The White House on Wednesday released a transcript of President Trump’s phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, in which the two discuss corruption in the country and how Joe Biden “stopped” an investigation into his son, Hunter.
In the conversation, Trump mentions that a Ukrainian prosecutor “was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair.”
He then suggested that President Volodymyr Zelensky get in contact with Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, and Attorney General William Barr.
“The other thing,” Trump said, according to the transcript of the July 25 chat, which lasted 30 minutes. “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.
“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you ·can look into it … It sounds horrible to me,” he said.
Zelensky assured Trump that he would look into the situation.
“The next prosecutor general will be 100 percent my person, my candidate who will be approved by the Parliament,” he told Trump.
“He or she will look into the situation. … The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case,” Zelensky said.
Trump then tells Zelensky that he will have Giuliani and the attorney general reach out to him, adding “we will get to the bottom of it.”
“I’m sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor,” Trump told Zelensky. “So good luck with everything.”
The transcript says it is a “memorandum of a telephone conversation” produced by White House Situation Room notetakers.
“TELCON is not a verbatim transcript of a discussion,” it said.
Joe Biden, as vice president, told Ukraine in 2016 that the US was considering canceling $1 billion in loan guarantees unless it got rid of top prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had been accused of slow-walking a number of corruption probes.
But Shokin, who was voted out of office by Ukraine’s parliament, was looking into Burisma Holding, an energy company that gave Hunter Biden a seat on its board.
Burisma paid Hunter as much as $50,000 a month.
Shokin’s replacement, Yuri Lutsenko, continued the investigation into Burisma and concluded there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden or his son.
News reports, based on an intelligence community whistleblower’s account of the phone call, said Trump stalled nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to pressure Zelensky to open the probe into the Bidens.
Trump has admitted talking to Zelensky about the Bidens, but said he held up the aid because he believed that European countries were not paying their fare share of Ukraine’s defense, denying there was a quid pro quo.
The aid package, approved by Congress, was released to Ukraine on Sept. 12.
Trump, hours before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement of an impeachment inquiry, wrote in a tweet that he “authorized the release tomorrow of the complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript of my phone conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine.”
The president said “you will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call.”
The White House said it will also release the whistleblower’s complaint this week.
An unidentified member of the intelligence community filed the complaint on Aug. 12 with Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, flagging a “promise” Trump made to a foreign leader.
Atkinson, labeling the complaint of “urgent concern,” turned it over to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.
But after consulting with the Department of Justice, Maguire refused to turn over the report to Congress.