openpolitics.com

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.

Mr. Zelensky was receptive, telling the president that he was ready to “open a new page on cooperation in relations” between the two countries. He also told the president that one of his aides had spoken with Mr. Giuliani recently, and he added that he hoped to meet Mr. Giuliani if he traveled to Ukraine.

Mr. Giuliani in May scuttled a planned trip to Kiev to meet with Mr. Zelensky after news of it became public.

Mr. Trump on the call repeatedly praised Mr. Giuliani, calling him a “highly respected man” who “very much knows what’s happening.”

“If you could speak to him, that would be great,” Mr. Trump said.

During the call, Mr. Trump also asked Mr. Zelensky to do another favor for the U.S., appearing to reference a debunked conspiracy about the U.S.-based cybersecurity firm  CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., which conducted forensic analysis of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network after it was hacked in 2016.

Mr. Trump said: “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike…”.

CrowdStrike concluded the hack was carried out by Russian intelligence officers, a finding corroborated by U.S. intelligence agencies and former special counsel Robert Mueller. But Mr. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the conclusion of Russian involvement in the Democratic hacks, and said in an April 2017 interview that CrowdStrike’s findings may not be credible because the company is “Ukrainian-based,” which is false.

CrowdStrike didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lawmakers are continuing to investigate whether there was a link between the request that Ukraine investigate Mr. Biden and the administration’s decision to put a hold on nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine this summer. About a week before his call with Mr. Zelensky, the president directed his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to put a hold on the Ukraine funds, the Journal has reported.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump confirmed he had asked Mr. Mulvaney to do so, saying he was frustrated that Europe wasn’t spending enough to help Ukraine. The EU has provided more than €15 billion ($16.5 billion) in loans and assistance to Ukraine since 2014. Other administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, have said concerns about corruption in Ukraine were partly responsible for the hold on aid.

The transcript release comes a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would move ahead with an impeachment inquiry, after months of resisting such a move.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” said Mrs. Pelosi (D., Calif.), who has expressed concern about the political risks of impeachment. She cited the president’s own admissions that he had raised Mr. Biden in his call with Mr. Zelensky and that he had directed a hold on military aid to Ukraine.

The investigations on Capitol Hill will escalate in the coming days, when Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, is set to testify before the House Intelligence Committee about a whistleblower complaint that involves the president’s communications with foreign leaders, including with Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The White House is preparing to allow the complaint to be turned over to Congress by the end of the week, according to a person familiar with the matter.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) on Tuesday also asked the whistleblower to speak to the Intelligence Committee on a voluntary basis on Thursday. He said he would arrange a format that would ensure the whistleblower’s privacy. The White House will likely allow the whistleblower to testify.

The complaint came from a whistleblower in the intelligence community who said White House officials had expressed concern about the content of the call, but the whistleblower didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky, senior Justice Department officials said. The intelligence community’s inspector general said in a letter to the Director of National Intelligence that Mr. Trump’s comments during the call could be viewed as soliciting a foreign campaign contribution in violation of federal campaign finance laws.

The inspector general’s letter was referred in August to the Justice Department, where officials said they concluded within weeks that there was no such violation, relying largely on a record of the call. Officials, including those from the department’s public integrity section, reviewed the allegation and determined there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue a criminal probe, they said. They didn’t take into consideration that Mr. Trump was withholding aid to Ukraine when they analyzed whether Mr. Trump was committing a campaign-finance violation.

The whistleblower complaint was also referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the officials said.

The inspector general’s preliminary review of the complaint found “some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the [whistleblower] in favor of a rival political candidate,” but said the allegations nonetheless appeared credible.