Impeachment inquiry: White House under fire for discrepancies in record of Ukraine call

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump's Ukraine phone call: U.S. and Ukraine relationship, explained U.S. and Ukraine relations go further back than the now infamous phone call between Trump and Zelensky. We explain their relationship.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump released a rough transcript Friday of his first conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and was quickly confronted with questions about why it departed from an initial description of that April conversation.

Absent from the call was any discussion of corruption in Ukraine, which Trump and his allies have said was at the heart of the president's requests for investigations. A brief summary of the same call released by the White House in April claimed Trump "expressed his commitment" to strengthen democracy and "root out corruption."

The largely congratulatory phone call was placed months before a second, ill-fated conversation between the two leaders in July that became the focus of the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry. Trump described Zelensky's election as "fantastic" and "incredible" in the April call and drew comparisons to his own success in 2016.

Trump and his allies argued the summary of the April call would counter allegations from Democrats that he abused the power of his office by pressuring Zelensky to dig up dirt on a political opponent and held up aid to the country as leverage. While the call contained no reference to the investigations, it also lacked key details included in an initial summary the White House released shorty after the call wrapped up.

The April 21 summary of the call said that Trump "underscored the unwavering support of the United States for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity" and that he expressed his commitment to work with Zelensky "to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption."

But in the rough transcript of the call made public Friday, there was no mention of corruption or of Russia's incursion into Ukraine's "territorial integrity."

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley did not explain the discrepancy between the two summaries but said in a statement that the initial readout "was prepared by the NSC’s Ukraine expert." That appeared to be a reference to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert at the National Security Council. Vindman is set to testify Tuesday.

Trump invited Zelensky to the White House during the April call, an invitation that would later be tied to requests to investigate the son of former Vice President Joe Biden and the 2016 election.

"When you're settled in and ready, I'd like to invite you to the White House," Trump told Zelensky. "We'll have a lot of things to talk about, but we're with you all the way."

During the 16-minute call, which took place as he was aboard Air Force One returning from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump compared Zelensky’s election to his own. Trump is a former reality show host; Zelensky a former comedian.

"And it's really an amazing thing that you've done," Trump said. "I guess, in a way, I did something similar."

More: How to stay updated on USA TODAY's impeachment coverage

The president told Zelensky that, when he owned the Miss Universe organization, the Ukrainians "always had great people."

Trump and his allies framed the call as evidence of his innocence against allegations from Democrats that he abused the power of his office.

"The president took the unprecedented steps to declassify and release the transcripts of both of his phone calls with President Zelensky so that every American can see he did nothing wrong,” said White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

At the time of Trump's first call to Zelensky, Biden had not formally announced his candidacy for president. He would do so four days later, on April 25.

Trump took the unusual step in September of releasing a summary of a July 25 call with the Ukrainian president at the center of a whistleblower’s complaint that alleged the president pressured Ukraine about Biden. The whistleblower complaint sparked House Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry into whether Trump abused the power of his office by withholding $400 million in financial aid approved by Congress to Ukraine as a way to force the country to chip in with investigations of a political opponent.

Trump maintains his July call was "perfect" and has repeatedly attacked the impeachment investigation as "a hoax" and a "witch hunt."

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The summary of the call comes as the impeachment inquiry has entered a new, public phase, featuring testimony from witnesses who have already been interviewed in private depositions. Several witnesses have corroborated the whistleblower's report, testifying they believed the decision to withhold Ukraine's security aid was linked to whether Kiev would pursue investigations into Trump's political rivals.

Revelations from the closed-door hearings also showed Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani had been running a months-long shadow foreign policy campaign on Ukraine to pressure Kiev to open investigations that would benefit the U.S. president politically ahead of the 2020 election.

Behind closed doors: Read all the transcripts from the testimony in the Trump impeachment inquiry

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Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council expert on Ukraine who listened in on both the April and July calls, testified to lawmakers that withholding aid undermined U.S. national security. He told impeachment investigators that it was clear that Ukraine had to deliver specific investigations in order to secure a much coveted White House meeting with Trump.

But Vindman also described Trump's earlier call in April with his Ukrainian counterpart as "positive" and that Trump "expressed his desire to work with President Zelensky and extended an invitation to the White House."

Contributing: John Fritze, David Jackson