President Trump on Wednesday said he backed transparency in terms of the whistleblower who raised alarm about his call with Ukraine’s president — but also demanded the same for Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“I have spoken with [House Minority] Leader Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans [and] I’ve informed them, all of the House members, that I fully support transparency on the so-called whistle-blower information even though it was supposedly second-hand information, which is sort of interesting,” Trump said during an afternoon press conference in Manhattan.
“But [I] also insist on transparency from Joe Biden and his son Hunter on the millions of dollars that have been 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,” the president continued.
“I think they should have transparency for that.”
Joe Biden, as vice president, told Ukraine in 2016 that the US was considering canceling $1 billion in loan guarantees unless it got rid of top prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had been accused of slow-walking a number of corruption probes.
But Shokin, who was voted out of office by Ukraine’s Parliament, had earlier been looking into Burisma Holding, an energy company that gave Hunter Biden a seat on its board, paying him as much as $50,000 a month.
Shokin’s replacement, Yuri Lutsenko, continued the investigation into Burisma and concluded there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden or his son.
A whistleblower had said that Trump stalled nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to open the probe into the Bidens, though that was not mentioned in the transcript.
Trump has admitted talking to Zelensky about the Bidens, but said he held up the aid because he believed that European countries were not paying their fair share of Ukraine’s defense, denying there was a quid pro quo.
The aid package, approved by Congress, was released to Ukraine on Sept. 12.
During the press briefing, the president also excoriated the press for not focusing on the United Nations General Assembly, where he said he’d been working night and day to secure better trade deals.
