GOP Rep Flips Dems' Script: Trump Was Right To Ask About Biden's Possible Corruption in Ukraine
GOP Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona argued Thursday that President Donald Trump was justified in asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into alleged wrongdoing by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Lesko tweeted, “We need to know how the former Vice President got a prosecutor fired and got his son a job w/ Burisma while he was the nation’s point person to Ukraine.”
The congresswoman read directly from the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky during Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing considering articles of impeachment against the president.
“The other thing, 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 … It sounds horrible to me,” Trump said in the portion of the call Lesko read.
President @realdonaldtrump wanted to get to the bottom of the corruption between Joe and Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Ukraine.
We need to know how the former Vice President got a prosecutor fired and got his son a job w/ Burisma while he was the nation’s point person to Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/AL6ag3voOQ
— Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (@RepDLesko) December 12, 2019
The lawmaker noted that Trump did not even mention the Bidens until near the end of the call and did so only one time.
“Burisma, to remind you, is the corrupt Ukrainian company that hired Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, to serve on their board at the very same time that Vice President Biden was the point man to Ukraine,” Lesko recounted.
“Put yourself in President Trump’s shoes,” she argued. “He has seen or heard about the video of Joe Biden bragging about how he got the prosecutor fired.”
“The same prosecutor that had been investigating the same corrupt company where Biden’s son got a cushy spot on the board earning at least $50,000 a month,” Lesko said.
Joe Biden threatened the Ukrainian officials during an official visit in March 2016 and said if they failed to act before he left Kyiv in six hours, they would lose $1 billion in U.S. aid.
“Well, son of a b—-, he got fired,” Biden proudly recalled in an appearance at the Council of Foreign Relations in January 2018.
Lesko pointed out that while Democrats are saying Trump raised the incident purely for corrupt, political reasons, “It is just as likely, and I would say more likely, that President Trump wanted to get to the bottom of possible corruption with the Bidens, Burisma and Ukraine.”
The Democrats’ two articles of impeachment allege Trump abused his power as president for his own personal political benefit by asking Ukraine to look into the Bidens’ Burisma dealings and obstructed the House’s impeachment investigation of him by not acceding to all their witness and document demands.
Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas, a member of the Judiciary Committee, pointed out Trump never demanded the Ukrainians investigate the Bidens, as Democrats have claimed.
“Nowhere in that transcript does the president make a ‘demand,'” Ratcliffe tweeted Thursday.
“The first time we heard the word ‘demand’ was from the whistleblower.”
.@RepRatcliffe: Democrats have built this fake-impeachment scheme around an alleged demand.
Nowhere in that transcript does the president make a “demand.”
The first time we heard the word “demand” was from the whistleblower. pic.twitter.com/PxDFuArlcO
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) December 12, 2019
In a tweet on Thursday evening, Lesko — who sits on the House Rules Committee, in addition to the Judiciary Committee — contended that congressional Democrats, not Trump, are guilty obstruction.
The real obstruction of Congress is from Charimen Nadler and Schiff, who have obstructed members of Congress from hearing from the whistleblower, denied all our witnesses, and refused to schedule a minority hearing, a right guaranteed to us in the minority under House Rules.
— Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (@RepDLesko) December 12, 2019
“The real obstruction of Congress is from Charimen Nadler and Schiff, who have obstructed members of Congress from hearing from the whistleblower, denied all our witnesses, and refused to schedule a minority hearing, a right guaranteed to us in the minority under House Rules,” she wrote.
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