Leaked audio of whistleblower: Trump calls his impeachment a ‘war’

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump Friday called his struggle with Democrats threatening impeachment a "war," a video of comments that he expected to remain private showed Friday.

"We´re at war. These people are sick," Trump says in the video obtained by Bloomberg.

He was speaking at a closed-doors gathering with US diplomats in New York on Thursday and apparently filmed by one of the people attending.

The event was held in the wake of the Democrats´ decision to launch an impeachment investigation into Trump’s alleged attempt to arm-twist the Ukrainian president into providing dirt on one of his main 2020 election rivals, Joe Biden.

The recording of the event, part of which was first published by the LA Times, showed Trump suggesting that whoever gave compromising information to the whistleblower was "close to a spy."

He went on to say that "spies and treason" used to be handled "a little differently than we do now."

While that comment prompted chuckles from the crowd, it has since been criticized by Trump´s opponents as being a veiled threat to the safety of the whistleblower and his sources.

The extended video clip published by Bloomberg showed more of the remarks in which Trump also refers to Biden as "dumb as a rock" -- getting more laughter from the diplomats.

He also calls journalists "animals," "scum" and "crooked."

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Friday said Attorney General William Barr had “gone rogue” in his handling of a whistleblower complaint that led her to launch

an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Pelosi also claimed that acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire “broke the law” by not immediately

handing over to Congress the whistleblower’s complaint, which the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community had determined was “urgent” and “credible.”

Barr is mentioned in the complaint, and in a memorandum of a July 25 phone call in which Trump asks Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “if you can look into” allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The whistleblower’s complaint raised alarms that the call showed Trump “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election.”

It called Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, “a central figure” in the alleged effort, and said that “Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”

Trump told Zelensky that he would “have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General [William] Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it.”