The Department of Justice has released an unredacted transcript of a phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The text was taken down by note takers. The call took place in July from the White House Situation Room. It shows no effort by President Trump to pressure Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, in exchange for military aid. This action was falsely alleged by a whistleblower and pushed Democrats on Capitol Hill into an impeachment inquiry.
"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 [Barr] would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it...It sounds horrible to me," Trump said.
"I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case," Zelensky replied.
"I'm sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything. You have a lot of assets. It's a great country. I have many Ukrainian friends, their [they're] incredible people," Trump said.
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The New York Times reported earlier this year that Biden bragged about getting the prosecutor in question fired under a threat of withholding $1 billion in loan assets for the country. At the time of the firing, that prosecutor was looking into Hunter Biden.
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.
You can read their entire conversation below.
Unclassified Call Record - President Trump and Ukraine by Katie Pavlich on Scribd
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