WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi alleged that White House's attempt to suppress a record of President Donald Trump's phone call to his Ukrainian counterpart was a cover-up.
The top Democrat made the accusation while outlining the accusations in a whistleblower complaint that sparked a new impeachment threat against the President.
Pelosi said the Hose Democrats decided to move forward with an impeachment inquiry because by suppressing a record of Trump's phone call to Ukraine, 'he betrayed his oath of office, our national security and the integrity of our elections'.
The complaint states the White House tried to 'lock down all records of the call, especially the word for word transcript.' That gave the whistleblower reason to believe that the White House 'understood the gravity of what transpired in that call.'
The complaint reports a 'repeated abuse of an electronics record system designed to store classified, sensitive national security information, which the White House used to hide information of a political nature.'
As she laid out part of her case for impeaching Trump, a reporter asked Pelosi if there is evidence in this complaint of a cover-up by the White House.
She replied: 'When you take - when you have a system of electronic storage for information that is specifically for national security purposes and you have something that is self serving to the President politically and decide it might not be - you might not want people to know and you hide it someplace else, that's a cover-up.'
The California Democrat said her understanding is that such cover-ups may have happened before.
Pelosi accused that the President believes he is above the law, and is asking a foreign government to help him in his election.
Pelosi said that along with the impeachment inquiry, the Caucus also hopes to protect the whistleblower reporting wrongdoing, from retaliation.
The complaint from the unidentified whistleblower says they received information from multiple U.S. officials revealing Trump was 'using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.'
'This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals,' the complaint reads.
The whistleblower, who is reportedly a CIA officer, allege that his July 25 phone call, Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate corruption allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential election.
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