President Trump pressed the Ukrainian president several times during a phone call in July to open an investigation into 2020 front-runner Joe Biden’s son.
In that discussion, which reportedly is the subject of an Intelligence Community whistleblower complaint, Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky roughly eight times to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in investigating Hunter Biden’s ties to an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.
“He told him that he should work with [Mr. Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know,” a source told the Wall Street Journal. This individual also said he did not believe Trump offered any sort of improper favor in exchange for agreeing to conduct an investigation.
House Democrats are now demanding the Trump administration hand over a whistleblower complaint, details about which are scarce, but reports say it centers on Trump’s communications with a foreign leader in which he made a “promise” and involves Ukraine. The acting director of national intelligence, who received the complaint from the Intelligence Community inspector general, has so far refused to comply.
Over the past few months, Giuliani has met with Ukrainian officials, encouraging them to investigate the employment of Hunter Biden as a board member in 2014, when Joe Biden was vice president, by natural gas firm Burisma Holdings. The elder Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not fire its top prosecutor, who had been accused of corruption and had been investigating the oligarch who owned the energy company, raising concerns about a possible conflict of interest.
Giuliani has said that his meeting last month in Madrid with Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Zelensky, was set up by the State Department. He also said he had no knowledge of the Trump administration’s review of $250 million in foreign aid pledged to Ukraine at the time of the meeting.
Following the revelation of the complaint and reports on his contents, the focus in Washington has turned to the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, an actor who was elected to office in May. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said this week that Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, gave him a “strong implication” the whistleblower’s complaint was relevant to one of his committee’s investigations, and his team was already looking into the Trump-Zelensky call as part of a sweeping, multicommittee inquiry into Trump’s and Giuliani’s role in “two politically-motivated investigations under the guise of anti-corruption activity.”
Three Democrat-led committees, including the intelligence panel, are examining whether Trump attempted to improperly pressure the Ukrainian government by withholding funds for its fight against Russian aggression unless they agree to assist the president’s reelection campaign by investigating Hunter Biden’s connections. The $250 million was released earlier this month.
The panels are additionally looking into whether there was an effort to seek the “prosecution of Ukrainians who provided key evidence against Mr. Trump’s convicted campaign manager Paul Manafort,” who is in prison for illegal lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian interests and financial fraud.
A senior adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister told the Daily Beast his country has not yet received an official request to investigate the Biden family and would look into the matter only if there is a formal appeal from Trump.
Pressed on the issue Friday, Trump told reporters his conversations with world leaders are “always appropriate,” adding, “It doesn’t matter what I discussed.” He also criticized the Intelligence Community official who submitted the complaint as “partisan,” even though he admitted he does not know the identity of the individual, and suggested, “Someone ought to look into Joe Biden.”
Giuliani, during a wild interview Thursday evening on CNN, said he has “no idea” what Trump told Zelensky over the phone and asserted that he acted independently in pressing the Ukrainian government to investigate matters related to Biden and Manafort. “I did what I did on my own,” he said.
Biden finally responded to Trump’s alleged comments on Friday, saying, “Not one single credible outlet has given any credibility to his assertion. Not one single one. And so I have no comment except the president should start to be president.”
VP @JoeBiden responds to suspicions that Trump asked Ukraine for information on Biden’s son Hunter:
“Not one single credible outlet has given any credibility to his assertion. Not one single one. And so I have no comment except the president should start to be president.”
— Marianna Sotomayor (@MariannaNBCNews) September 20, 2019
Next week, Trump is scheduled to meet Zelensky at the United Nations General Assembly, and Maguire is expected to testify before the House and Senate intelligence panels. In suggesting Trump or top aides are stonewalling the Intelligence Community from forwarding the complaint, which the inspector general deemed to be of “urgent concern,” Schiff threatened to take the matter to court. “We will look at whatever remedies we have,” Schiff told reporters on Thursday.
