New Trump-Ukraine Call Transcript Raises More Questions

Evan Vucci/AP

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Minutes before the start of the House’s second public impeachment hearing, the White House released the rough transcript of President Donald Trump’s April phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the newly elected president of Ukraine. The release of that conversation—which took place three months before the now infamous July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Zelensky to do him a “favor” by investigating Trump’s political enemies—appears to be intended by the White House to help Trump’s case. Instead, it raises new questions about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into aiding his personal political fortunes.

According to the newly released document, which isn’t a verbatim transcription, Trump used the April 21 call to congratulate Zelensky on his electoral victory. During the conversation, Zelensky repeatedly invited Trump to his inauguration—a key request from a US ally hoping to demonstrate that it had strong international support in its ongoing conflict with Russia. Trump responded that he would “look into it” but added that in any case, “we will have somebody, at a minimum, at a very, very high level, and they will be with you.”

But despite promising to send a “very high level” official, Trump reportedly blocked Vice President Mike Pence from attending the inauguration, sending Energy Secretary Rick Perry instead. Here’s how the Washington Post explained it in a story last month:

President Trump repeatedly involved Vice President Pence in efforts to exert pressure on the leader of Ukraine at a time when the president was using other channels to solicit information that he hoped would be damaging to a Democratic rival, current and former U.S. officials said.

Trump instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May—an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar—when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington, the officials said.

[…]

Pence’s staff was weighing whether the vice president should lead a delegation to attend Zelensky’s inauguration in May, an important vote of confidence for the new Ukrainian president whose nation has come to view the United States as a bulwark against Russian aggression. Russia has annexed Crimea, a part of Ukraine, and continues to foment a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.  

The date of the inauguration had been in flux, the White House still had not dispatched advance staff and Secret Service to Ukraine, and no visit had been officially confirmed when the president instructed Pence not to attend, according to officials. A current and former official confirmed Trump’s instructions, which were also mentioned in the whistleblower report.

After the transcript’s release this morning, House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff addressed Trump directly during the hearing. “I hope you will explain to the country today why it was—after this call and while the vice president was making plans to attend the inauguration—that you instructed the vice president not to attend Zelensky’s inauguration,” said Schiff.

During the April call, Trump invited Zelensky to visit the White House, an invitation the Ukrainian eagerly accepted. The transcript of that conversation contains no indication of Trump demanding the investigations he asked for in the July call with Zelensky. But text messages between Kurt Volker, then the US special representative for Ukraine negotiations, and Andrey Yermak, a key adviser to Zelensky—released by House investigators in early October—demonstrate that there was a clear understanding between the two countries: A date for a White House meeting between the two leaders would be set only after Zelensky convinced Trump that he would launch the investigations.

Here’s the rough transcript of the April 21 call: 

 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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