Donald Trump’s Call With Ukrainian Leader, One Day After Robert Mueller’s Congressional Testimony, Shows the President Is a Brazen Criminal

James Risen
Career criminal Donald Trump just barely avoided prosecution earlier this year when special counsel Robert Mueller pulled his punches and refused to indict the president for either obstruction of justice or campaign finance violations in connection with the Trump-Russia investigation. Mueller’s decision not to indict Trump came despite overwhelming evidence in Mueller’s own final report that the president of the United States was guilty of a crime.

Most people who survive that kind of legal threat would lie low, at least for a while, and try to get back to some level of normalcy. But Trump is a habitual criminal, and his reaction to escaping Mueller’s investigation was to go on yet another crime spree.

In fact, Trump has been acting like a bank robber who beat one rap because of a technicality, and so decides to rob every bank in sight.

In the Trump-Russia inquiry, Mueller was able to prove that the Russian government intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win. But he never could prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that Trump or the people around him had colluded with Moscow in its election interference. Mueller did show that Trump campaign officials met with Russians in an effort to gather dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and that Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice in trying to make the whole Russian case go away.

But Mueller decided that he couldn’t prove that, by asking for opposition research from foreigners, the Trump campaign had violated the campaign finance law that bans accepting things of value from foreigners.

Mueller also built a conclusive case that Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice, based on a series of actions seeking to derail the Russia investigation. But Mueller decided that, since the Justice Department has a long-standing legal opinion arguing that a sitting president can’t be indicted, he wouldn’t charge Trump with obstruction.

In the end, Mueller didn’t indict Trump for anything, and Congress decided not to try to impeach Trump in connection with the Russia probe. On July 24, Mueller testified before Congress about his investigation and final report. After his testimony, the special counsel quietly exited the scene, having let Trump off the hook.

The president was a free man.

So what did Trump do with his newfound freedom?

The very next day — on July 25 — he was at it again, this time with Ukraine.
Trump got on the phone that day with the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and repeatedly sought his help in an attempt to damage Trump’s political rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. This time, there was no question, as there had been in the Russia case, about whether Trump directly sought the help of a foreign power to help him win an election. A summary of the call released by the White House on Wednesday proves Trump did exactly that.

The summary is based on notes taken by White House staffers who were listening in on the telephone conversation between Zelensky and Trump. The notes are not an exact transcript, and may soften or omit the most egregious statements by Trump.

But what is in the memorandum is bad enough. It shows that Trump repeatedly asked Zelensky to help him go after Biden. Trump asked the Ukrainian president to work with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and Attorney General William Barr to help them manufacture lies about Biden and his son Hunter’s involvement with a Ukrainian company.

Trump acts like a mob boss on the phone call. He demands Zelensky’s help and then observes that Ukraine’s economy will soon improve.

“I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it,” Trump said, according to the summary. “I’m sure you will figure it out. … Your economy is going to get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, noted Wednesday just how much Trump’s language on the call sounded like it was straight out of the mafia playbook.

“The transcript of the call reads like a classic mob shakedown,” Schiff wrote on Twitter. “I have a favor to ask – Investigate my opponent – My people will be in touch. Nice country you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to her.”
On Thursday morning, after weeks of contentious back and forth, a complaint from a government whistleblower about Trump’s efforts to force the Ukrainian government to damage Biden was made public. The complaint shows that the phone call was just one part of a larger campaign by Trump and those around him to use the presidency for his personal political gain.

“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” the complaint states. Trump “sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid,” the whistleblower wrote. “I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government’s efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.”

For months, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resisted calls to impeach Trump over the Russia investigation and other abuses of power and criminal activity. Pelosi worried that trying to impeach Trump would endanger House Democrats in competitive swing districts, and that any articles of impeachment would fail in the Republican-controlled Senate. Even if the House found grounds to impeach, Pelosi’s thinking went, Trump would remain in power.

The anti-climactic outcome of the Mueller probe proved to be the biggest obstacle. By concluding that he couldn’t prove collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, Mueller undercut the best argument for impeachment and convinced Pelosi that it wasn’t the right time to push for it.

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But the Ukraine case has suddenly put impeachment back on the table. That’s because Trump’s effort to get the Ukrainian president to help him destroy his Democratic rival appears to be a clear abuse of the power of the presidency. In this case, Trump is damned by his own words. And the Ukraine case has a very simple narrative that is relatively easy for both Congress and the public to understand: Trump called a foreign leader and sought his help to damage a political rival.

Given the obvious set of facts in the Ukraine case, it would have been difficult for Pelosi to continue to avoid impeachment. To do so would have required turning a blind eye to what may be the most blatant criminal activity Trump has engaged in since taking office.

