Whistleblower worried about election interference

WASHINGTON—The whistleblower who raised concerns about President Donald Trump’s July phone call to the Ukrainian president said he thought Trump meant to “solicit interference from a foreign country” in the upcoming presidential election. On Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee released a declassified portion of the complaint. The person who filed it noted he or she got the information from White House officials, not firsthand. The White House attempted to “lock down” records of the call by storing them in a separate electronic system used to handle sensitive information, the complaint said. The Trump administration released a memo Wednesday about the contents of the call.

How has the White House responded? On Twitter, the president accused Democrats of attempting to destroy the Republican Party. Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified to the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday that he initially withheld the complaint from Congress because the contents were the kind “typically subject to executive privilege.”

Dig deeper: Read the letter from Inspector General Michael Atkinson to Maguire in which he explained why he thought the complaint constituted an “urgent concern.”