T he transcript of the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioning former Vice President Joe Biden and allegations of corruption was released today following an intelligence community whistleblower complaint centered on the conversation.
A whistleblower with knowledge of the phone call made a complaint to Trump-appointed Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who deemed the complaint “serious” and “urgent,” but acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire declined to release the contents of the whistleblower complaint to Congress after consulting with the Justice Department. This set off a firestorm on Capitol Hill, and lawmakers called for Trump to be impeached following claims that the president pressured Ukraine to investigate the 2020 Democratic presidential front-runner and his son Hunter Biden.
The former vice president bragged in 2018 that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t fire top prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani alleged for months that Biden wanted Shokin fired because Giuliani says Shokin undertook an investigation into Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma Holdings, which employed Biden’s son as a board member starting in 2014, reportedly paying him $50,000 a month.
Democrats and others countered the claims made by Giuliani and Trump’s allies by pointing out that the governments in the United States and many European countries saw Shokin as a hindrance to Ukraine’s anti-corruption investigations and called for his ouster. Ukraine removed Shokin in 2016.