President Trump used the power of his office to try to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election to investigate a political rival “for personal gain”, according to an explosive whistle-blower complaint released on Thursday after days of damning revelations about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

Attorney-General William P. Barr and the President’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani were central to the effort, the complaint said.

In addition, the complaint says that the whistleblower, an unidentified intelligence officer, learned from multiple American 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.”

“This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call,” the complaint said.

The whistleblower’s complaint was based on accounts from multiple White House officials who were “deeply disturbed” by what they heard on the call, the complaint said.

“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 whistleblower wrote in the complaint.

The complainant asserted that multiple officials said a subsequent meeting or phone call between Trump and Zelensky would depend on whether the Ukrainian President was willing to “play ball” on investigating former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr and his son, Hunter Biden, and other matters.

The whistleblower said the White House officials who relayed the details of the call to the whistleblower were “deeply disturbed”.

Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees and a group of senior lawmakers from both parties, including Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, were permitted to review the classified complaint on Wednesday, just hours after the White House released a reconstructed transcript of a July 25 call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. During the call, about the country’s need for more American financial aid, Trump urged Zelensky to pursue an investigation into Biden.

The unclassified version was released ahead of a House Intelligence Committee hearing where the acting director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire is scheduled to testify. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence provided lawmakers with an unclassified version of the whistle-blower complaint so that it could be discussed in the open hearing.

Though the reconstructed transcript of the call has been released, the complaint, filed in August by an intelligence official, contains more details than the phone call, including the details about White House officials who may have witnessed presidential misconduct and other actions.

“Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 re-election bid,” the complaint said.

House Democrats have said that Trump violated his oath of office when he pressured a foreign leader to investigate one of his political rivals.

The White House initially refused to provide Congress with the complaint or to reveal what was said on the call. After Democrats took the first steps to impeach Trump, the administration disclosed details of the call and shared the classified complaint with lawmakers.

The allegations it contained were “deeply disturbing” and “very credible,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday after reviewing the complaint.

Trump has dismissed the allegations that he acted improperly.