President Donald Trump on Wednesday continued his deluge of attacks against the intelligence whistleblower whose complaint spurred House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, again calling for the person’s unmasking and asking why there should be protection for the intelligence official. Speaking to reporters at the White House after signing an executive order, Trump accused the whistleblower of falsifying parts of the complaint, which the president dismissed as a “con,” despite most elements having been proved accurate by materials from the White House or Trump himself. Trump continued to assert that the phone call at the heart of the complaint — during which he asked President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and events surrounding the 2016 election — was a “perfect” call, a characterization that he contended had been borne out by the rough transcript released by the White House.
