US president asked Volodymyr Zelenskiy for ‘a favor’ and to ‘look into’ Biden as impeachment inquiry launched against Trump

Donald Trump pressed the Ukrainian president to work with the US attorney general to investigate his political rival Joe Biden, a damning White House memo revealed on Wednesday, raising the stakes in an acrimonious and polarising impeachment inquiry.

Democrats said the US president’s conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, detailed in the five-page rough “transcript” was a devastating betrayal of his country that merited their investigation, while Republicans claimed it showed no quid pro quo and offered complete vindication.

Favors, dirt, investigations: key takeaways from the Trump-Ukraine memo Read more

The disclosure came a day after Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, announced an official impeachment inquiry following a whistleblower’s complaint regarding alleged violations by Trump, setting the stage for a long and rancorous fight in the run-up to next year’s presidential election.

That whistleblower’s complaint was handed over to the US Congress on Wednesday, but the details remained classified. Lawmakers who reviewed the document described it as “deeply disturbing” and “very credible”, and called for it to be made public.

Earlier, some observers expressed surprise that the White House had agreed to release such a damaging memo detailing the 30-minute call between Trump and Zelenskiy on 25 July. Though not a verbatim transcript, it showed that, after being congratulated on his victory in the Ukrainian election, Zelenskiy thanked the US for its military support and said he was almost ready to buy more American weapons.

Q&A How do you impeach the US president? Show Hide Article 1 of the United States constitution gives the House of Representatives the sole power to initiate impeachment and the Senate the sole power to try impeachments of the president. A president can be impeached if they are judged to have committed "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" – although the US Constitution does not specify what “high crimes and misdemeanors” are.

The formal process starts with the House of Representatives passing articles of impeachment, the equivalent of congressional charges. According to arcane Senate rules, after the House notifies the Senate that impeachment managers have been selected, the secretary of the Senate, Julie Adams, tells the House that the Senate is ready to receive the articles. Then impeachment managers appear before the Senate to “exhibit” the articles, and the Senate confirms it will consider the case. The presiding officer of the Senate notifies the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, of the impending trial. Roberts arrives in the Senate to administer an oath to members. The presiding officer will then administer this oath to senators: “I solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the constitution and laws, so help me God.” The Senate must vote on a resolution laying out ground rules for the trial including who the key players will be, how long they will get to present their cases and other matters. After the Senate is “organized”, the rules decree, “a writ of summons shall issue to the person impeached, reciting said articles, and notifying him to appear before the Senate upon a day and at a place to be fixed by the Senate”. A president has never appeared at his own impeachment trial. Trump will be represented by the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and his personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, among others. After the oath, the trial proper will begin. Senators may not speak during the proceedings but may submit written questions. The question of witnesses and other matters would be decided on the fly by majority vote. A time limit for the proceedings will be established in the initial Senate vote. The senators will then deliberate on the case. In the past this has happened behind closed doors and out of public view. The senators vote separately on the two articles of impeachment – the first charging Trump with abuse of power, the second charging him with obstruction of Congress. A two-thirds majority of present senators – 67 ayes if everyone votes – on either article would be enough to convict Trump and remove him from office. But that would require about 20 Republicans defections and is unlikely. The more likely outcome is a Trump acquittal, at which point the process is concluded. Two presidents have previously been impeached, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Andrew Johnson in 1868, though neither was removed from office as a result. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before there was a formal vote to impeach him. Tom McCarthy in New York

Trump replied “I would like you to do us a favor, though” and went on discuss possible joint investigations. Later in the conversation, he told Zelenskiy he should work with Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the US attorney general, William Barr, to look into unsubstantiated allegations that Biden, the former vice-president, helped remove a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son, Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Trump said: “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it.”

He added: “It sounds horrible to me.”

The previously unknown connection to Barr was a potentially grave development for Trump because it shows he sought to involve the US government with a foreign country to seek dirt on a potential election rival. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden, the current frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

In a rambling press conference late on Wednesday afternoon, while wrapping up his visit to the United Nations general assembly in New York, Trump dismissed the growing Ukraine scandal as “a big hoax” and said he “didn’t threaten anybody”.

The unidentified whistleblower submitted a complaint to Michael Atkinson, the US government’s intelligence inspector general, in August. Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, then blocked the release of the complaint to Congress, citing issues of presidential privilege and saying the complaint did not deal with an “urgent concern”. Atkinson disagreed but said his hands were tied.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters outside the White House on Tuesday, the day a formal impeachment inquiry was announced. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

The House intelligence committee chair, Adam Schiff, said he would do everything in his power to protect the whistleblower. “I think that what this courageous individual has done has exposed serious wrongdoing,” he said. According to the Associated Press, lawmakers have yet to learn the identity of the whistleblower.

The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said: “Having read the whistleblower complaint, I am even more worried about what happened than when I read the memorandum of the conversation between President Trump and President Zelenskiy.”

Trump and Zelenskiy came face to face on the sidelines of the UN general assembly on Wednesday and the awkward body language was plain. The Ukrainian president told reporters: “I think you read everything. I think you read text. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be involved to democratic, open elections of USA. No.”

