Trump Suggests He Discussed Biden With Ukraine’s Zelenskiy

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump appeared to acknowledge on Sunday that he had discussed former Vice President Joe Biden in a July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president that is the subject of a congressional investigation.

Trump, speaking to reporters Sunday near Houston, also said he’d consider releasing a partial transcript of the call, though he added he didn’t like the idea because U.S. presidents and foreign counterparts should be free to have candid confidential conversations.

“I’m going to talk about it,” the president said, referring to calls by Democrats to publish the transcript. “But you have to be a little bit shy about doing that. People don’t like that and I don’t like the concept of it.”

Earlier in the day, Trump said the conversation he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “was largely congratulatory” but also about “all of the corruption taking place.”

“It was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine,” Trump told reporters as departed the White House for events in Texas and Ohio on Sunday.

He later expanded his attack, alleging that Biden as vice president withheld “billions of dollars” in aid from Ukraine to pressure the country into dropping an investigation into a company connected to Biden’s family. Asked at the Texas stop whether he raised Biden’s or his son’s name in the call with Zelenskiy, Trump said: “Well, I don’t even want to mention it, but certainly I’d have every right to.”

Former President Barack Obama’s administration, led by Biden -- along with other Western nations -- pressured Ukraine in 2016 to fire then-prosecutor general Viktor Shokin on grounds of corruption. The country’s parliament voted to remove Shokin from office.

In May, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general at the time said he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son, Hunter Biden, who once sat on the board of one of the country’s biggest gas companies. Vitaliy Kasko, a prosecutor who pursued a case against the gas company’s owner, told Bloomberg in May that there had been no U.S. pressure to close the case.

Whistle-Blower Mystery

The president said that a mysterious intelligence whistle-blower raised “false alarms” about his interactions with a foreign leader and said he wouldn’t object to his attorney Rudy Giuliani testifying to Congress about the Ukraine affair.

“You can’t have people doing false alarms like this,” Trump said of the whistle-blower, who has not been identified. He added that he’d have “no problem” with Giuliani speaking to House committees that are investigating allegations the president and his lawyer pressured Zelenskiy to re-open

In a July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy, Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to investigate Biden’s son Hunter, according to a person familiar with the call. Trump defended the call on Sunday.

“I said nothing wrong, it was perfect. I assume many people are on the line. I know that before I make the call,” Trump told reporters as he departed for events ahead of the United Nations General Assembly next week. “What wasn’t perfect was the horrible thing Joe Biden said.”

The Washington Post has reported that the whistle-blower’s complaint concerns Trump’s interactions with Zelenskiy. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said in an interview with a Ukrainian news outlet, Hromadske, on Saturday that “Trump did not pressure Zelenskiy.”

Biden Riposte

Biden revisited the issue on Saturday while campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Trump’s doing this because he knows I will beat him like a drum,” Biden said. “Why is he on the phone with a foreign leader trying to intimidate a foreign leader if that’s what happened, that appears what happened.”

Biden repeated his call for Trump to release the transcript of the Zelenskiy phone call. Revelations about Trump’s interactions with Zelenskiy have led some congressional Democrats to turn up the heat on their leadership to begin impeachment proceedings against the president.

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said on ABC’s “This Week” that transcripts of private conversations between world leaders are not released very often and “there’s no evidence that that would be appropriate here at this point.”

Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, on Sunday called for the whistle-blower “to come forward.”

“Republicans who claim to be national security experts need to demand that the whistle-blower present himself or herself before Congress,” Murphy said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“If we do have the evidence from this whistle-blower that the president indeed did try to bully a foreign power into affecting our elections, then we have to do something about it,” he said.

Trump Family

Trump’s focus on Biden’s interactions with Ukraine invites scrutiny of his own children’s business dealings while he’s been in office, a subject that his surrogates have difficulty addressing.

In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was asked why it’s acceptable for the Trump children to do business all over the world after he questioned the business dealings of Biden’s son in Ukraine.

“I don’t really want to go into more of these details,” Mnuchin replied.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a Trump ally, called for the Justice Department to investigate Biden and “all things Ukraine.”

“I’m hoping the Department of Justice will look at the Biden-Ukraine connection like we looked at the Trump-Russia connection,” Graham said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

--With assistance from Billy House and Mark Niquette.

To contact the reporters on this story: Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.net;Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Tony Czuczka

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.