Trump admits he raised Biden with Ukraine leader
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that he raised former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son in a summer phone call with Ukraine’s new leader, as Democrats pressed for investigations into whether Trump improperly used his office to try to dig up damaging information about a political rival.
Trump told reporters that the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was “congratulatory” and focused on corruption in the East European nation. In his remarks to reporters, he then raised Biden as an example, although there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son, Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian gas company.
“It 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 said as he left the White House for a trip to Texas.
Biden, who is among the front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination, accused Trump of making a baseless political smear.
The matter has sparked a fierce debate over whether Trump misused his office for political gain and whether his administration is withholding from Congress critical information about his actions. The incident is part of a whistleblower complaint, but the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to share details with lawmakers, citing presidential privilege.
Democratic House
“It 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.” – PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has resisted calls for impeachment for other alleged Trump transgressions, said Sunday that unless Maguire provides information to Congress, administration officials “will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation.”
Another impeachment holdout so far, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “we may very well have crossed the Rubicon here.”
A person familiar with the matter has told The Associated Press that Trump urged Zelenskiy to investigate Hunter Biden. The person wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue
publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
“Ukraine’s got a lot of problems,” Trump said at the White House. “The new president is saying that he’s going to be able to rid the country of corruption and I said that would be a great thing. We had a great conversation. We had a conversation on many things.”
Trump insisted he said “absolutely nothing wrong” to Zelenskiy. He did not answer directly when asked whether he would release a transcript of the conversation to the public.
After arriving in Texas, Trump told reporters he will look into releasing details or a transcript of the call, but stressed that foreign leaders should feel free to speak frankly with an American president without fear that the details of their conversations will later be disclosed. Trump said if Ukraine released its own transcript it would be same as his version of the call.
Trump and Zelenskiy plan to meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly later this week.