The White House. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

White House lawyers "directed" officials to store records of a call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a way that would obscure that information from others who would normally be able to access it, including members of the Cabinet, according to a whistleblower complaint released Thursday.

In a redacted, declassified version of the complaint released by the House Intelligence Committee, the whistleblower wrote that they were told by White House officials that they "were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call."

"They told me that there was already a 'discussion ongoing' 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 document reads.

The whistleblower wrote that they later "learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to 'lock down' all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced—as is customary—by the White House Situation Room."

"White House officials told me that they were 'directed' by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials," the complaint said.

Read the complaint:

The whistleblower said the transcript of the phone call was put into an electronic system "that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature."

"One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system, because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective," the complaint reads.

The declassified version of the complaint was released shortly before acting director of National Intelligence Patrick Maguire began his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee about the complaint and its handling.

A memo on the call between Trump and Zelensky was released by the White House Thursday. It showed that Trump asked Zelensky to work with Attorney General William Barr and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to look into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden over the removal of an Ukrainian prosecutor.

Debunked reports alleged that the former vice president pressured Ukraine to remove the prosecutor because he was investigating the younger Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. That prosecutor was alleged by global leaders as failing to adequately investigate allegations of corruption.

DOJ sought to distance Barr from the memo of Trump's call with several statements, saying Barr was never asked to investigate the Bidens and was unaware of Trump's conversation with Zelensky until it was referred to the department some weeks later.

The declassified whistleblower complaint also makes several references to Barr. It said Trump referred to Giuliani and Barr "as his personal envoys on these matters."

And it referenced several interviews by Ukrainian prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko given to The Hill publication earlier this year, including one in which Lutsenko said he "had spoken with Mr. Giuliani about arranging contact with Attorney General Barr."

Some Democrats, such as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-New York-are calling for Barr to recuse himself from the Ukrainian matters.

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