WHITE HOUSE RELEASES NOTES OF TRUMP’S UKRAINE CALL.
Help offered for Biden probe, call memo shows
U. S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday denied he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, after the White House released a rough transcript of the July call between the two that Democrats say confirms the need for an impeachment inquiry.
At the start of a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, Zelensky told reporters that Trump did not push him to investigate Biden.
“I think you read everything,” he said. “I think you read (the) text. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be involved to democratic, open elections, elections of U.S.A. … Nobody pushed me.”
At that point, Trump cut in. “In other words, no pressure,” he said.
The exchange followed the release of a document that showed Trump offering the help of the U. S. attorney general to investigate Biden and promising Zelensky a White House meeting after he said he would conduct such an inquiry.
The call begins with Trump congratulating Zelensky on his election victory, but quickly devolves into the president pressing for an investigation of his political rivals and endorsing an apparent conspiracy theory. He seems to suggest Hillary Clinton’s private email server is in Ukraine and asserts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation started with that country.
“I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it,” Trump says, according to the transcript.
He adds later: “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. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. … It sounds horrible to me.”
Zelensky replied that “my candidate” for the prosecutor job “will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.”
At the outset of the call, Trump also asks for Ukraine’s help in finding the location of the Democratic National Committee server that U. S. officials say was hacked by Russian intelligence in the run-up to the 2016 election.
“The server, they say Ukraine has it,” Trump says according to the transcript. “I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”
The transcript, in keeping with White House practice, is a memorandum of a telephone conversation and is not a verbatim account. The text reflects the notes and memories of officials in the Situation Room.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D- Calif., said the rough transcript proves Trump “has tried to make lawlessness a virtue in America and now is exporting it abroad.”
The July 25 call has been the subject of intense scrutiny since The Washington Post reported last week that a whistleblower had come forward with concerns about the matter.
The whistleblower’s complaint was to be released to the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
Trump has acknowledged publicly that he asked Zelensky to investigate Biden’s son, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that came under scrutiny by authorities there.
Pelosi said the notes of the call by the White House “confirms that the president engaged in behaviour that undermines the integrity of our elections, the dignity of the office he holds and our national security.”
She said she respects Trump’s responsibility to engage with foreign leaders.
But, she said, “It is not part of his job to use taxpayer money to shake down other countries for the benefit of his campaign. Either the president does not know the weight of his words or he does not care about ethics or his constitutional responsibilities.”
Pelosi also accused the Justice Department of “acting in a rogue fashion” and being “complicit in the president’s lawlessness.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D- Calif., said the rough transcript reveals “a classic mafia- like shakedown of a foreign leader.”
As Republican senators left a closed- door luncheon Wednesday, they were mostly supportive of the president and dismissive of the transcript, even as some lawmakers and their aides groused behind the scenes about the White House’s response.
There were scattered statements about whether Trump handled the call appropriately, but any sense of alarm was muted. “As a general rule, transcripts of phone conversations between heads of state should not be released. In this case, an exception had to be made,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-miss.