President Trump said Monday his phone conversations with Ukraine’s president were important for cracking down on corruption, amid accusations that Democratic front-runner Joseph R. Biden shielded his son from a probe into profiteering in that country.
“It’s very important to talk about corruption,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the United Nations. “If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?”
A government whistleblower has accused Mr. Trump of pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden’s son Hunter and his post with a Ukrainian gas company. The talks came about the same time the U.S. was debating whether to release $250 million in military aid to the country fighting a long-running incursion from Russian-backed forces.
Mr. Trump said Mr. Zelensky came into office last year promising reforms.
“One of the reasons the new president got elected is he was going to stop corruption,” Mr. Trump said. “So it’s very important that on occasion you speak to somebody about corruption.”
He said of Mr. Biden, “What Biden did was wrong.”
Mr. Trump also said Hunter Biden “took a lot of money from China.”
Mr. Biden boasted in a speech last year that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees from Ukraine in 2015 unless its leaders fired the country’s top prosecutor, who had inherited a probe of the gas company. Mr. Biden and other Obama administration officials asserted that the former prosecutor wasn’t doing enough to stop corruption generally.
Mr. Trump has said he’s considering releasing the transcript of his phone conversations with the Ukraine president. Democrats are threatening that they might consider it an impeachable offense if Mr. Trump was digging for dirt on a political rival from a foreign leader.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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