Zelenskiy added: “Sure, we had, I think, good phone call. It was normal. We spoke about many things, and I – so I think and you read it that nobody pushed me.”

Trump commented: “In other words, there was no pressure and you know there was no pressure.”

But Democrats seized on the memo’s contents, saying it showed Trump used his powers not for America’s national security but to hurt Biden and help his own re-election.

Q&A What is the Trump-Ukraine scandal at the heart of impeachment? Show Hide In a July 2019 phone call, Trump asked Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to mount an investigation of his potential rival for the White House in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, and son Hunter Biden – and also to investigate a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, instead of Russia, was behind foreign tampering in the 2016 election. Trump framed the requests as a “favor” after he reminded his counterpart that “the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine”. Overshadowing the conversation was the fact that Trump had recently suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid that Congress had approved for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia . News of the call emerged in a Washington Post report on 18 September that an internal whistleblower complaint, filed in August, involved “communications between Trump and a foreign leader”. Trump’s attempted dealings in Ukraine caused a scandal in US diplomatic ranks. The Democrats have obtained text messages between top US envoys in Ukraine establishing that diplomats told Zelenskiy that a White House visit to meet Trump was dependent on him making a public statement vowing to investigate Hunter Biden’s company. Trump does not dispute public accounts of what he said in the call, as established by the whistleblower’s complaint, released on 26 September, and a call summary released by the White House itself. But Trump and allies have argued that the conversation – “I’ve given you that, now I need this” – was not actually as transactional as it appears to be. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has pressured Ukraine to smear Biden, and the whistleblower said White House officials had caused records of Trump’s Ukraine call to be moved into a specially restricted computer system. The vice-president, Mike Pence, has acknowledged contacts with Ukrainian officials while claiming to have no knowledge of Trump’s Biden agenda.

On 3 October 2019, Trump even suggested that: “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.” Unlike when he was a candidate, Trump’s invitations for foreign powers to attack his domestic political opponents now have all the power of the White House behind them. Critics say this is a plain abuse of that power and it undermines US national security because it places Trump’s personal agenda first. The Trump administration also stands accused of obstruction of Congress for resisting congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony relating to the crisis. A lot of people – from the whistleblower, to career government officials swept up in the affair, to legal scholars, to Democrats and even some Republicans – believe it’s plausible that the president has committed an impeachable offense. Tom McCarthy in New York

Biden said in a statement: “It is a tragedy for this country that our president put personal politics above his sacred oath. He has put his own political interests over our national security interest, which is bolstering Ukraine against Russian pressure.

“It is an affront to every single American and the founding values of our country. This is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. It is a national security issue. It is a test of our democratic values.”

Pelosi condemned Trump for using taxpayer money to “shake down” other countries for the benefit of his campaign. “The transcript and the justice department’s acting in a rogue fashion in being complicit in the president’s lawlessness confirm the need for an impeachment inquiry,” she said. “Clearly, the Congress must act.”

Schiff told reporters: “The notes of the call reflect a conversation far more damning than I and many others had imagined.”

He added: “This is how a mafia boss talks. And it’s clear that the Ukraine president understands exactly what is expected of him.”

Play Video 1:57 Adam Schiff condemns Donald Trump's Ukraine call as a 'mafia shakedown' – video

But the alternative realities that have pervaded American politics for the past three years were still in evidence. Trump and his allies sought to paint a very different picture, insisting that the memo proved his innocence.

The Trump re-election campaign fired off emails seeking to raise funds off the “smear job” by soliciting donations for an “Official Impeachment Defense Task Force”.

Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, suggested the impeachment move will boost Trump’s chance of re-election. He said: “Because of their pure hatred for President Trump, desperate Democrats and the salivating media already had determined their mission: take out the president.”

Parscale went on: “The facts prove the president did nothing wrong.” This is just another hoax from Democrats and the media, contributing to the landslide re-election of President Trump in 2020.”

Trump's phone call with Ukraine's president: read the full memorandum Read more

There was little sign of Republicans breaking ranks, though a tiny number indicated the revelations were troubling. Even if Trump is impeached by the House, he would not be convicted and removed from office by the Republican-controlled Senate. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump loyalist, said: “Impeachment over this? What a nothing (non-quid pro quo) burger. Democrats have lost their minds when it comes to President Trump.”

One of the few dissenting voices was Senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who said: “My reaction was the same as I had a few days ago, which is this remains deeply troubling and we’ll see where it leads. But my first reaction is it’s troubling.”

Trump had confirmed that he ordered the freezing of nearly $400m in military aid to Ukraine a few days before the call, claiming the US was paying more than its fair share – rather than any threat of blackmail or quid pro quo. The aid was eventually released under pressure from Congress.

The Ukraine scandal erupted after an intelligence community whistleblower came forward. Democrats have been demanding details of the whistleblower’s complaint, but the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to share that information, citing presidential privilege.

On Wednesday it also emerged that the intelligence community’s inspector general told the acting director of national intelligence that the call could have been a federal campaign finance violation. But the justice department determined the president did not commit a crime after prosecutors reviewed a rough transcript.

The justice department also denied that Trump had sought to involve Barr.

Agencies contributed reporting