An American intelligence officer wrote a complaint about the US president. The reason could be the first conversation of Donald Trump with Vladimir Zelensky

An unnamed American intelligence officer complained about US President Donald Trump because of his communication with one of the foreign leaders. Their conversation concerned Ukraine, reports The Washington Post with reference to two sources. They tried to lower the complaint on the brakes, but this only filed a scandal.

The US intelligence has received an important complaint from the informant. In violation of the rules, she was not transferred to the congress

The complaint that The Washington Post writes about was filed on August 12, but intelligence did not disclose who it was directed against. US -General Inspector of US Intelligence Services, Michael Atkinson, who studied the complaint, considered it reliable and worthy of attention. Atkinson assigned the document to an emergency status, which allows to reveal its contents to the exploration committees of both chambers of the US Congress.

However, the Boss Atkinson - the acting director of the US National Intelligence Joseph Maguire - refused to provide a complaint to Congress. He applied for advice to the Ministry of Justice, where they said that it was not necessary to disclose the content of the document for congressmen, because he does not concern the intelligence officer and, accordingly, is not the competence of Maguire.

Atkinson did not agree with this position and notified the Congress of the existence of a complaint without revealing its essence. The head of the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives, Democrat Adam Schiff demanded that Maguire transfer the document to legislators. According to him, the leaders of the US national intelligence had never prevented the transfer of emergency complaints from informants to Congress, and Maguire’s behavior may indicate that the situation is related to his boss, the US President.

The complaint of the informant is directed against the US President. Donald Trump denies that he did something bad

The fact that the informant really complained about Donald Trump himself, the sources of The Washington Post told September 18. According to them, the reason for the complaint was the negotiations of the US president with an unnamed foreign leader. During these negotiations, Trump made a promise that the informant considered it alarming enough to send a complaint.

According to The Washington Post, an intelligence officer who worked in the White House was an informant. It is not known how he found out about Trump’s conversation - he heard him himself or read about him in the report that the White House employees receive. The sources of The Washington Post reported that, according to Michael Atkinson, the complaint concerned more than one Trump conversation.

Donald Trump himself said he did not do anything bad. “Almost every time I talk on the phone with a foreign leader, I understand that many people from different government departments are listening to us, not to mention students from the other side. Is someone stupid enough to think that I could say something inappropriate in such a conversation? ” - wrote Trump on Twitter.

The complaint is related to Ukraine. How exactly is unknown

On September 19, two sources of The Washington Post said that the informant’s complaint is about Ukraine. However, they did not specify in a conversation with which foreign leader the country was mentioned and in what context. It is known that July 25 - a few weeks before filing a complaint - Trump first spoke by phone with the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky.

According to The New York Times, during this conversation Trump expressed the hope that the new Ukrainian government will complete the investigation of corruption, "which restrained the interaction between Ukraine and the USA." Democrats in the House of Representatives suggested that under the guise of fighting corruption, Trump was trying to force the Ukrainian authorities to conduct politically motivated investigations against their opponents.

The New York Times wrote about these investigations. According to the publication, the personal lawyer of Trump Rudolph Juliani asked the assistant Vladimir Zelensky Andrei Yermak to investigate whether the Ukrainian authorities tried to interfere with the Trump election campaign in 2016 and did not Joe Biden, a former vice-president of the United States and the rival of Trump in future elections- personal benefits of dismissal of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Juliani actually confirmed the existence of investigations.

The American president has already been suspected of inappropriate statements when communicating with foreign leaders. In particular, it was reported that in 2017, during a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov, Trump disclosed the secret information of Israeli intelligence on the activities of the Islamic State.

Olga Korelina