President Donald Trump repeatedly pressured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s son during a July phone call in which he urged him eight times to work with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on a probe, a new report said Friday.
“He told him that he should work with [Mr. Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know” whether allegations against Biden’s son Hunter Biden were true or not, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources.
Trump did not mention withholding foreign aid to Ukraine or any other quid-pro-quo in exchange for probing the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s son.
Giuliani, acting as Trump’s lawyer, met in June and August with top Ukrainian officials about an investigation.
The former Gotham mayor has charged that Biden as vice president worked to protect a Ukrainian gas company whose board included his son.
Biden in 2016 reportedly threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless Ukraine removed a prosecutor who was probing the gas company.
The prosecutor was later voted out of office amid a corruption probe, and a Ukrainian official earlier this year said he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son.
After the July call between the two presidents, the Ukrainian government said Trump had congratulated the new president and hoped that his government would pursue with investigations and corruption probes that had soured relations between the two countries.
Trump earlier Friday denounced reports about a whistleblower’s complaint that he had an inappropriate conversation with a foreign leader.
“It’s a ridiculous story. It’s a partisan whistleblower. I have had conversations with many leaders. They’re always appropriate, always appropriate, at the highest level, always appropriate,” the president said from the White House during an appearance with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
“It’s just another political hack job. That’s all it is.”
Trump bristled when asked if he had discussed Joe Biden on a call to Zelensky.
“It doesn’t matter what I discuss, but I will say this. Somebody ought to look into Joe Biden’s statement, because it was disgraceful where he talked about billions of dollars that he’s not giving to a certain country unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the case,” he continued, referring to Biden’s 2016 threat.
“So somebody ought to look into that, and you wouldn’t, because he’s a Democrat, and the fake news doesn’t look into things like that. It’s a disgrace,” he said.
Giuliani has worked for months to pressure Ukraine to launch the probe, telling The Journal he met with an official from the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office in June in Paris, and met with Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Zelensky in Madrid in August.
Giuliani told the paper earlier this month that Yermak assured him the Ukrainian government would “get to the bottom” of the Biden matter.
The August meeting came weeks before the Trump administration began reviewing the status of $250 million in foreign aid to Ukraine, which the administration released this month.
Giuliani said he wasn’t aware of the issue with the funds to Ukraine at the time of the meeting.
The Ukraine issue made headlines following the whistleblower’s complaint that Trump had had a troubling conversation with a foreign leader, subsequently identified as Zelensky.
Trump was expected to meet with Zelensky in person for the first time next week, during the annual United Nations General Assembly.
Intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint was troubling enough to be considered a matter of “urgent concern,” a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.
But Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire refused to share details about the complaint with lawmakers, a move that Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested Thursday was ordered by the White House.
Atkinson appeared before Schiff’s committee Thursday, but did not divulge details of the complaint.
“It’s been very hard for the director of national intelligence to explain why he is the first ever in that position to withhold an urgent whistleblower complaint from Congress,” Schiff told reporters.
In an interview Thursday, Giuliani said he wasn’t aware whether the whistleblower complaint related to Ukraine.
But in a Twitter post later that evening, he defended the possibility that Trump had urged Zelensky to investigate his potential campaign opponent.
“A President telling a Pres-elect of a well known corrupt country he better investigate corruption that affects US is doing his job,” Giuliani wrote.
Meanwhile, Trump’s allies also attacked the reports — with GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina saying the whistleblower should be behind bars.
“I think anyone would know that you can’t snitch on the president of the United States and think you’re going to get away with that. This person’s going to prison,” he told reporters.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a different take.
“The Administration’s blocking of Acting DNI Joseph Maguire from providing Congress with the whistleblower complaint violates the federal statute, which unequivocally states that the DNI ‘shall’ provide Congress this information,” she said in a statement.
“The President and Acting DNI’s stonewalling must end immediately.”
Trump said he didn’t know the identity of the whistleblower, but in his White House remarks accused the person of partisanship.
“I just hear it’s a partisan person, meaning it comes out from another party. But I don’t have any idea. But I can say that it was a totally appropriate conversation. It was actually a beautiful conversation,” he said.
Earlier Friday, he attacked the reports on Twitter.
“The Radical Left Democrats and their Fake News Media partners, headed up again by Little Adam Schiff, and batting Zero for 21 against me, are at it again!” he wrote in the first of a pair of tweets, referring to Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating the issue.
“They think I may have had a ‘dicey’ conversation with a certain foreign leader based on a ‘highly partisan’ whistleblowers statement,” the commander-in-chief continued.
“Strange that with so many other people hearing or knowing of the perfectly fine and respectful conversation, that they would not have also come forward. Do you know the reason why they did not? Because there was nothing said wrong, it was pitch perfect!”
Biden later put out a statement responding to the WSJ report. “If these reports are true, then there is truly no bottom to President Trump’s willingness to abuse his power and abase our country,” he said. “This behavior is particularly abhorrent because it exploits the foreign policy of our country and undermines our national security for political purposes.”
He also called on Trump to “immediately release the transcript of the call in question, so that the American people can judge for themselves.”