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The White House released a call transcript yesterday confirming President Donald Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to probe his political rival Joe Biden, a day after Democrats seized on the explosive allegation to launch an impeachment process.
“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,” Trump told Volodymyr Zelensky in the July 25 call.
As Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden and other Western leaders pressured Ukraine to get rid of the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, because he was seen as not tough enough on corruption.
“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it,” Trump said.
The five-page document, a summary of the call rather than a word-for-word record was released as Trump was preparing to meet Zelensky on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Democrats, who opened formal impeachment proceedings against the president on Tuesday, are investigating whether he pressured a foreign government to look into a political opponent, and if he used a $400 million aid package as leverage.
There was no mention of the money in the summary.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who ran against Trump in the 2016 presidential election, said in an interview exerpt released Tuesday that she is “favour of moving toward impeachment” and that “we are in a crisis.” “I did not come to that decision easily or quickly, but this is an emergency as I see it,” Clinton told PEOPLE.
“This latest behaviour around Ukraine, trying to enlist the president of Ukraine in a plot to undermine former Vice President Biden or lose the military aid he needs to defend against Trump’s friend, Vladimir Putin, if that’s not an impeachable offense, I don’t know what is.”
