Reprinted with permission from Alternet

President Donald Trump has insisted that his July 25 phone conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect.” But according to testimony by Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the U.S. Army officer who served as the National Security Council’s director for Ukraine-related matters, White House lawyer John Eisenberg went to great lengths to keep the call a secret.

Vindman, who gave a deposition on Tuesday, has been among the witnesses in House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. And in Politico, journalist Natasha Bertrand reports that after Vindman expressed concerns to Eisenberg about the July 25 conversation, lawyers decided to move the record of the call to the NSC’s top-secret codeword system — which is generally reserved for very classified matters.

Bertrand adds that “Eisenberg’s purported request that Vindman keep the call a secret raises questions about whether the lawyers’ intent was to bury the conversation altogether. It also undermines Trump’s insistence that the call was ‘perfect.’”

House Democrats, as part of their impeachment inquiry, have asked Eisenberg to testify this Monday, November 4, although it remains to be seen whether he will.