The latest Trump administration scandal that has consumed the mainstream media for the last 24 hours centers around the allegation that President Trump “repeatedly pressured” the president of Ukraine to investigate the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. While Trump’s critics are sounding the alarm over the allegedly scandalous call and “pressure” campaign, President Trump made clear in a comments Friday that he did nothing wrong and this is just “fake news” business as usual.
“The Radical Left Democrats and their Fake News Media partners, headed up again by Little Adam Schiff, and batting Zero for 21 against me, are at it again!” Trump tweeted Friday. “They think I may have had a ‘dicey’ conversation with a certain foreign leader based on a ‘highly partisan’ whistleblower[‘s] statement. Strange that with so many other people hearing or knowing of the perfectly fine and respectful conversation, that they would not have also come forward. Do you know the reason why they did not? Because there was nothing said wrong, it was pitch perfect!”
The tweets echo equally dismissive comments Trump made to the press Friday, stating that comments he made during his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were “totally appropriate,” and saying when pressed about asking him to investigate Biden’s son, “It doesn’t matter what I discussed.” Trump also suggested that “somebody ought to look into that.”
The Biden matter also involves the then-vice president pressuring Ukraine to oust a prosecutor general who investigated a gas company, Burisma Group, for whom his son, Hunter Biden, served as a board member. Biden says he pressed for the ouster of the prosecutor not to protect his son, but because he failed to adequately address the country’s corruption problems.
As detailed by The Daily Wire, the latest Trump scandal started with another anonymously sourced and rather vague report published by The Washington Post on Wednesday about a whistleblower making an unspecified major accusation about Trump’s conversation with a foreign leader. By Friday, The Wall Street Journal was reporting that “Trump repeatedly pressed Ukraine president to investigate Biden’s son.”
“President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on a probe, according to people familiar with the matter,” the Journal reported Friday.
“He told him that he should work with [Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know” if the allegations were true, the unnamed source told the Journal.
The Journal notes that the source said Trump did not mention a provision of foreign aid to Ukraine or any other quid pro quo for pursuing the investigation.
Giuliani has been making the media rounds to address the new scandal, and has generally added more fuel to fire. He told the press that he did meet with a top Ukrainian official in June and August to discuss the Biden investigation.
“After the July call between the two presidents, the Ukrainian government said Mr. Trump had congratulated the new president on his election and expressed hope that his government would push ahead with investigations and corruption probes that had stymied relations between the two countries,” the Journal reports.
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This article has been revised for clarity.