The White House released a summary of President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, but had yet to release a copy of the whistleblower complaint that set the ordeal in motion.
The summary, which includes a note saying it is not a verbatim transcript of the conversation, shows how Trump repeatedly urged Zelensky to investigate Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden.
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Trump said, according to the notes and recollections of Situation Room duty officers and National Security Council policy staff released Wednesday.
He went on, per the summary: “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you could look into it ... it sounds horrible to me.”
The release comes three days after Trump confirmed Biden was a subject of the conversation with Zelensky. Given the Trump administration’s history of editing documents, it’s not a guarantee that this release tells the full story of the two world leaders’ phone call.
The White House reportedly plans to release the whistleblower complaint and the related inspector general’s report to Congress this week as well, outlets reported. Trump initially resisted giving his approval for this.
The move comes amid a series of bombshell reports claiming Trump asked a foreign power to investigate the former vice president, one of his prime rivals in the 2020 election, and may be guilty of a criminal violation in doing so.
The unfolding scandal, which originated as a whistleblower complaint in August, prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to call for a formal impeachment probe on Tuesday after months of her pushing back on calls from other Democrats to do so.
Several House committees have also started investigating whether Trump delayed more than $250 million in aid to Ukraine as he allegedly pressed Zelensky to look into Joe Biden.
Trump has dismissed all concerns.
“The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, with largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place and 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 told reporters at the White House when the reports broke.
Trump was referring to his rival’s son Hunter Biden, who worked with Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was still serving under President Barack Obama in 2016. However, the pair has not been accused of legal wrongdoing related to that work.
Trump, meanwhile, claims the former vice president called for the removal of a notoriously corrupt prosecutor in Ukraine in 2014 in order to impede an investigation into the company his son was working with. However, Ukrainian authorities have cleared Joe Biden of any wrongdoing in the case, and the record shows members of the Obama administration did in fact support Ukrainian officials’ criminal investigations.