Following suspicion from multiple White House and government officials, a former CIA-White House official has issued a complaint that could greatly influence the impeachment of President Donald Trump. 

A former CIA official who used to work in the White House filed an official document calling out Trump for abusing his executive power for his self interest. This report was caused by overwhelming suspicion following a July 25th phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky. As stated in the report, this phone call was a “serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or executive order” where Trump asked Zelensky to work with Attorney General William P. Barr in investigating one of Trump’s competitors in the 2020 election, former US Vice President Joe Biden. The complaint was filed to limit foreign involvement in the 2020 election and also continue the investigation of President Trump. There were approximately a dozen White House officials in the room during the phone call and suspicion aroused afterwards, as many felt the discussion was incredibly inappropriate. Trump is denying all accusations of abuse of executive power. The president went on to further repudiate these allegations in a televised meeting with Zelensky, who stated that he felt there was no pressure. However, even more suspicion was raised in the time following the call, as said in the report, “Days following the call the whistleblower learned from many US officials that senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced.” The call had been moved to a confidential electronic system which held only the most sensitive information. The phone call was supposedly a routine procedure, however the fact that the transcript of the call was hidden suggests that some corruption occurred on the part of the president. In defense, Trump has claimed that the whistleblower’s information is not credible since the whistleblower was not directly involved in any of the events that occurred, and has received all of his information from other officials. Despite this, the recent release of the transcript of the call is almost exactly what the whistleblower has described. During the call, Trump repeatedly brought up that “the United States has been very, very good to the Ukraine,” implying he used his dominance over Ukraine to intimidate Zelensky into getting him to investigate Biden. Trump also talked about how Ukraine is in debt to the US for the majority of the call, which goes along very closely to what was described in the Whistleblower Complaint. Considering these things, it’s no wonder Zelensky has denied any pressure by Trump. 

The allegations brought up in the report have led to growing public support for the impeachment of Trump. With Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has launching a formal impeachment inquiry, impeachment may become a very real possibility in the future.