WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump repeatedly prodded Ukraine’s new leader to work with lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the U.S. attorney general to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden, according to a rough transcript summarizing a July 25 call that was released Wednesday.
A five-page summary of the call detailed a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
It’s just one piece of an overall complaint made in mid-August by a whistleblower.
The complaint is central to the formal impeachment inquiry launched Tuesday by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The memo also shows the president’s lingering fixation on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump flippantly refers to the ex-FBI director as a “man named Robert Mueller” and says he turned in “a very poor performance.”
In addition, the memo 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 suggests that Ukraine may be in the possession of the email server, though it’s unclear what he’s referring to.
Trump also says he’d like to have his attorney general “call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”
Left: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as he meets Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi (not pictured) for bilateral talks during the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, August 26, 2019. Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters