WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump repeatedly prodded Ukraine’s new leader to work with lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the U.S. attorney general to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden, according to a rough transcript summarizing a July 25 call that was released Wednesday.
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A five-page summary of the call detailed a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. It’s just one piece of an overall complaint made in mid-August by a whistleblower. The complaint is central to the formal impeachment inquiry launched Tuesday by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Here’s a look at what the partial transcript tells us — and what it doesn’t.
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What We Know: Trump told the Ukrainian president, “If you can look into it … it sounds horrible to me,” referring to unsubstantiated allegations that Biden sought to interfere with a Ukrainian prosecutor’s investigation of his son Hunter, who had been hired by a gas company in that country.
Trump also confirmed that he ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before the call.
The Republican president has denied any wrongdoing.
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What We Don’t Know: The rough transcript is not a full account of what was said on the call between Trump and Zelenskiy — meaning more details might yet emerge. Congress has also not seen the full whistleblower’s complaint, which is believed to be based on more than just the call.
In the meantime, the impeachment probe focuses partly on whether Trump abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government to undermine Biden and help his own reelection effort. Whether Trump’s comments in the partial transcript rise to that will ultimately be up to the Democrat-controlled House, which can eventually vote to move forward with impeachment proceedings.
If the CALL is no big deal, then why are top Republicans having a stroke and running for the Bunker?
Asking a foreign head of state to dig up dirt on a political opponent is the definition of treachery, collusion and criminal behavior, all to help Trump win an election. Its not about Obama, Hillary or Biden now. Trump is in trouble. He did this.
GOP to Biden: Release transcripts of your calls with Ukrainian and Chinese leaders
The Republican National Committee presented a challenge to Joe Biden on Tuesday, after the Democratic presidential candidate called for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
Earlier in the day, the president announced that he would release the full transcript of a call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, following an anonymous whistleblower’s allegations of impropriety during the conversation.
RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel then called on the former vice president to release the transcripts of his own conversations with Ukrainian and Chinese leaders.
McDaniel issued a statement, saying:
Once again, Joe Biden has shown he is just as extreme as the rest of the 2020 Democrats who are desperate to bring President Trump down. Instead of backing a baseless impeachment effort, Biden should be answering for the only scandal that exists: Why a corrupt Ukrainian company paid his son $50,000 a month to lobby the Obama-Biden administration, and why Biden threatened the Ukrainians if they failed to fire a prosecutor investigating the company.
Now that the President has authorized the release of the transcript of his call with President Zelensky, we call on Biden to release the transcripts of his calls as Vice President with Ukrainian and Chinese leaders while his son was conducting shady business deals in those countries.
Why are they not investigating Biden for trying to interfere in an investigation on his son?
As a matter of fact, why not investigate the whole previous administration for all sorts of wrongdoing? Oh, wait! I forgot! Because we’re not allowed to criticize Obama or Hillary for anything as they are perfect and can do no wrong.
Interesting that for 30-40 years, Trump said exactly the same things he says now on different issues and as long as he was “one of them” they kissed the ground he walked on. The minute he decided to run as a Republican, all of a sudden he’s evil and anything that comes out of his mouth is the most terrible thing in the world (even though he’s said it many times before), no matter what he says, just that it’s HIM that said it.
A very appropriate comment about the summary transcript appearing on Twitter:
“This is like telling your girlfriend you’re not cheating on her and then releasing the sex tape to prove it.”
I mean really…praising the Ukrainian prosecutor who was discredited by all of Europe as massively corrupt, making repeated charges against the Bidens without any evidence at all, and after two earlier investigations there found nothing amiss, and asking as a “favor” for the Ukrainians to contact AG Barr to coordinate an investigation of Joe Biden…and last week Ukrainian foreign ministry officials saying they felt they were being dragged into an American political fight. Only the Fuhrerprincip as followed by devout Trumpies wouldn’t see an issue here.
No evidence against Biden?! Only his own bragging words! Wow, talk about low IQ!!!
Funny to read uneducated Jewish kids, Pontificating. It’s not Purim.
More lies by the fake news media propagandists, there is no more details to the transcript this is it, all that maybe missing is a couple words lost in either translation or wasn’t heard, but the deranged loser dems will push this idiotic conspiracy about there being missing whole paragraphs because there is nothing here that is a problem all the President asked was a favor to look into what connections there are with ukraine and the Russian collusion hoax later after that Biden was brought up in the context of the prosecuter (as Trump wanted to be sure there would be a good prosecuter to look into Ukrainians part in the Russian collusion hoax) he had fired to protect his son.