, Washington correspondent
The return to Washington, on the evening of Thursday, September 26, had to be difficult for Donald Trump. The whistleblower's complaint, whose redacted content was made public in the morning, does not help the US president's case threatened with "impeachment" by the House of Representatives.
The 10-page document begins with damning terms for the head of state, accused of "using his power to solicit interference from a foreign country in the US election of 2020. This interference includes among other things, putting pressure on a foreign country to investigate one of the president's main political rivals. "
This information was already known to the public since the publication of the memo of the telephone conversation in which Donald Trump asks Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his rival, Democrat Joe Biden. But they are accompanied by another harsh accusation: White House lawyers, aware of the "seriousness" of the conversation, have sought to cover the president.
Locked archives
How? 'Or' What ? By locking "all records related to the phone call", including ordering to store them in a "separate electronic system" from the one used usually. A "maneuver to stifle" the scandal, according to the House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi, on the front line in the investigation for "impeachment".
The complaint also involves Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, who allegedly tried to put pressure on Volodymyr Zelensky's entourage after the 25 July phone call. Mike Pence, Vice President, and William Barr, the Minister of Justice, are not spared by the whistleblower.
The New York Times understands that the latter is a CIA agent who was on secondment to the White House. His lawyers are furious with the newspaper, accusing them of endangering their client.
Donald Trump's statements on Thursday did not reassure them. In a private exchange recorded without his knowledge in New York, the American president insinuated that the half-dozen officials who, in the White House, transmitted information to the whistleblower, are "close to a spy" who deserve capital punishment: "You know what we did in the good old days (...) in case of betrayal by spies? We treated it a little differently from today ..."