Transcript of Trump's call with Ukraine shows no link to military aid, refuting Democrats' charge

President Trump did not press Ukraine’s president for an investigation of Democratic frontrunner Joseph R. Biden and his son in return for a promise of military aid, according to a transcript of their July phone call released Wednesday by the Justice Department.

In the July 25 call, Mr. Trump did raise the Bidens with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the transcript shows. It involved the question of whether Mr. Biden had pressured Ukraine to stop an investigation in 2016 of a Ukrainian gas company that paid Hunter Biden $3 million.

“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 [William P. Barr] would be great,” Mr. Trump said on the call. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if
you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

Mr. Zelensky responded that the country’s new prosecutor would be loyal to him. “He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue,” he pledged to Mr. Trump.

They also talked about the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and the controversy over the Democratic National Committee servers hacked in 2016.
But there is no “quid pro quo” evident in the written account of the phone conversation.

House Democrats announced a formal impeachment inquiry Tuesday based on their suspicions that Mr. Trump tried to pressure the Ukrainian leader into investigating the Bidens by withholding $391 million in military aid last summer. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Mr. Trump had committed a “betrayal” of the Constitution.

The president and his team say Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, should be investigated for receiving $3 million from a Ukrainian energy company while his father was serving as vice president.