If Trump isn’t called to account for this, he would rightly believe he can get away with anything.

Trump offered Ukrainian president Justice Dept. help in an investigation of Biden, memo shows

By Devlin Barrett ,Matt Zapotosky ,Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey

The Washington Post September 25 at 8:32 PM

President Trump repeatedly urged the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden, one of his chief political rivals, and offered to enlist the U.S. attorney general in that effort while dangling the possibility of inviting the foreign leader to the White House, according to a rough transcript of the call released Wednesday.

The July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky raised alarms among some intelligence officials, leading in August to a secret whistleblower complaint and a Justice Department referral to determine whether the president’s conduct amounted to a violation of a campaign finance law that bars foreign contributions to U.S. politicians.

[Official readout: President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky]

Prosecutors reviewed the rough transcript and last week declined to investigate, concluding that the president had not violated campaign laws, senior Justice Department officials said Wednesday.

The document touched off a wide spectrum of reactions on Capitol Hill, where Democrats accused Trump of violating his oath of office by soliciting political payback from a foreign leader, having only a day earlier announced they have launched a formal impeachment inquiry of the president. Republicans defended the president and lobbed counteraccusations at Biden.

Trump continued to insist he did nothing wrong, and Zelensky, seated beside him during an awkward joint appearance at the United Nations in New York, described their July phone call as “normal,” saying, “I’m sorry but I don’t want to be involved to democratic open elections of U.S.A.”

The drumbeat of revelations about the Trump-Zelensky call is likely to continue this week. After the White House allowed some lawmakers Wednesday to review the whistleblower’s complaint, Democrats signaled they were increasingly convinced that the president’s behavior justified their drive for impeachment.

“He copped to asking a foreign power to help him in his election,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said. “That’s impeachable.”

[Cracks emerge among Senate Republicans over Trump urging Ukrainian leader to investigate Biden]

In keeping with White House practice, the memo is not a verbatim account. A cautionary note on the document warns that the text reflects the notes and memories of officials in the Situation Room and that a number of factors, including accents and translations, “can affect the accuracy of the record.”

The phone call began with Trump congratulating Zelensky on his election victory, and Zelensky effusively praised Trump in return, according to the White House memo.

Trump said the United States “has been very, very good to Ukraine,” and Zelensky replied by agreeing “1,000 percent.” The Ukrainian president went on to suggest his country may soon buy more antitank missiles from the United States. “We are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes,” Zelensky said.

Trump replied: “I would like you to do us a favor because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.” He then asked for help in finding the Democratic National Committee computer server that U.S. 

officials say was hacked by Russian intelligence in the run-up to the 2016 election. Trump also called special counsel Robert S. Mueller III “incompetent” for his performance a day earlier while testifying to Congress about his investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

“The server, they say Ukraine has it,” Trump says according to the memo. “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”

 

[Giuliani pursued shadow Ukraine agenda as key foreign policy officials were sidelined]

Trump repeatedly said Zelensky should work with Attorney General William P. Barr or Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Giuliani had separately pressed Ukrainian officials for a Biden inquiry.

“I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it,” Trump said, according to the White House memo.

As the half-hour conversation went on, Trump’s requests of Zelensky shifted to a different topic: investigating the Bidens.

“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,” Trump said, according to the memo. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. … It sounds horrible to me.”

Zelensky replied, according to the White House memo, that “my candidate” for the prosecutor job “will look into the situation.” After he noted he stayed at Trump Tower on his last visit to New York City, Trump invited him for a White House meeting — something the Ukrainian leader had wanted.

“Whenever you would like to come to the White House, feel free to call,” Trump says, according to the White House’s rough transcript.

Since Zelensky’s election in April, Ukraine had urgently sought a meeting for the new president at the White House, a sit-down to demonstrate Washington’s backing as it fights a long-simmering war with Russian-backed separatists. U.S. officials and members of the Trump administration wanted the meeting to go ahead, but Trump personally rejected efforts to set it up, The Washington Post reported last week.

The White House has not yet set a date for an Oval Office meeting.

[Justice Dept. rejected investigation of Trump phone call just weeks after it began examining the matter]

Although the Justice Department concluded the call did not violate campaign finance law, Democrats said the president’s conduct endangered national security. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said the call “reads like a classic mob shakedown.”

At a news conference later in New York, Trump savaged Schiff, Democrats and the media.

“It’s all a hoax, folks. It’s all a big hoax,” the president said. “When you look at the information, it’s a joke. Impeachment for that? When you have a wonderful meeting or a wonderful phone conversation.”

