
Maguire then blocked release of the complaint to congress, citing issues of presidential privilege and saying the complaint did not deal with an "urgent concern." Atkinson disagreed but said his hands were tied.
Atkinson, who met privately with members of congress last week, will also talk behind closed doors to the Senate intelligence panel today.
The House and Senate committees have also invited the whistleblower to testify, but it is uncertain whether the person will appear and whether his or her identity could be adequately protected without Maguire's blessing.
According to the Associated Press, the whistleblower is prepared to speak privately before the Senate and House intelligence committees but their lawyers want to first ensure that they have the appropriate security clearances so that they can be present for any meeting.
The Trump whistleblower complaint is expected to allege a pattern of obfuscation at the White House, with officials moving the records of some of the presidents' communications with foreign officials onto a separate computer network from where they are normally stored. My colleague Dave McClean has more details:
Donald Trump's July phone call with the Ukrainian president was a "mob shakedown", a Democrat member of congress has said.
California representative Eric Swalwell, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC the conversation was "corrupt" and "the way that third world leaders conduct themselves".
He added the whistleblower's complaint "lays out witnesses we need to follow up with, documents we need to get, and also describes a number of individuals around this disturbing conduct who never came forward".
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