The Trump administration has released details of a phone conversation in July that has triggered a US impeachment inquiry against the president.
According to the notes, Donald Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to look into corruption claims involving the son of Joe Biden, Mr Trump’s possible rival in next year’s presidential election.
Concerns about the call were initially raised by a whistleblower.
The Democrats accused Mr Trump of seeking foreign help to smear a rival.
Under the US constitution, a president can be impeached for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours” – a procedure that can lead to removal from office.
In July, Mr Trump froze military aid to Ukraine but he has insisted that this was not used to put pressure on the new government in Kiev.
Mr Trump discusses with his newly elected Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, the 2016 removal of a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, according to notes of their 25 July telephone conversation released by the White House.
The US president is quoted as saying in the call: “I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair.
“A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.”
He continues: “The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution [of Mr Biden’s son] and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the [US] Attorney General would be great.
“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”
Mr Zelensky says in response: “We will take care of that and we will work on the investigation of the case.”
Thanking Mr Trump, Mr Zelensky says he stayed in Trump Tower in New York City during a previous visit to the US.
During the call, the US president also asks Mr Zelensky to work with US Attorney General William Barr and Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, to look into the matter, according to the notes.
The Department of Justice said on Wednesday that Mr Trump had not spoken with the attorney general about having Ukraine investigate Mr Biden, and Mr Barr had not communicated with Ukraine.
BBC
