Report: White House official told whistleblower Trump's Ukraine call was 'frightening' and 'crazy'

The whistleblower who filed a complaint about President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke shortly afterwards with a White House official who described the exchange as "frightening," "crazy," and "completely lacking in substance related to national security," The New York Times reports.

The whistleblower wrote a memo prior to filing a complaint with the intelligence community inspector general in August. In it, the whistleblower stated that the White House official, who listened in on the call, was "visibly shaken by what had transpired," the Times reports. Inspector General Michael Atkinson deemed the subsequent complaint credible, and last week, Atkinson passed the memo and other documents related to the whistleblower to Congress; someone who was familiar with the memo described it to the Times.

In the memo, the whistleblower wrote that the White House official said "there was already a conversation with White House lawyers about how to handle the discussion because, in the official's view, the president had clearly committed a criminal act by urging a foreign power to investigate a U.S. person for the purpose of advancing his own re-election bid in 2020." Read more about the memo and complaint at The New York Times.

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