WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that he mentioned former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden's son in a summer phone call with Ukraine's new leader, as Democrats pressed for investigations into whether Trump improperly used his office to try to dig up damaging information about a political rival.
Trump told reporters that the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was "congratulatory" and focused on corruption in the East European nation. In his remarks to reporters, Trump then raised Biden as an example, although there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
"It was largely the fact that we don't want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine," Trump said as he left the White House for a trip to Texas.
Biden, who is among the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, accused Trump of making a baseless political smear.
The matter has sparked a debate over whether Trump misused his office for political gain and whether his administration is withholding from Congress critical information about his actions. The incident is part of a whistleblower complaint, but the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to share details with lawmakers, citing presidential privilege.
A person familiar with the matter said Trump urged Zelenskiy to investigate Hunter Biden. The person wasn't authorized to discuss the issue publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
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"Ukraine's got a lot of problems," Trump said at the White House. "The new president is saying that he's going to be able to rid the country of corruption, and I said that would be a great thing. We had a great conversation. We had a conversation on many things."
Hunter Biden was hired by the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings in April 2014, two months after Ukraine's Russia-friendly president was ousted by protesters and as Joe Biden was heavily involved in U.S. efforts to support the new pro-Western government and its pledge to fight corruption. The hiring of the younger Biden immediately raised concerns that the Ukrainian firm, whose owner was a political ally of the ousted president, was seeking to gain influence with the Barack Obama administration.
Two years later, Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor general, who was accused by many in Ukraine and in the West of being soft on corruption. Trump has claimed that the prosecutor, who had led an investigation into Burisma's owner, "was after" Hunter Biden and that the vice president was trying to protect his son. There is no evidence of this.
Trump insisted he said "absolutely nothing wrong" in the call to Zelenskiy. He did not answer directly when asked whether he would release a transcript of the conversation to the public.
After arriving in Texas, Trump told reporters that he will look into releasing details or a transcript of the call, but he stressed that foreign leaders should feel free to speak frankly with an American president without fear that the details of their conversations will later be disclosed. Trump said that if Ukraine released its own transcript, it would be the same as his version of the call.
Trump and Zelenskiy plan to meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly later this week.
The president has described the whistleblower as "partisan" but has acknowledged not knowing the identity of the intelligence official who lodged a formal complaint against him with the inspector general for the intelligence community.
The complaint was based on a series of events, including the July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy, according to two people familiar with the matter. They were not authorized to discuss the issue by name and were granted anonymity.
Michael Atkinson, the U.S. government's intelligence inspector general, has described the whistleblower's Aug. 12 complaint as "serious" and "urgent," but he has not been allowed to turn over the complaint to Congress.
Maguire, the acting intelligence director, has been subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee and is expected to testify publicly Thursday. Maguire and Atkinson also are expected to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week.
LAWMAKERS WEIGH IN
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has resisted calls for the impeachment of Trump, said in a letter to all House members Sunday that unless Maguire provides information to Congress, administration officials "will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation."
The Trump administration, she said, "is endangering our national security" by blocking the release of the whistleblower's full complaint.
Another Democratic holdout on the impeachment issue, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union that "we may very well have crossed the Rubicon here."
"I have been very reluctant to go down the path of impeachment. ... This would be an extraordinary remedy of last resort, not first resort," Schiff said. "But if the president is essentially withholding military aid at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit that is providing dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign, then that may be the only remedy that is coequal to the evil that that conduct represents."
Joe Biden said in Iowa on Saturday that "Trump deserves to be investigated" for "trying to intimidate a foreign leader, if that's what happened." Biden said Trump was motivated by politics "because he knows I'll beat him like a drum."
Trump's apparent confirmation that he mentioned Biden on the call with Zelenskiy came as his allies denied that the president had pressed for an investigation.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said there is "no direct evidence" that Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden or his family, adding the allegation is "based on hearsay reports."
"I just frankly can't imagine why people have lost their minds so much over these daily reports of one thing or another that seem to consume everybody's attention in the news coverage," Cornyn told reporters ahead of Trump's event in Houston.
On NBC News' Meet the Press, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin repeatedly declined to say whether it was appropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival. Mnuchin suggested that Trump did not pressure Zelenskiy.
"You're speculating that the president pressured. I don't have any reason to believe that the president pressured ... in any way," Mnuchin said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urged the Justice Department to investigate the "Biden-Ukraine connection."
"We have looked at all things Russia and Trump, his family, everything about his family, every transaction between the Trump campaign and Russia," Graham said on Fox News Channel's Sunday Morning Futures.
Now is the time, he said, to know "what relationships, if any, did the Biden world have to the Ukraine."
Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press; and by Felicia Sonmez, Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, Colby Itkowitz, Matt Zapotosky, Jonathan O'Connell and Rachael Bade of The Washington Post.
A Section on 09/23/2019