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“They want to have a transcript of the other call, the second call, and I’m willing to provide that,” the President told reporters Saturday on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, before boarding Air Force One.
Trump has denied doing anything improper.
“You’ll read the second call, and you’ll tell me if there’s anything wrong with it,” he said. The call took place months before the July conversation at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
Trump also claimed that he doesn’t care if congressional impeachment proceedings are behind closed doors or in public because, he said, they shouldn’t be happening at all.
“There shouldn’t be anything. There shouldn’t be impeachment hearings,” he said, also calling the testimony so far “all third-hand knowledge.”
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden in Ukraine.
A letter from the GOP
In a letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Republicans listed the anonymous whistleblower, former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, former US special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker, high-ranking State Department official David Hale and Tim Morrison, the top Russia and Europe adviser on the National Security Council. Saturday marked Republicans’ deadline to submit the request.
The GOP also requested Nellie Ohr, a former Fusion GPS contractor, and Alexandra Chalupa, a former Democratic National Committee staffer, signaling that Republicans still want to focus on unsubstantiated claims related to the 2016 presidential campaign.
Schiff said on Saturday that the Intelligence Committee “is evaluating the Minority’s witness requests and will give due consideration to witnesses within the scope of the impeachment inquiry, as voted on by the House.”
2,677 pages of impeachment inquiry testimony
The testimony details how top US officials were alarmed that Trump had outsourced Ukraine policy to his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who had pushed top Ukraine officials to publicly announce an investigation into the Bidens and to pursue a conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 elections to help Democrats. Giuliani’s efforts, with support from the President, led to the ouster of America’s top diplomat in Ukraine, who stood in his way, while enlisting emissaries who have since been indicted.
Moreover, the testimony shows a President detached from the integral role Ukraine plays in US policy against Russia — but also animated in his agitation toward Ukraine. And the testimony of at least one witness links Trump to the decision to withhold nearly $400 million in security aid for Ukraine until that country announced it would pursue the investigations into his political rivals.
CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Manu Raju, Jeremy Herb, Marshall Cohen, Phil Mattingly and Kate Sullivan contributed to this story.
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