US Democratic lawmakers who reviewed a secret whistle-blower complaint involving US President Donald Trump on Wednesday called it “deeply disturbing” and said that it gives them new leads to pursue as they consider impeachment.
The complaint from an intelligence committee whistle-blower, the document at the center of a firestorm about Trump’s handling of Ukraine, was on Wednesday made available to members of the intelligence committees of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate after weeks of delay.
Lawmakers were allowed to see the complaint the evening before Acting US Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire was set to testify to the US Congress about it.
The complaint is at least in part related to a July telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump prodded Zelensky to investigate his Democratic political rival, former US vice president Joe Biden.
The White House released a rough transcript of that call on Wednesday morning.
House Democrats emerging from a secure room would not divulge details of the complaint, but described it as disturbing and urgent.
US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said that it “exposed serious wrongdoing” and “certainly provides information for the committee to follow up with others.”
US Representative Eric Swalwell told CNN that the whistle-blower “laid out a lot of other documents and witnesses who were subjects in this matter.”
The complaint showed that the whistle-blower learned details of the call from White House officials, said one person familiar with the complaint who was granted anonymity to discuss it.
Another such person said that the lawmakers did not learn the identity of the whistle-blower.
Another Democratic member of the panel, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, said that the whistle-blower “lays out the situation very logically” and “is both acknowledging the things that he or she knows and doesn’t know, which is a hallmark of a credible document.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who on Tuesday fully endorsed an impeachment investigation in light of the Ukraine revelations — and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also viewed the complaint.
Schumer said that he is even “more worried” now than he was before reading it and “there are huge numbers of facts crying out for investigation.”
Most Republicans were quiet or defended the president as they left the secure rooms, but at least one Republican said that he was concerned by what he had read.
“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,” said US Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican member of the Senate intelligence panel who has been an occasional critic of Trump.
“Democrats ought not be using words like ‘impeach’ before they knew anything about the actual substance,” he added.
Trump, whose administration had earlier balked at turning over the complaint, on Wednesday afternoon said: “I fully support transparency on the so-called whistle-blower information” and that he had communicated that position to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
The rough transcript released by the White House on Wednesday showed that Trump prodded Zelensky to work with the US attorney general and Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate Biden.
Lawmakers said that they needed to see the complaint, not just the memo about the call, as they investigate the president and whether his actions were inappropriate.
Pelosi on Tuesday said that if Trump abused his presidential powers, it would mark a “betrayal of his oath of office.”
It is unclear if the complaint will eventually be made public. Both Republicans and Democrats have called for it to be released.
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