The White House on Wednesday released a transcript of a telephone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – the basis for Democrats’ newly announced impeachment inquiry – and it reveals nothing to support House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim he demanded Ukraine “help him in his political campaign at the expense of our national security.”
Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the transcript shows Democrats “have again leapt to conclusions before looking at the facts.”
“There was no quid pro quo and nothing to justify the clamor House Democrats caused yesterday,” he said.
The congressman said the “real danger here is that Democrats keep using baseless accusations in hopes of crippling a successful presidency.”
Democrats similarly fueled the claims that the Trump campaign in 2016 colluded with Russia to win the election. But special counsel Robert Mueller found that didn’t happen.
Democrats now are charging that Trump threatened to withhold American aid to Ukraine unless its government investigated Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who was getting $50,000 a month for sitting on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company.
Joe Biden is on video boasting that as vice president he ordered Ukraine to fire a prosecutor that was investigating the company for possible corruption or the U.S. would withhold promised aid.
He boasted that he gave Ukraine and ultimatum and the prosecutor was fired.
According to newly released transcript, Trump told the Ukrainian president: “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.”
In fact, American authorities also have expressed an interest in the benefits Hunter Biden obtained from Ukraine and also China because his father was the vice president at the time.
The controversy over the phone call was raised by an unidentified whistleblower who filed a complaint after being told about the phone conversation. The inspector general who reviewed it found the whistleblower held a bias against the president.
The Washington Examiner explained: “Biden boasted in 2018 that, as vice president, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t fire top prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani alleged for months that Biden wanted Shokin fired because Giuliani says Shokin undertook an investigation into Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma Holdings, which employed Biden’s son as a board member starting in 2014, reportedly paying him $50,000 a month.”
Joe Biden has claimed he never spoke to his son about his overseas business dealings, in contradiction to what Hunter Biden has said.
The transcript was released after Trump obtained permission from Ukraine.
“You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!”
The Examiner said the evidence of the whistleblower’s “political bias” also will be released.
Fox News reported the document “does not show Trump leveraging military aid as part of a quid-pro-quo, as Democrats have suggested in pressing forward with impeachment.”
However, Democrats have said they also want access to the full whistleblower report.
The complaint may soon be turned over, Fox News reported, as the administration weighs how to handle the document.
Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager, added, “Because of their pure hatred for President Trump, desperate Democrats and the salivating media already had determined their mission: take out the president. The fact is that the president wants to fight the corruption in Washington, where the Bidens, the Clintons, and other career politicians have abused their power for personal gain for decades.
“The facts prove the president did nothing wrong. This is just another hoax from Democrats and the media, contributing to the landslide re-election of President Trump in 2020.”
