- The White House on Wednesday released the bombshell phone call of President Donald Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine
- Trump urged Volodymyr Zelensky to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuiliani, and brought up former VP Joe Biden and his son Hunter
- Ukraine president Zelensky said he wanted to ‘drain the swamp’ and called Trump a ‘great teacher for all of us’
- Trump said there was ‘a lot of talk about Biden’s son’ and tried to connect Zelensky with both Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr
- He also appeared to reference the the DNC or Hillary Clinton’s server, asking Zelensky to ‘find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine’
- Zelensky said his aide had already met Giuliani and told Trump: ‘You have nobody but friends around us.’
- The call is part of a whistle-blower complaint to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community
- Both he and the acting Director of National Intelligence passed it to the DOJ for possible criminal investigation – but it declined to order one
- SCROLL DOWN FOR THE FULL DOCUMENT
The White House on Wednesday released the bombshell transcript of President Donald Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine where Trump urges his counterpart to investigate Joe Biden and work directly with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani – and even brings up the DNC’s hacked email server.
But the transcript does not show Trump tying the investigation to aid for Ukraine as he spoke to Volodymyr Zelensky, the quid pro quo which some reports had suggested it contained.
The Justice Department also revealed a series of new details about the whistle-blower complaint behind the unfolding scandal. Officials disclosed that:
- The acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, and the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, referred the whistle-blower complaint to the Department of Justice for possible criminal investigation into Trump’s actions;
- The Justice Department, led by Attorney General Bill Barr, has already declined to criminally investigate the call – effectively clearing the president.
In the call, the president mentions political rival Biden by name, seeks an inquiry into a company tied to Biden’s surviving son, Hunter, and predicts Ukraine’s economy will do ‘better and better’ – but does not explicitly tie the United States’ aid to the country to the investigation he demands.
He urges the president to contact Giuliani, who this summer called off a planned mission to Ukraine after bringing up a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden served on the board.
‘There is 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 says, according to the transcript.
Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he had directed the release of a ‘complete’ transcript of the July 25 phone call
Ftriends: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted a photo of himself and his wife Olena with President Trump and Melania Trump at a diplomatic reception Tuesday night
Ukraine links: Joe Biden made multiple trips there and demanded action on corruption; Hunter was on the board of a natural gas firm which faced money-laundering accusations
‘Biden went about bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… it sounds horrible to me,’ the president told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president assured Trump: ‘The next prosecutor .general will be 100 per cent my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start. As a new prosecutor in September.
‘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 of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation.’
Ukraine’s president Zelensky said he wanted to ‘drain the swamp’ and called Trump a ‘great teacher for all of us,’ according to the transcript.
Trump told his counterpart: ‘I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.’
‘Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great,’ Trump said.
Democrats were already planning to scour the transcript for any suggestion of a quid-pro-quo – which Trump has explicitly denied offering.
The transcript shows no such direct linkage – although Trump does appear to mention a variety of ways in which Ukraine might benefit from acceding to his requests.
He tells Zelensky ‘I would like you do us a favor’ when he asks him to find out what happened with the Democratic National Committee’s server. He appears to reference an unnamed oligarch when he says ‘I guess you have one of your wealthy people …’ without apparently finishing the thought.
Trump does not appear to mention any mention of $250 million in security aid to Ukraine that the president said he held up before making the call.
He does, however, say the U.S. does ‘a lot’ for Ukraine, and trashes Germany’s and the Europeans’ efforts.
‘I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about,’ Trump said.
He adds that German Chancellor Angela Merkel ‘doesn’t do anything.’ He said the U.S. ‘has been very, very good to Ukraine.’
He also trashes the Obama-nominated ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich, who stayed over into his own administration. She is a career diplomat and remains a State Department employee.
‘The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news,’ Trump said, and the people she was dealing with in Ukraine ‘were bad news.’
In response, Zelenksy tells Trump that the new prosecutor will be ‘100 per cent my person, my candidate’ and promises: ‘He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned’ – meaning the one affiliated with Hunter Biden.
Zelensky also bashes Yovanovich, prompting Trump to answer: ‘Well, she’s going to go through some things.’
He also appeared to reference the the DNC server which was hacked before the 2016 election, asking Zelensky to ‘find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine.’
He asked Zelensky ‘to do us a favor’ by investigating whether Ukraine is in possession of computer data linked to hacking of a Democratic National Committee server in 2016.
He mentioned Crowdstrike, a company that helped the Democratic National Committee manage its computer network when Russian agents penetrated it.
Trump has vented at his political rallies that the FBI in 2016 never made an effort to seize the server and analyze its contents.
‘I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it,’ Trump said in the July call with Zelensky.
‘I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.’
The only person to directly bring up U.S. security aid for Ukraine at a time it was being held up is Zelensky – who says Ukraine is ‘ready to continue to cooperate for next steps.’
Ukraine desperately wants the aid as it continues to clash with Russia following its 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea.
‘The United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation,’ Zelensky said, mentioning U.S. imposed sanctions that Trump resisted when Congress tightened them after his election.
‘I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense,’ Zelensky continues. ‘We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes,’ he said, mentioning Javelin missiles, a portable anti-tank munition.
Zelensky flattered Trump and told him on his last trip to New York he stayed at Trump Tower.
He assured Trump: ‘We will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation.’
The two men talked about meeting on Trump’s then-planned trip to Poland. Zelensky suggested a joint trip to Ukraine. ‘We can either take my plane and go to Ukraine or we can take your plane, which is probably much better than mine,’ Zelensky said.
The transcript became a political hot potato this week as Democrats clamored for its release with predictions that it would show Trump committing impeachable offenses.
They argue that Trump’s request for a new investigation into the Bidens was motivated by a desire to politically cripple the former vice president, who was then thought of as his main rival in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump released the call transcript the morning after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House was conducting a formal impeachment inquiry of the president.
READ THE FULL DOCUMENT
source:dailymail