Trump: Transparency for Whistleblower, but Also for Joe Biden and Hunter Biden

Trump: Transparency for Whistleblower, but Also for Joe Biden and Hunter Biden
President Donald Trump holds a press conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 25, 2019. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Zachary Stieber
Updated:

President Donald Trump said he told members of the House of Representatives that he supports transparency for the alleged whistleblower who filed a complaint about Trump’s July phone call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump said he told House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Republican members that he “fully supports transparency on the so-called whistleblower information, even though it was secondhand information, which is interesting.”

“But also insist on transparency from Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden on the millions of dollars that have quickly and easily taken out of Ukraine and China. Millions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars taken out very rapidly while he was vice president and I think he should have transparency about that,” Trump said at a press conference at the United Nations in New York on Sept. 25.

Biden said last year that he pressured then-Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko while he was in office to fire a prosecutor. That prosecutor was probing Burisma, a company that Hunter Biden worked for until early this year.

“Additionally I demand transparency from Democrats who went to Ukraine and attempted to force the new president ... they went there and they wanted to force the new president to do things they wanted under the form of political threat,” Trump said. “They threatened him if he didn’t do things. That’s what they’re accusing me of but I didn’t do anything.”

Trump noted that Zelensky told reporters earlier in the day that “nobody pushed me.”

“It’s a hoax. It’s all a hoax, folks,” Trump said.

Trump then highlighted a letter that three Democratic senators sent Ukraine last year requesting information about Trump.

“In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance for Ukraine was at stake,” Trump claimed. “If they didn’t do the right thing, they wouldn’t get any assistance. Doesn’t that sound familiar?”

The letter, signed by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), did not contain a threat that US assistance to Ukraine was at stake.

The president then turned to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) who “literally threatened” the president of Ukraine “that if he doesn’t do things right that they won’t have Democratic support in Congress,” Trump added.

Murphy told the New York Times recently that he spoke with Zelensky and told him not to listen to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani about the possible probe, warning the president that if his country investigated Biden it could threaten America’s support for Ukraine.

It would be “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations,” Murphy said. He claimed that he was not interfering in Ukrainian politics.

Correction: This article was updated on Dec. 31, 2019, to reflect the content of the letter sent on May 4, 2018.
Zachary Stieber
Zachary Stieber
Senior Reporter
Zachary Stieber is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times based in Maryland. He covers U.S. and world news. Contact Zachary at [email protected]
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