President Donald Trump pushed for the Ukranian president to work with Attorney General William Barr to investigate Joe Biden, a newly released memorandum of the call shows.
The transcript of the July 25 call was released on Wednesday by the White House.
During the call, Trump told President Volodymyr Zelensky he should speak with Barr and Rudy Giuliani about Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Ukranian gas company.
“There’s a lot 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 said, according to the memorandum, adding: “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”
Barr was not aware that Trump floated the idea of him and Zelensky talking, according to the New York Times. Zelensky said his new prosecutor would look into the case and asked for more information.
The release of the memorandum comes the day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced an official impeachment inquiry into Trump in light of reports about Trump’s phone call.
The White House noted that the transcript of the call is not verbatim and is a memorandum of the phone call. On Tuesday, Trump pledged to release it.
It does not show Trump mentioning the freezing of military aid to Ukraine—which the Washington Post reported the president did ahead of his phone call with Zelensky.
Ahead of the release, Trump called on Democrats to “apologize” to him.
“Will the Democrats apologize after seeing what was said on the call with the Ukrainian President? They should, a perfect call – got them by surprise!” the president tweeted on Wednesday morning.
Will the Democrats apologize after seeing what was said on the call with the Ukrainian President? They should, a perfect call – got them by surprise!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2019
You can read all of the memorandum here.
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