President Trump on Wednesday claimed the release of a partial transcript of a call between him and the Ukrainian president validated his assertions that it showed no wrongdoing, even as Democrats seized on its contents to bolster their calls for impeachment.
Trump reacted to the transcript shortly after it was released while attending a meeting on Venezuela at the United Nations. He told reporters that the transcript of his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a “nothing call.”
{mosads}”The letter was a great letter, meaning the letter revealing the call that was done at the insistence of myself and other people that read it. It was a friendly letter, there was no pressure,” Trump said.
“The way you had that built up, that call it was going to be the call from hell,” he continued. “It turned out to be a nothing call other than a lot of people said ‘I never knew you could be so nice.’ “
The president decried the calls for his impeachment “the single greatest witch hunt in American history.” He lashed out at members of the media as “corrupt” and touted the success of the economy before reporters were ushered out of the room in New York City.
The White House released a transcript of Trump’s call with Zelensky after the conversation triggered growing calls for an impeachment inquiry. Trump previously acknowledged that he raised Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son on the call in the context of discussing corruption.
The White House document, which is not a verbatim transcript, shows Trump urging Zelensky to work with his personal attorney and the attorney general to look into Biden’s role in ousting a Ukrainian prosecutor in 2016.
Trump and his allies quickly dismissed the contents of the call as insignificant, painting Democrats as overeager to remove the president from office.
They noted that there was no explicit quid pro quo in which Trump tied aid for Ukraine to the country’s willingness to investigate Biden.
But the call is likely to further fuel calls for impeachment, as many Democrats have made clear that any instance of Trump pressing a foreign power to investigate a domestic political rival would cross the line.