Trump hints at Biden mention
US President Donald Trump suggested that he mentioned former VicePresident Joe Biden and his son Hunter in a phone call with the leader of Ukraine, as Democrats ramp up their calls for accountability amid questions about whether Trump sought to use his influence to seek re-election help from a foreign country.
In an exchange with reporters, Trump was asked about his July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The Washington Post reported last week that Trump pressured Zelenskiy to investigate a company with ties to Hunter Biden, and the call between Trump and Zelenskiy is the subject of an extraordinary whistleblower complaint. “The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place, was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice-President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine,” Trump told reporters. “And Ukraine, Ukraine’s got a lot of problems.”
Trump has denied that he has done anything untoward in his conversations with world leaders and had previously declined to say whether he spoke to Zelenskiy about Biden, who is leading in polls for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
The developments have ratcheted up pressure on congressional Democrats to pursue impeachment proceedings against Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who thus far has rebuffed the impeachment calls from rank-andfile party members, signalled a shift in her position in a letter to all House members. The Trump Administration, she said, “is endangering our national security” by blocking the release of the whistleblower’s full complaint. “If the Administration persists in blocking this whistleblower from disclosing to Congress a serious possible breach of constitutional duties by the president, they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said that while he has been reluctant to pursue impeachment, it may be the “only remedy” to the “evil” represented by Trump’s alleged effort to pressure Ukraine into providing dirt on Biden by threatening to withhold US military aid.