The White House has released the transcript of the controversial July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he repeatedly suggests that 2020 Democrat Joe Biden should be investigated by Ukraine.
Biden boasted in 2018 that, as vice president, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t fire top prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani alleged for months that Biden wanted Shokin fired because Giuliani says Shokin undertook an investigation into Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma Holdings, which employed Biden’s son as a board member starting in 2014, reportedly paying him $50,000 a month.
The newly released transcript does not show any direct quid pro quo, but it does show that Trump wanted Zelensky to speak with Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr about a possible investigation into the Bidens. The Justice Department distanced itself from that on Wednesday.
“I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair,” Trump told Zelensky. “A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.”
Trump also said that “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.”
Trump told Ukraine’s president that “Rudy very much knows what’s happening” and said “if you could speak to him that would be great.”
“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it,” Trump told Ukraine’s president. “It sounds horrible to me.”
Democrats and others have countered the claims made by Giuliani and Trump’s allies by pointing out that the governments in the United States and many European countries saw Shokin as a hindrance to Ukraine’s anti-corruption investigations and called for his ouster, and Ukraine removed Shokin in 2016. Former Ukrainian and U.S. officials said the Burisma case was dormant before Shokin was fired, and Shokin’s successor, Yuri Lutsenko, has said there wasn’t evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
The Justice Department said Barr played no role in whatever Trump and Giuliani discussed with Ukrainian officials.
“The President has not spoken with the Attorney General about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former Vice President Biden or his son,” Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said. “The President has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine – on this or any other matter. The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine – on this or any other subject. Nor has the Attorney General discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.”
The conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian president took place just after special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony in front of Congress.
“As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine,” Trump said. “Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”
Trump told Zelensky that he’d like his help with issues surrounding Russian interference and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, while also hinting at claims made by Republicans that some people in Ukraine may have interfered on behalf of Clinton in 2016.
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” Trump said. “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it.”
Crowdstrike is the cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee hired to investigate the hacking of its emails in 2016, concluding that the cyberattacks were carried out by the Russian government. Mueller also concluded that Russia hacked the DNC.
A U.S. intelligence official made allegations of corruption in a whistleblower complaint centered around the conversation, prompting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to launch an “impeachment inquiry” on Tuesday.
The whistleblower complaint was deemed “serious” and “urgent” by Trump-appointed Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, but acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire declined to release the contents of the whistleblower complaint to Congress after consulting with the Justice Department. Maguire will testify before House and Senate intelligence committees on Thursday. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and others on Capitol Hill are now seeking to meet with the whistleblower in person.
On Saturday, Biden rejected the notion that he pressured the Ukrainian government on behalf of his son, and said, “I have never spoken with my son about his overseas business dealings.” But Hunter Biden told the New Yorker in July he and his father spoke about his business foray in Ukraine once.
Before the call transcript was released, Pelosi claimed that Trump’s actions represented a “betrayal” of his oath of office, the country’s national security, and the integrity of the nation’s elections. And she announced that the Democrats are “moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.”
Trump tweeted on Tuesday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got permission from Ukraine’s president to release the contents of the phone call in question and that he had “authorized the release tomorrow of the complete, fully declassified, and unredacted transcript of my phone conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine.”
“You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call,” Trump said. “No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!”
The Trump administration is also planning to release a document that shows the intelligence community inspector general found evidence that the whistleblower had a “political bias” in favor of a “rival candidate” of Trump.
In a letter to the whistleblower’s attorneys on Tuesday, the DNI’s general counsel, Jason Klitenic, said that “we have every reason to believe that your client — our [intelligence community] colleague — has acted in good faith and fully complied with the law.” Klitnec also noted that the whistleblower “has respected the confidential and privileged nature of the information” that he had provided to the intelligence community inspector general.
Trump has claimed that the “so-called whistleblower” had partisan motivations, but attorney Bradley Moss — who is a partner at the same law firm as whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid and has also worked with whistleblower attorney Andrew Bakaj — pushed back against attacks on the whistleblower by the president and his allies.
“What you’re seeing is a smear campaign against this whistleblower — and someone has to speak up,” Moss said.
Bakaj, Zaid, and Moss have criticized Trump in the past, especially related to how he has handled issues of national security, and Trump and his allies have begun scrutinizing the whistleblower attorneys too.
The Senate fast-tracked and unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution calling for the entire whistleblower complaint to be “immediately” handed over the the congressional intelligence committees, which might happen as early as Wednesday.
