{"id":231923,"date":"2019-09-22T19:10:34","date_gmt":"2019-09-22T23:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=231923"},"modified":"2019-09-22T19:10:34","modified_gmt":"2019-09-22T23:10:34","slug":"trump-suggests-he-raised-biden-with-ukraines-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/09\/22\/trump-suggests-he-raised-biden-with-ukraines-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump suggests he raised Biden with Ukraine’s president"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
In his remarks to reporters, he then raised Biden as an example, although there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. (File Photo<\/a>: Joe Biden\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that he raised former Vice-President Joe Biden and Biden’s son in a summer phone call with Ukraine’s new leader, as Democrats pressed for investigations into whether Trump improperly used his office to try to dig up damaging information about a political rival.<\/p>\n

Trump told reporters that the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was \u201ccongratulatory\u201d and focused on corruption in the East European nation. In his remarks to reporters, he then raised Biden as an example, although there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice-President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine,\u201d Trump said as he left the White House for a trip to Texas.<\/p>\n

Biden, who is among the front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination, accused Trump of making a baseless political smear.<\/p>\n

The matter has sparked a fierce debate over whether Trump misused his office for political gain and whether his administration is withholding from Congress critical information about his actions. The incident is part of a whistleblower complaint, but the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to share details with lawmakers, citing presidential privilege.<\/p>\n

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has resisted calls for impeachment for other alleged Trump transgressions, said Sunday that unless Maguire provides information to Congress, administration officials \u201cwill be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another impeachment holdout so far, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday on CNN’s \u201cState of the Union\u201d that \u201cwe may very well have crossed the Rubicon here.\u201d<\/p>\n

A person familiar with the matter has told The Associated Press that Trump urged Zelenskiy to investigate Hunter Biden. The person wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

\u201cUkraine’s got a lot of problems,\u201d Trump said at the White House. \u201cThe new president is saying that he’s going to be able to rid the country of corruption and I said that would be a great thing. We had a great conversation. We had a conversation on many things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunter Biden was hired by the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings in April 2014, two months after Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president was ousted by protesters and as his father was heavily involved in U.S. efforts to support the new pro-Western government and its pledge to fight corruption. The hiring of the younger Biden immediately raised concerns that the Ukrainian firm, whose owner was a political ally of the ousted president, was seeking to gain influence with the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

Two years later, Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor general, who was accused by many in Ukraine and in the West of being soft on corruption. Trump has claimed that the prosecutor, who had led an investigation into Burisma’s owner, \u201cwas after\u201d Hunter Biden and the vice-president was trying to protect his son. There is no evidence of this.<\/p>\n

Trump insisted he said \u201cabsolutely nothing wrong\u201d in the call to Zelenskiy. He did not answer directly when asked whether he would release a transcript of the conversation to the public.<\/p>\n

After arriving in Texas , Trump told reporters he will look into releasing details or a transcript of the call, but stressed that foreign leaders should feel free to speak frankly with an American president without fear that the details of their conversations will later be disclosed. Trump said if Ukraine released its own transcript it would be the same as his version of the call.<\/p>\n

Trump and Zelenskiy plan to meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly later this week.<\/p>\n

The president has described the whistleblower as \u201cpartisan\u201d but has acknowledged not knowing the identity of the intelligence official who lodged a formal complaint against him with the inspector general for the intelligence community.<\/p>\n

The complaint was based on a series of events, including the July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy, according to two people familiar with the matter. They were not authorized to discuss the issue by name and were granted anonymity.<\/p>\n

Biden said in Iowa on Saturday that \u201cTrump deserves to be investigated\u201d for \u201ctrying to intimidate a foreign leader, if that’s what happened.\u201d Biden said Trump was motivated by politics \u201cbecause he knows I’ll beat him like a drum.\u201d<\/p>\n

A leading Republican senator urged the Justice Department to investigate the \u201cBiden-Ukraine connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have looked at all things Russia and Trump, his family, everything about his family, every transaction between the Trump campaign and Russia,\u201d Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Fox News Channel’s \u201cSunday Morning Futures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now is the time, he said, to know \u201cwhat relationships, if any, did Biden world have to the Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Atkinson, the U.S. government’s intelligence inspector general, has described the whistleblower’s Aug. 12 complaint as \u201cserious\u201d and \u201curgent,\u201d but he has not been allowed to turn over the complaint to Congress.<\/p>\n

Maguire, the acting intelligence director, has been subpoenaed by Schiff’s committee and is expected to testify publicly on Thursday. Maguire and Atkinson also are expected to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that he raised former Vice-President Joe Biden and Biden’s son in a summer …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":231936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-darlene-superville","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231937,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231923\/revisions\/231937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}