Administration prepares to turn over whistleblower complaint to Congress by the end of the week
WASHINGTON—President Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to “look into” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son and said he would direct his personal lawyer and the attorney general to reach out to Mr. Zelensky to help him in a possible investigation, according to a document released by the White House designed to memorialize a July phone call between the leaders.
The document also revealed that Mr. Trump, before asking Ukraine to examine actions by Mr. Biden’s son, reminded Mr. Zelensky that the U.S. sends security aid to Ukraine. “I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine,” he said. “We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time.” He contrasted the U.S. aid with what European countries do to help Ukraine.
[Read the document detailing President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.]
According to the document released by the White House on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump didn’t make an explicit link on the call between the U.S. aid—which he had ordered a hold on a week earlier—and an investigation into Mr. Biden’s son. Mr. Zelensky responded that the president was “absolutely right” and that European countries were “not working as much as they should work for Ukraine.”
The call document, which the White House and President Trump have referred to as a transcript, isn’t verbatim and was based off the “notes and recollections” of Situation Room and National Security Council officials, the White House said.
Meanwhile, Justice Department officials disclosed Wednesday that concerns about the call being a violation of campaign-finance rules were referred to the department by the intelligence community’s inspector general, but officials concluded there was no violation.
The president on the call raised a discredited claim that his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been pressing for months: that Mr. Biden as vice president called for the ouster of Ukraine’s prosecutor general to protect his son, Hunter, who sat on the board of a company whose owner the prosecutor had investigated. The prosecutor was the target of widespread criticism from the U.S. and other countries and had in fact hampered the investigation into the younger Mr. Biden’s company, Burisma Group. Ukraine’s prosecutor general in May said he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden or his son.
“There’s a lot of 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,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it…it sounds horrible to me.”
He said Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr would call Mr. Zelensky and added: “I’m sure you will figure it out.” A Justice Department spokeswoman said the president never asked Mr. Barr to make the call nor did he ask the attorney general to investigate Mr. Biden. Mr. Barr also didn’t discuss the call or other matters related to Ukraine with Mr. Giuliani, she said.
Mr. Zelensky assured him that the new prosecutor general would “look into the situation,” and said that if Mr. Trump had any additional information to provide, it would be “very helpful for the investigation.”
Mr. Zelensky was the first person on the call to bring up Mr. Giuliani, after the president asked him to “do us a favor” and investigate matters involving Ukraine related to former special counsel Robert Mueller ’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Mr. Trump pointed to Mr. Mueller’s testimony before Congress a day earlier, which he said was “incompetent,” but added that “a lot” of the special counsel investigation had “started with Ukraine.
“Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible,” Mr. Trump said.