Report: White House lawyer moved Trump's Ukraine transcript to classified server after staff flagged concerns

(Image credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

published 31 October 2019

After learning that White House officials had concerns over President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, National Security Council legal counsel John Eisenberg proposed moving a reconstructed transcript of the call to a server used for highly classified material, restricting access to it and going against White House protocol, The Washington Post reports.

This revelation was made during Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's testimony to House investigators on Tuesday, people familiar with the matter told the Post. Vindman was among a handful of officials who listened in on the call, during which Trump asked Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and he was so bothered by the request that he went to Eisenberg's office to tell him that what Trump said was wrong.

Vindman, the National Security Council's top Ukraine adviser, also testified that he went to Eisenberg following a July 10 meeting with Ukrainian officials visiting the White House, the Post reports. According to several accounts, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told the Ukrainians that their country needed to investigate the Bidens and Burisma, the energy company where Hunter Biden once was on the board of directors. This was "inappropriate," Vindman said. The NSC's former top Russia official, Fiona Hill, also reportedly testified that she had relayed concerns to Eisenberg about that meeting. House Democrats have asked Eisenberg to testify on Monday. Read more at The Washington Post.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.