(Politico)
ELEANOR MUELLER 09/22/2019 11:05 AM
President Donald Trump on Sunday said he would consider releasing a transcript of a phone call he had with Ukraine’s leader, even though two of his Cabinet secretaries said only hours earlier that such conversations must remain “private.”
“We’ll make a determination about how to release it, releasing it, saying what we said,” the president told reporters in Houston. “It was an absolutely perfect conversation. The problem is, when you’re speaking to foreign leaders, you don’t want foreign leaders to feel that they shouldn’t be speaking openly and good. … You want them to be able to express themselves without knowing that not every single word is going to be going out and going out all over the world.”
News reports say that Trump pressured officials in Ukraine to undertake an investigation that would damage former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential Democratic opponent in 2020. A whistleblower complaint said to involve the president’s actions is now the focus of a battle over congressional review.
Those seeking an investigation want to know whether Trump, in a July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, made U.S. aid contingent on the country’s looking into Biden’s son Hunter, who had business dealings there.
On Sunday morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the details of Trump’s call shouldn’t be made public.
“Those are private conversations between world leaders,” Pompeo said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I would leave whether that should be released” to the White House, he added.
Комментарии