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A new report from the Wall Street Journal confirms that President Donald Trump over the summer “repeatedly pressed” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.

According to WSJ, Trump asked Zelensky an estimated eight different times to launch a probe of Hunter Biden in a move aimed at crippling Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

“He told him that he should work with [Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know,” one of WSJ’s sources claims. According to this source, however, Trump on this phone call made no mention of foreign aid and didn’t offer Zelensky an explicit quid-pro-quo for his cooperation in investigating Biden.

Trump on Friday claimed that his summer call with the Ukrainian president was “totally appropriate,” but declined to discuss what was said during the call.

“It doesn’t matter what I discussed,” the president said, while also insisting that Biden and his family be investigated.

Ukraine’s government is waiting for the green light from President Donald Trump to investigate business dealings by Joe Biden’s son with one of the country’s energy companies.

Anton Geraschenko, a senior adviser to the country’s interior minister, said there currently was no investigation under way, but he said the government would “look into it” as soon as the Trump administration officially asked for one, reported The Daily Beast.

Trump’s conversations with a foreign leader were reportedly the subject of a whistleblower complaint that originated in the intelligence community, and there has been widespread speculation the calls involved Ukraine’s president and assurances of U.S. aid in exchange for damaging information about Biden.

“Clearly,” Geraschenko told The Daily Beast, “Trump is now looking for kompromat to discredit his opponent Biden, to take revenge for his friend Paul Manafort, who is serving seven years in prison.”

The Ukrainian government adviser made clear the country would be willing to comply with Trump’s request once it was made.

“We do not investigate Biden in Ukraine, since we have not received a single official request to do so,” Geraschenko said.

Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani are interested in finding out more details about Hunter Biden’s connection with the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings.

Geraschenko spoke to The Daily Beast before reports suggested the whistleblower complaint involved Ukraine’s president, but he confirmed his statements again in a follow-up phone call Friday.

Ukraine is ready to investigate the connections Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden had with the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings, according to Anton Geraschenko, a senior adviser to the country’s interior minister who would oversee such an inquiry.

Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, the day after special counsel Robert Mueller testified in Congress about Russian election interference.

The White House reportedly considered blocking $250 million in support for Ukraine’s military at the end of August, but that funding was released, and even increased, Sept. 12.

Trump reportedly offered to release that funding if Ukraine agreed to dig into Hunter Biden’s dealings in the country, and Geraschenko welcomed that aid in the country’s territorial dispute with Russia.

“For now, we would like America to support us more, and not only with money but also with the newest weapons in our war against the aggressor, the Russian Federation,” Geraschenko told The Daily Beast. “We want a status as NATO’s special partner, allowing us to buy any weapons in the U.S., including the newest anti-aircraft rockets to defend our country in case Russia decides to attack from the air. Our technology is more than 40 years old.”

President Donald Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani have reportedly been trying to force to deliver dirt on top Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Trump had been withholding military aid from Ukraine.

In fact, last month Giuliani freely admitted he had traveled to the Eastern European country.

“Ukraine’s prosecutor general told Bloomberg in May he had no proof of wrongdoing by Biden or his son,” CNN reported at the time.

And in a stunning breach of protocol, the U.S. State Department reportedly assisted Giuliani with the trip.

The Trump administration is releasing almost US$400 million worth of military assistance for Ukraine, unplugging the spigot of aid after weeks of speculation that the US might withhold the cash as part of a broad reassessment of American policy in confronting Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The aid comes in two buckets. First is US$141 million pledged by the State Department, and then US$250 million from the Pentagon, all pegged to a variety of weapons systems and non-lethal capabilities such as communications, training facilities, and surveillance gear to help Ukraine protect its coastline from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

After it was reported last month that the White House ordered a reassessment of US funding for Ukraine’s military, both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill pressed the administration to maintain the support that has flowed since the illegal 2014 Russian invasion.

Sen. Rob Portman, co-chairman of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, said today that Trump told him the DoD money was good to go. Portman said he “spoke with the president last night to ask him to release the security funds for Ukraine, and I want to thank him for doing so.”

Sen. Lindsay Graham was also confident that the DoD money would be unspooled, saying today that Ukraine is “going to get the money.”

The Pentagon referred queries about the US$250 million to the White House.

highdesert wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2019 5:06 pm Probably not a problem if citizen Trump talked with the Ukraine president about a potential Biden investigation, but when Trump offered that the $400 million US aid would be released if the Ukrainians took that action very likely crosses a legal line. IIRC the Ukraine president has no prior government experience he was a comedian, so Trump probably thinks he can play him.

More details continue to come out about President Donald Trump’s alleged extortion of Ukraine for campaign assistance.

The latest revelations came from a report published by The Washington Post Friday evening.

The newspaper flushed out the apparent quid pro quo Trump sought.

“When President Trump spoke on the telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late July, the Ukrainians had a lot at stake. They were waiting on millions in stalled military aid from the United States, and Zelensky was seeking a high-priority White House meeting with Trump,” the newspaper reported. “Trump told his Ukrainian counterpart that his country could improve its image if it completed corruption cases that have ‘inhibited the interaction between Ukraine and the USA,’ according to a readout of the call released by Kiev.”

“What neither government said publicly at the time was that Trump went even further — specifically pressing Ukraine’s president to reopen a corruption investigation involving former vice president Joe Biden’s son, according to two people familiar with the call, which is now the subject of an explosive whistleblower complaint,” the paper reported.

It was former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in his role as Trump’s television defense lawyer, who followed-up on Trump’s call.

“Days after the two presidents spoke, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, met with an aide to the Ukrainian president in Madrid and spelled out two specific cases he believed Ukraine should pursue,” The Post reported. “One was a probe of a Ukrainian gas tycoon who had Biden’s son Hunter on his board. Another was an allegation that Democrats colluded with Ukraine to release information on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the 2016 election.”

“Your country owes it to us and to your country to find out what really happened,” Giuliani said he told the aide, Andriy Yermak.

President Donald Trump had gotten off scot-free. ”A great day for me,” he declared on July 24. Former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony about Trump’s alleged obstruction of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election had failed to convince House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ― let alone congressional Republicans ― to impeach him.

With not one member of his circle in prison for attempting to collude with a foreign power, and with the prospect of impeachment rapidly fading thanks to Pelosi’s hand-wringing and stonewalling, Trump did what any rational leader would do: He apparently did it again.