Trump denied any wrongdoing and suggested the Biden family deserved to be investigated for possible corruption, making unsubstantiated allegations they’ve taken millions of dollars out of China. He insisted his hands were clean.

“I didn’t do it, I didn’t threaten anyone,” the president said. “No push, no pressure, no nothing.”

Not all Republicans agreed. Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) said the matter “remains troubling in the extreme. It’s deeply troubling.”

On Wednesday afternoon, select lawmakers were allowed to read classified versions of the whistleblower’s complaint. Officials are preparing to declassify a version of it and make it public later this week, according to people familiar with the discussions.

White House officials said the call memo does not show the president seeking any quid pro quo to kneecap a political rival because the president did not tie his requests to aid from the U.S. government.

While political fights surrounding the phone call have raged for the last 10 days, government officials at a host of agencies have been privately dealing with the matter for more than a month.

Senior Justice Department officials said the director of national intelligence referred concerns about the call to the Justice Department in late August, after the intelligence community inspector general found that it was a possible violation of campaign finance laws. Days later, the inspector general referred the matter to the FBI.

Career prosecutors and officials in the Justice Department’s criminal division reviewed the rough transcript, which they obtained voluntarily from the White House, and determined the facts “could not make” the appropriate basis for an investigation, a senior Justice Department official said Wednesday. The final decision was made by Brian Benczkowski, who leads the Justice Department’s criminal division. As part of their reasoning, Justice Department lawyers determined that help with a government investigation could not be quantified as “a thing of value” under the law, officials said.

Their primary source for reaching that conclusion was the memo, according to the officials. While prosecutors did gather information about how the White House memorializes presidential calls with foreign heads of state, they did not interview other White House officials because they had not formally opened an investigation. Justice Department officials still do not know who the whistleblower is, officials said Wednesday.

In a statement, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said the Justice Department’s criminal division “reviewed the official record of the call and determined, based on the facts and applicable law, that there was no campaign finance violation and that no further action was warranted.”

“All relevant components of the Department agreed with this legal conclusion, and the Department has concluded the matter,” Kupec said.

Kupec also said Trump had never spoken with Barr “about having Ukraine investigate anything related to former vice president Biden or his son,” nor had Barr talked about “anything related to Ukraine” with Giuliani.

She noted, though, that U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is exploring the origins of the FBI’s probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, was “exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.”

Trump ordered the memo released following days of mounting pressure from Congress, and a new surge of Democrats who favor impeachment. The president’s decision followed reports that he pressed Zelensky to investigate Biden, considered a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump in 2020, and his son, Hunter Biden.

White House officials said there were discussions for several days about releasing details of the call, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo objecting to its release on the grounds that doing so would make it harder for Trump to speak frankly with foreign leaders, and senior Justice Department officials urging it be made public to quell the growing debate over Trump’s conduct.

Trump has acknowledged publicly that he asked Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that came under scrutiny by authorities there. Hunter Biden was not accused of any wrongdoing in the investigation. As vice president, Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, who Biden and other Western officials said was not sufficiently pursuing corruption cases. At the time, the Ukrainians’ investigation was dormant, according to former Ukrainian and U.S. officials.

[Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress]

Initially, the parameters of the whistleblower allegations were mysterious. Although whistleblower complaints to the intelligence community inspector general are often forwarded to the intelligence committees in Congress, the Justice Department determined this one should not be provided to lawmakers for their review.

Justice Department officials released their legal reasoning for doing so Wednesday, asserting that because the matter did not concern the “funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence community” matter — but instead was an allegation of possible criminal conduct by the commander in chief — it should be more properly handled as a criminal referral.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel noted the inspector general had found “some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate.”

Lawmakers have raised concerns about Trump’s directive to freeze nearly $400 million in military assistance for Ukraine in the days leading up the phone call with Zelensky.

[Trump ordered hold on military aid days before calling Ukrainian president]

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced she was launching a formal impeachment inquiry, saying “the actions of the Trump presidency have revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

The rapidly escalating confrontation between the White House and Congress comes just months after Trump freed himself from the cloud of the investigation led by Mueller. Now, he is back in the crosshairs of a resurgent impeachment effort over a fresh allegation of election season misconduct.

One senior White House official said that while the call summary was “not entirely helpful for our side,” it also showed there was not an explicit quid pro quo — which could be a crime. “Everyone is going to see in that transcript what they want to see,” this person said, adding there were robust discussions about whether it would help or hurt Trump.

Nancy Pelosi formally announced an impeachment inquiry into President Trump by the House.

What's in a (Trump) Straw?