Trump made unusual update to top-secret codeword system to protect his calls from leaks

President Donald Trump's Ukraine scandal isn't his only problem. In looking at the whistleblower report about the Ukraine calls, it was discovered Trump was using the "upgraded security of the National Security Council’s top-secret codeword system" to hide all of his calls with international leaders and possibly others.

According to Politico, the upgrades to Trump's system in 2018 added a whole new collection of documents, and it was an abuse of the system.

"If hiding political embarrassing material, rather than protecting national security secrets, was the motivation, experts and former officials said, it would be an abuse of the codeword system," the site reported. "While not necessarily an illegal act, it does run counter to an executive order signed by President Obama in 2009 that says information can’t be classified to 'conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error' or 'prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency,'" a former official said.

Another official explained that the new system also had the ability to check who was logging into the system to look at specific documents. It came after Trump claimed a conversation with a Mexican official said one thing while the Mexican officials said another. Someone released the transcript of the call, proving Trump was lying.

"Before the upgrade, the White House began restricting the distribution of the transcripts of the president’s calls with foreign leaders to a narrower group of officials," reported Politico. "Previously, the transcripts had been put on a shared drive that all NSC staffers had access to, which made it easier for leaks to happen, according to a former Trump White House official."

Read the full report at Politico.