President Donald Trump released the transcript of his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that took place on July 25 from 9:03 AM to 9:33 AM.
It shows that he asked Zelensky for a review on Vice President Joe Biden’s family dealings in Ukraine.
However, Trump did not threaten to withhold “military aid as part of a quid-pro-quo, as Democrats have suggested in pressing forward with impeachment.”
From Fox News:
It begins with the president congratulating Zelensky on his election victory, before Trump eventually broaches the subject former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.“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,” Trump said in the phone call. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it…It sounds horrible to me.”That refers to Joe Biden, while vice president, urging Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, while Shokin was investigating the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings — where Hunter Biden was on the board. Biden has maintained that corruption concerns prompted his intervention.
Zelensky told Trump Ukraine’s new prosecutor would look into the controversy surrounding Biden and his son Hunter Biden working with a Ukrainian company:
“He or she will look into the situation specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue, the issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and we will work on the investigation of the case.”The president told Zelensky he wanted his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General Bill Barr to get involved.“I will have Mr. Giuliani give you call and I’m also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom if it. I’m sure you will figure it out,” he said.
I see on Twitter people saying it implicates Trump, but it lacks the quid-pro-quo the Democrats latched onto as an excuse for an impeachment inquiry. Supposedly Trump threatened not to hand over $400 million of military aid to Ukraine.
Yet, in the transcript, Zelensky says the matter of Biden is also important to him:
Ukraine Call Transcript by Fox News on Scribd
Trump responded to the transcript during a meeting at the United Nations. From Mediaite:
“The president [of Ukraine] himself just came out with a statement saying there was absolutely no pressure put on him,” Trump claimed. “What I do want to see is I want to see other countries helping Ukraine also, not just us. As usual, the United States helps and nobody else is there. So I want to see other countries help.”“Just so you understand, it’s the single greatest witch hunt in American history, probably in history, but in American history. It’s a disgraceful thing,” he continued. “The letter was a great letter, meaning the letter revealing the call. That was done at the insistence of myself and other people that read it. It was a friendly letter. There was no pressure. The way you had that built up, that call, it was going to be the call from hell. It turned out to be a nothing call, other than a lot of people said I never knew you could be so nice.”“Part of the problem you have is you have the fake news, you have a lot of corrupt reporting. You have some very fine reporters and journalists, but you have a lot of corrupt reporters, a lot of corrupt journalists,” the President declared. “If you noticed, the stock market went up when they saw the nonsense. All of a sudden the stock market went down very substantially yesterday when they saw a charge. After they read the charge, the stock market went up very substantially. We have created the greatest economy in the history of our country, the greatest economy in the world. Had my opponent won, China would right now be the number one economy by far.”
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