Transcript of Trump-Zelenskiy call released
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday released a memorandum of an April telephone conversation he had with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine that differed from a summary of the call released by the White House months ago.
The memorandum of the call, which took place after Zelenskiy won a landside presidential election, shows the two men praising each other’s political acumen and predicting an era of warm relations between the United States and Ukraine. There is no mention of Trump’s determination to have Ukraine’s government investigate his political rivals — one subject of a July phone call that has become the focus of an impeachment inquiry in Congress.
But a White House readout of the call in April offers a different account. In that summary, provided to reporters shortly after the call took place, the administration said that Trump promised to work with Zelenskiy “to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity and root out corruption.”
A White House spokesman, Hogan Gidley, gave no explanation for the discrepancy but said “it is standard operating procedure for the National Security Council to provide readouts of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders. This one was prepared by the NSC’s Ukraine expert,” an apparent reference to Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, who has given damaging testimony about Trump in a closed-door deposition and is scheduled to testify in public next week.
Vindman declined to comment. A person familiar with White House preparations did not know why language about corruption was included in the news release about the April phone call but said that talking points given to Trump before the call specifically mentioned corruption and the president chose not to discuss the issue with Zelenskiy.
On April 21, Zelenskiy, an unseasoned politician who promised to rid the country of its endemic corruption, had won a stunning victory. When he spoke with Trump that day, he said he admired Trump’s outsider victory in 2016 and studied some of Trump’s tactics.
In the memorandum of the call released on Friday, Trump said, “I have no doubt you will be a fantastic president,” invited him to the White House and heaped praise on Ukraine.
The rough transcript released Friday was of a telephone call three months before a July conversation Trump had with Zelenskiy. During that call, Trump appeared to condition U.S. military aid to Ukraine on whether Zelenskiy agreed to pursue investigations into the Biden family and he claimed that Ukrainians tried to undermine the Trump campaign in 2016.