|
|
|
Trump admits discussing political rival with Ukraine's president
|
|
|
|
Top Stories |
|
|
|
|
IANS | 23 Sep, 2019
The US president confirmed that
he discussed former Vice President Joe Biden with Ukraine's president
during a July call, a conversation that has prompted Democrats to accuse
the president of pressuring a foreign leader to investigate a political
opponent, according to an EFE/Down Jones report.
Scrutiny over
Trump's interactions with Ukraine has ricocheted across Washington and
onto the campaign trail, spurring new calls for impeachment proceedings
to begin, after The Wall Street Journal reported that the president
repeatedly pressured new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to
investigate the former US vice president's anticorruption efforts in the
country while his son Hunter Biden was also working there.
Trump
defended his call with Zelensky as routine while again suggesting
Biden, a potential Trump opponent in 2020, and his son should be
investigated - though neither have been accused of wrongdoing over their
work in Ukraine.
"The conversation I had was largely
congratulatory, was largely corruption - all of the corruption taking
place, was largely the fact that we don't want our people like Vice
President Biden and his son [contributing] to the corruption already in
the Ukraine," Trump said on Sunday, Efe news reported.
On Friday, Trump had declined to say what the two leaders had discussed, saying, "It doesn't matter."
The
examination of Trump's dealings with his Ukrainian counterpart is
likely to escalate this week as Congress continues to probe a
whistleblower complaint concerning Trump, an aspect of which involves
the Ukraine call, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The
Journal reported last week that Trump pressed the Ukrainian president
in the call to work with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on an
inquiry into Biden and his son.
Giuliani has suggested Biden's
pressure on Ukraine was motivated by a Ukrainian prosecutor general's
probe of a gas company for which his son Hunter was a director.
Biden,
as vice president, did call for the ouster of the former Ukrainian
prosecutor general as part of a broader effort by anticorruption
investigators, European diplomats, US allies and the US State Department
to overhaul a prosecutor's office widely viewed as corrupt.
A Ukrainian official said this year that he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe or Hunter Biden.
Biden,
a leading Democratic contender for the presidential nomination, said on
Saturday that he had never discussed with his son any overseas business
dealings and called for Trump to be investigated.
"He's using the abuse of power and every element of the presidency to try to do something to smear me," Biden said.
As
more details emerge about the July call between Trump and Zelenky,
Democrats in Congress and those running for president pressed anew to
begin impeachment proceedings.
"Congress failed to act and now
Donald Trump has shown that he believes he is above the law," Sen.
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democratic presidential candidate,
said Saturday in Iowa. "He has solicited another foreign government to
attack our election system. It is time for us to call out this illegal
behaviour and start impeachment proceedings right now."
Rep. Adam
Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the Intelligence Committee and a close ally
of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), said that impeachment "may be the
only remedy" if Trump was found to have courted foreign intervention in
the 2020 election.
"We may very well have crossed the Rubicon here," Schiff said in an interview on CNN.
"This
would be, I think, the most profound violation of the presidential oath
of office during this presidency, which says a lot, but perhaps during
just about any presidency," he added, while calling on the Republican
president to release both a transcript of the Ukraine call and the
whistleblower complaint.
Pelosi, however, has been reluctant to
open an impeachment inquiry. In a letter to House colleagues Sunday,
Pelosi appeared to inch closer to such an inquiry as she called for the
director of national intelligence to turn over the whistleblower
complaint to the House Intelligence Committee.
"If the
Administration persists in blocking this whistleblower from disclosing
to Congress a serious possible breach of constitutional duties by the
President, they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness
which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation," she wrote.
Republicans in Congress were largely quiet about Trump's call with Zelensky, although some began to convey concern on Sunday.
"If
the President asked or pressured Ukraine's president to investigate his
political rival, either directly or through his personal attorney, it
would be troubling in the extreme," Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said on
Twitter. "Critical for the facts to come out."
Romney didn't specify which responses may be necessary or call for a release of the July call's transcript, as Democrats have.
Speaking
to NBC, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), said it was "not appropriate for any
candidate for federal office, certainly including a sitting president,
to ask for assistance from a foreign country."
Toomey quickly added: "But I don't know that's what happened here."
The
whistleblower complaint was submitted last month to the inspector
general of the intelligence community, who deemed it a significant
matter of "urgent concern."
Federal whistleblowing law generally
dictates that such a complaint should be sent to the congressional
intelligence committees, but Joseph Maguire, the acting director of
national intelligence, has refused to do so.
Maguire is to appear
this week before both the Senate and House intelligence committees,
where he will be asked about his decision not to share the complaint.
Amid
the latest revelations over Ukraine, Democrats and Republicans in
Congress have been frustrated over the Trump administration's delay of
$250 million in aid for the country to help it ward off pressure from
Russia. The administration released the aid to Ukraine this month.
Trump didn't raise the matter of aid to Ukraine in the call with Zelensky, the Journal reported.
Trump said on Sunday that he hadn't offered any quid pro quo to Ukraine.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Customs Exchange Rates |
Currency |
Import |
Export |
US Dollar
|
66.20
|
64.50 |
UK Pound
|
87.50
|
84.65 |
Euro
|
78.25
|
75.65 |
Japanese
Yen |
58.85 |
56.85 |
As on 13 Aug, 2022 |
|
|
Daily Poll |
|
|
PM Modi's recent US visit to redefine India-US bilateral relations |
|
|
|
|
|
Commented Stories |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|