‘VISIBLY SHAKEN’

White House Official Told Whistleblower Trump-Ukraine Call Was ‘Crazy,’ ‘Frightening’

According to a memo written by the whistleblower, the official said “the president had clearly committed a criminal act.”

A White House official described President Trump’s July 25 call with the Ukrainian president as “crazy” and “frightening” to the whisteblower who filed a complaint about the conversation, ABC News and The New York Times report. In a two-page memo written a day after Trump’s call, the whistleblower noted that the official was “visibly shaken by what had transpired and seemed keen to inform a trusted colleague within the U.S. national security apparatus about the call.” According to the whistleblower, the official deemed the call “completely lacking in substance related to national security.” The memo also reportedly states the official said there were conversations “underway with White House lawyers about how to handle the discussion” because “the president had clearly committed a criminal act by urging a foreign power to investigate a U.S. person for the purposes of advancing his own re-election bid in 2020.”

The memo was later given to the intelligence community’s inspector general, who also reviewed the whistleblower’s complaint and deemed it an item of “urgent concern.” The inspector general subsequently gave the memo to Congress. The White House, a spokesman for the inspector general, and the whistleblower’s lawyers have not commented publicly on the matter.