First, as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) put it in a written statement: “The Committee this morning will be releasing the declassified whistleblower complaint that it received late last night from the ODNI. It is a travesty that it was held up this long. This complaint should never have been withheld from Congress. It exposed serious wrongdoing, and was found both urgent and credible by the Inspector General.” In addition to the president, whoever was involved in the decision was acting in intentional, deliberate violation of the law. The only conceivable reason for withholding the document is its indictment of not only the president but also a host of willing enablers in an illegal scheme to betray American democracy.

Second, the complaint confirms that perhaps dozens of U.S. officials were witnesses to the conduct and or helped enable it. Schiff notes: “This complaint is a road map for our investigation, and provides significant information for the Committee to follow up on with other witnesses and documents. And it is corroborated by the call record released yesterday." The complaint says:

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“More than a half dozen” officials provided information to the whistleblower

“Multiple White House officials” confided in the whistleblower about the call

“Approximately a dozen” White House officials listened to the July 25 call; “multiple” White House officials told him the transcript had been moved to a protected computer system to avoid its discovery

U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and U.S. special representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker gave advice to the Ukrainians as to how to deal with Trump (making these officials witnesses, if not participants, in the scheme)

The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was recalled apparently as a result of a Ukrainian official (whose patron was an anti-reformer and opponent of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky) who demanded to talk to Attorney General William P. Barr about the arrangement

And multiple State Department officials tried to “contain the damage” from Giuliani’s activities.

Former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah tells me, “It seems to me that In addition to all of the crimes we were talking about yesterday we now should add obstruction of justice to the list and a very wide net of possible participants.”

Despite all these U.S. officials involved, none stepped forward to alert Congress or the country. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was either the most clueless secretary ever to work at Foggy Bottom, or he, too, was aware of the scheme and approved the recall of the U.S. ambassador. He should be subpoenaed to testify before or after tendering his resignation, either for gross obliviousness or failure to stop the conspiracy in its tracks.

Finally, there is no doubt that this is a far-flung conspiracy playing out over months under the direction of Trump. The president has not only betrayed American democracy and used taxpayer-funded aid to pressure a foreign power to help him politically, but he has also entangled a horde of government officials whose careers are now in peril, at the very least.

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In short, the Ukraine conspiracy is plainly bigger than “just” the president but implicates multiple government agencies and departments. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tweets: “The massive White House coverup of Trump’s abuse of power vis-a-vis Ukraine & Biden, including evidence of concealment, is now clearly documented. Bill Barr is up to his eyebrows in the criminal conspiracy. He’s Trump’s John Mitchell. Mitchell ended up in prison. It’s all unraveling.”

Trump must resign or be removed, but that should be only one step in an effort to surface countless individuals who have used government offices for corrupt purposes, or have been silent as others did. We have the most historically corrupt administration in history.

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