WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump repeatedly prodded Ukraine’s new leader to work with Rudy Giuliani and the U.S. attorney general to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden. That’s according to a five-page memo summarizing the July 25 call.
- The White House released the memo Wednesday
The conversation between Trump and Ukraine’s president is just one piece of a whistleblower’s complaint made in mid-August. The complaint is central to the impeachment inquiry announced Tuesday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The memo summarizing President Trump’s call with the Ukraine leader shows the president’s lingering fixation on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump refers to the ex-FBI director as a “man named Robert Mueller” and says he turned in “a very poor performance.”
The memo also shows that the president made reference to the private cybersecurity firm that investigated Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee servers during the 2016 election.
Trump told the Ukrainian president “If you can look into it ... it sounds horrible to me.” Trump was talking about unsubstantiated allegations that Biden sought to interfere with a Ukrainian prosecutor’s investigation of his son, Hunter.
Trump also confirmed that he ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before the call. The president says he did nothing wrong.
The memo was released following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s order for an impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s behavior. According to the Constitution, impeachable offenses include treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. What constitutes these crimes has almost always been up for debate.
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