Impeachment inquiry focuses on 2 White House lawyers

WASHINGTON — The House impeachment inquiry is zeroing in on two White House lawyers privy to a discussion about moving a memo recounting President Donald Trump’s phone call with the leader of Ukraine into a highly restricted computer system normally reserved for documents about covert action. The impeachment inquiry is investigating Trump’s call in which he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for “a favor” — one that alarmed at least two White House staffers who listened in on the July 25 call. And it’s because they think there’s a cover-up,” he told reporters at a recent White House briefing, adding, “There must have been something really, really duplicitous, something really under-handed about how they handled this document, because there must be a cover-up.” Mulvaney said if the administration had wanted to cover anything up, it wouldn’t have called the Justice Department after the call to have them look at the transcript and wouldn’t have publicly released the memorandum of the conversation. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham pushed back on Thursday, saying Vindman “never suggested filling in any words at any points where ellipses appear in the transcript.” She added that because Vindman testified behind closed doors, the White House “cannot confirm whether or not Lt. Col. Vindman himself made any such false claim.” Like most presidential calls with foreign leaders, the Trump-Zelenskiy call was put into the T-Net system where certain individuals are granted permission to read it based on their need to know, according to two individuals with direct knowledge of the system.