Inside Job:The whistleblower complaint about President Trump released yesterday was based in part on concerns expressed by members of the administration and President Trump’s own White House staff, according to the document.

  At the same time, the unnamed whistleblower says White House lawyers ordered that the electronic records of President Trump’s July 25^thphone conversation with the president of Ukraine must be moved to a secure server. 

  The whistleblower, who The NY Timesreports is a CIA officer formerly attached to the White House, says, “In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.”

  The whistleblower complaint says President Trump urged the president of Ukraine to investigate Vice President Jo Biden and his son, Hunter, and that his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani followed up meeting with Ukrainian officials overseas. 

  The Biden rumors appear to have originated with Yuri Lutsenko, who was Ukraine’s prosecutor general until the end of August. He has since retracted his accusations.

  The whistleblower cautions that he was not a witness to the events described in his report, “However, I found my colleagues accounts of these events to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another.” 

  He goes on, “The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. They told me that there was already a discussion on going with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials’ retelling, that they had witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain.” 

  The whistleblower then says that in the days following the phone call, White House lawyers ordered that all records of the phone call be locked down. He said, “This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.”

Unprecedented: In hearing before the House Intelligence Committee that otherwise would have been the lead news, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguiredescribed the whistleblower complaint against President Trump as “unprecedented.”

  Maguire, who was appointed by President Trump, was careful not to take sides or qualify the whistleblower complaint in any way. “My responsibility was to get you the whistle-blower letter and get the other information released. I have done my duty,” he told the committee.

 Chairman Adam Schiff was tough in his opening statement. Schiff asked Maguire to explain “why you stood silent when an intelligence professional under your care and protection was ridiculed by the president, was accused of potentially betraying his or her country, when that whistle-blower, by their very act of coming forward, has shown more dedication to country, more of an understanding of the president’s oath of office than the president has ever demonstrated.”

Denial on the Potomac:Facing what may be the most serious and immediate threat to his presidency, Trump shocked an audience from the US Mission to the United Nations saying, “I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy.” As previously noted, the whistleblower said there were many sources. Trump said, “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

  White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham issued a statement saying the whistleblower complaint “is nothing more than a collection of third-hand accounts of events and cobbled-together press clippings.”

  She said, “The White House will continue to push back on the hysteria and false narratives being peddled by Democrats and many in the mainstream media.” 

  Grisham did not give a press conference to answer questions because she doesn’t do that. It’s been about 200 days since the last press briefing and Grisham has announced there isn’t likely to be one any time soon.

  Grisham said on Fox, the network that does not challenge the administration, that,“To be honest, the briefings have become a lot of theater. And I think that a lot of reporters were doing it to get famous. I mean, yeah, they’re writing books now. I mean, they’re all getting famous off of this presidency. And so, I think it’s great what we’re doing now.”

The Bulletin Board:Just a few weeks after the Trump administration sued California to block it from setting higher auto emissions standards than the federal government, the EPA is claiming that the state needs to improve it water and air quality. — The reported number of vaping related illnesses in the US has risen to 805 with 12 deaths, the CDC says. — As repercussions in the college admissions scandal continue, a Los Angeles businessman who paid $400,000 to get his son into Georgetown as a tennis player was sentenced to four months in prison. Stephen Semprevivo, 53, wept as he told the judge, “I deserve to be punished.” — The Trump administration is slashing the number of refugees to be accepted into the country in the next 12 months to 18,000, down from 30,000.

Social Notes: The NY Postobserves that model Kaitlynn Carter, who previously broke up with husband Brody Jenner, wore a metal mesh bra in her first public appearance since breaking up with singer with Miley Cyrus, who broke up with husband Liam Hemsworth to date Carter, who was not wearing a metal mesh bra when the romance with Cyrus started.

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