Trump Asks Ukraine’s Leader to ‘Do Us a Favor’ and Also Urges Inquiry of Biden – The New York Times

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Over the next several days, the president offered a series of shifting and at times contradictory explanations and justifications for his conversation with Mr. Zelensky and his decision this summer to freeze the $391 million in aid to Ukraine. It was unblocked after officials at the Office of Management and Budget raised concerns that the money would be impounded, making it harder to spend in the future, and after two Republican senators — Rob Portman of Ohio and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — raised concerns to the White House.

Mr. Trump made no direct or indirect mentions of aid to Ukraine during the July 25 call, according to the White House memorandum. But Mr. Trump does repeatedly mention Mr. Biden, saying at one point that the former vice president had bragged about stopping a prosecution involving the company that his son worked for — a charge for which there is no public evidence.

According to the reconstructed call, Mr. Zelensky responded that Ukraine has a good prosecutor now.

In New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly, which opened Monday, Mr. Trump at one point repeated his assertion that the conversation with Mr. Zelensky was about corruption. But he later said he had frozen the aid because European countries were not committing their fair share toward defending Ukraine against Russian aggression.

Mr. Trump and his allies inside the White House initially refused to allow details about the call to be released to lawmakers or disclosed publicly. They argued that doing so would set a dangerous precedent and would discourage frank conversations between presidents and foreign leaders.

Faced with mounting demands for disclosure, including by Senate Republicans, Mr. Trump relented on Tuesday.

But Mr. Trump’s advisers, even as the president gave in, said they believed that Democrats had gone too far and that the record of the phone call — and the substance of the whistle-blower’s complaint — would prove not to be damaging to Mr. Trump.

Meanwhile, the president made it clear on Twitter that he planned to aggressively fight Democratic efforts to impeach him. He lashed out at the allegations of impropriety regarding the call, saying they were nothing more than “more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage.” And he denounced what he called “crazy” partisanship by his opponents.

“PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT,” he tweeted Tuesday evening.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/us/politics/ukraine-transcript-trump.html

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