The White House tried to conceal the contents of phone calls between Trump and other world leaders, including Russia's Putin and Saudi Arabia's Mohammad bin Salman, CNN and The New York Times reported.
Trump is currently under fire a call asking Ukraine to investigate an election rival and allegations that the White House then tried to cover it up by storing the transcript in a system typically reserved for the country's top secrets.
The White House has confirmed some of the details, and Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry over the call.
The transcripts of calls with other leaders were moved to a secure system and transcripts were not circulated as normal after the White House was frustrated by leaks from other calls, the reports said.
Trump's conversation with Bin Salman addressed the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi a Saudi consulate, but there is no evidence of wrongdoing from Trump during the call, officials told the outlets.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The White House reportedly tried to lock down the transcripts of President Donald Trump's calls with other world leaders, including Russia's Putin and Saudi Arabia's Mohammad bin Salman, according to reports from CNN and The New York Times.
The Times, citing current and former officials, said that the call transcripts were stored in a computer system that is typically used for highly classified materials.
The process began over a year ago because details from some earlier conversations between Trump and world leaders, including Australia's president, had leaked, the Times reported.
Read more: Trump officials were reportedly so alarmed by his Ukraine call that the transcript had to be printed out and passed around by hand
The calls, with leaders that Trump has maintained controversial relationship with, sometimes took place during politically sensitive times, according to both outlets, with Trump's conversation with Bin Salman addressing the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi a Saudi consulate.
Both outlets said there was no evidence of any wrongdoing by Trump during the call.
Bin Salman denies any direct involvement in the killing but experts say it is "inconceivable" that it took place without his knowledge, and Trump has come under fire for maintaining his relationship with the crown prince since.
Trump is currently facing heavy criticism over a call with Ukraine's president, which promoted Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry against him and sparked accusations of a cover up by the White House.
An intelligence community whistleblower claimed that White House officials tried to "lock down" records of the call, especially the transcript.
The whistleblower claimed that White House lawyers directed officials to remove the electronic transcript from its usual electronic system, and move it to a system reserved for particularly sensitive, classified information.
Read more: 2 key facts refute Trump's conspiracy theories about the Ukraine scandal
The system is intended to safeguard "code word" documents — some of the country's most sensitive information.
A senior White House official confirmed to CNN on Friday that National Security Council lawyers decided that the transcript of that phone call in that system. The statement did not address the whistleblower's allegation that other transcripts had been treated in the same way.
Kellyanne Conway, a White House counselor, told reporters on Friday that "as I understand, the document was handled appropriately at all times."
The whistleblower said that some officials worried that this transfer "would be an abuse of the system, and that it was "not the first time" that a transcript of a Trump conversation has been put into this system.
It is not clear whether Trump's conversation with other leaders were put in this same system, the Times reported.
A memo of the call, which is not a transcript but is instead made from staff notes about the call, revealed that Trump asked Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, former vice president and Trump's current election rival, and to interfere with the probe into Russian meddling with the 2016 elections.
Read more: The notes on Trump's call with Ukraine's president hint at a quid pro quo over investigating Joe Biden's son
The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, said Thursday that the White House's own memo lines up with the contents of the complaint. "The whistleblower's complaint is in alignment with what was released yesterday by the president," he said.
Citing people familiar with the matter, CNN reported that aides took "remarkable" steps to stop the conversations with other world leaders from becoming public.
No transcript of the call with Bin Salman was circulated to officials and officials who would typically get a transcript of such calls did not get them, according to CNN.
Access to the transcript of Trump's call with Putin was "highly restricted," CNN also reported.
Trump's calls with other Saudi officials — including King Salman and Prince Khalid bin Salman, who at the time was then the Saudi ambassador to the US — were also placed in the same system as the calls with Bin Salman and Putin, the Times reported.
Read more: Around 300 former national security officials and ex-White House staff sign open letter accusing Trump of 'unconscionable abuse of power' over Ukraine call
Sam Vinograd, who served on President Barack Obama's National Security Council and at the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush, told CNN: "In my experience you would never move a transcript to the code word system if it does not have any code word terms."
"If the president is classifying and declassifying stuff he doesn't want to get out, that is an abuse of power and abuse of the system," said Vinograd, who now serves as a CNN national security analyst.
Trump denies any wrongdoing, and maintains that his call with Zelensky was a "perfect" phone call. Republicans argue that there was no evidence of quid pro quo during the call.
Gfrisse1 on September 28th, 2019 at 16:36 UTC »
They didn't "try" to conceal transcripts of Trump's calls with other world leaders. They did it.
https://theweek.com/speedreads/868538/white-house-reportedly-concealed-transcripts-trump-phone-calls-mbs-putin
savagedan on September 28th, 2019 at 15:47 UTC »
The kind of transparency this crook promised the American people
doodcool612 on September 28th, 2019 at 13:18 UTC »
The President has wide authority to classify basically whatever, but there is a very specific and explicit exception for covering up a crime or anything that's just embarrassing.
This is extremely serious. Our classification system is to be used for national security purposes only, not for the political purposes of any one individual. Our governmental representatives have a responsibility to be accountable to the people, and if they are misusing our national security apparatus to conceal politically damaging information, then they are grossly abusing their power.
If the President had direct knowledge that these abuses were going on, he may be criminally liable. It is absolutely inconceivable that the President's people could be committing crimes to cover up for him without his knowledge. Regardless, the buck stops with the President, and if his people were committing crimes for his benefit, he has a responsibility to know because ultimately he will be held responsible.
Edit: I'm getting a bunch of questions, so I'll just answer them here.
What exactly is the President accused of, and what is the evidence?
- The President is being accused of soliciting foreign interference in our election, which is a crime, and abusing the powers of the presidency by misappropriating Congressionally appropriated funds that were supposed to serve our national security for his own political purposes, and then over-classifying all the embarrassing related materials to cover his tracks.
We know from the memo released by the White House that the President did ask Ukrainian leader Zelensky to investigate Biden. This is a monumentally corrupt action. There is a system in this country for investigating wrong-doing. If the President had any legitimate concern about wrong-doing, he had a responsibility to go through the proper channels, meaning the FBI, so that he could be checked by our Judicial Branch. Instead he went around the system, in a way that is specifically forbidden by our laws. It is absolutely illegal for the campaign to solicit "anything of value," including dirt on his political opponent, from a foreign government. He even used the words "Do us a favor."
Furthermore, we know that the President did freeze foreign aid funding to Ukraine before and during the call to Zelensky, and that he spoke about that aid to Zelensky while he was asking Zelensky to investigate his political rival. This is just mind-boggling abuse of power. That money was duly apportioned by Congress to be used for our national security, and Trump held that money up, and the only discernible reason was to strong-arm Zelensky into doing something totally illegal.
If there was no quid pro quo was there no crime?
- No, this is just one of those weird things going around the internet. If you solicit foreign interference into an election, you broke the law. Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Biden. People may disagree as to whether the national security funds were frozen as a means to strong-arm Zelensky, but there can be no disagreement as to whether it was inappropriate for Trump to ask Zelensky to investigate Biden.
Was there any legitimate reason for these materials to be code-word classified?
- Absolutely not. Everything that was spoken about on that call was a matter of public record. The only thing that was sensitive on that call, assuming the memo contains all the relevant information, was when the President asked Zelensky to investigate Biden, in violation of the law.
Why is over-classification a bad thing?
- Presidents are specifically forbidden from classifying materials solely for being embarrassing or to cover up a crime. This is because a functioning democracy requires that the public know what our representatives are doing so we can hold them to account.
When the President classified these materials, he shielded them from FOIA requests, and made them inaccessible to journalists and the public.
Did the President have any reason to withhold these classified materials from Congress?
- Absolutely not. There are specific protocols that are supposed to be observed when a whistleblower complaint is filed. The Administration's decision to withhold the materials from Congress for as long as they did is absolutely illegal.
Why did Trump want Hunter Biden investigated anyway? What are the distinctions between the Obama Admin's freezing of foreign aid to Ukraine and the Trump Administrations?
- When Biden was VP, Ukraine went through a revolution. There was an international effort to get rid of a corrupt prosecutor. The Obama Admin told the Ukrainian government to clear out corruption in the government in exchange for foreign aid. They did, and the prosecutor got fired.
Giuliani has asserted, without evidence, that the prosecutor that got fired was fired because he was investigating Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son. The administration has been unable to provide any evidence of this claim, even to their own FBI. There is no evidence that this is the case.
By contrast, the Trump admin froze aid to Ukraine for reasons unexplained. Some have argued that the transcript clearly shows that Trump was using the frozen aid to extort Zelensky into investigating Biden during a campaign for political purposes.