President Trump announced Tuesday afternoon he will release a July call transcript with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It will be an attempt to clear the air after Trump was accused by an anonymous whistleblower, without a first hand account of the conversation, of urging the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. In exchange, Ukraine would receive military aid.
....You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2019
Since the allegation was made, a number of new Democrats have called for Trump's impeachment. Notably, Democrat Senator Dick Durbin, second only to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, also jumped on board.
Trump has repeatedly denied any wrong doing and has accused the Bidens of corruption. The Ukrainian government has also issued a statement denying any pressuring from Trump took place.
“I know what the conversation was about and I think there was no pressure,” Prystaiko said during a media interview. “This conversation was long, friendly, and it touched on many questions, sometimes requiring serious answers.”
The White House has been debating for at least 24-hours whether the transcript should be released. UPDATE: It will not be redacted.
Meanwhile, here's the backstory on Biden's connection to Ukraine. It turns out, he's the one who actually pressured the government to fire a prosecutor looking into his son's business dealings in exchange for loan guarantees.
It was a foreign policy role Joseph R. Biden Jr. enthusiastically embraced during his vice presidency: browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its act. And one of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.
The pressure campaign worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.
Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.
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This story has been updated with additional information.
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