On Thursday, the Trump administration released the whistleblower complaint at the center of the Ukraine controversy that prompted the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into President Trump. The complaint accuses Trump of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election” by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “look into” former Vice President Joe Biden pressuring Ukraine to remove its top prosecutor, who had investigated Biden’s son’s company for corruption. The complaint also alleges that the White House attempted to “’lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced,” though the administration released the transcript Wednesday.
Additionally, a July 2017 letter from the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein raised concerns over reports that Ukraine’s political leadership “opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump for president of the United States and worked with a Democratic National Committee consultant to undermine his campaign.”
“This consultant allegedly had various meetings with Ukrainian government officials, including embassy staff, to coordinate the dissemination of incriminating information about Trump campaign officials,” wrote Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in a press release announcing the letter. “It appears that this consultant was operating to advance the interests of both the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton campaign, and a foreign government, which would have required registration under FARA.”
Citing several reports from mainstream news outlets, the letter reads in part:
According to news reports, during the 2016 presidential election, “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump” and did so by “disseminat[ing] documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter…”[1] Ukrainian officials also reportedly “helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers.”[2] At the center of this plan was Alexandra Chalupa, described by reports as a Ukrainian-American operative “who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee” and reportedly met with Ukrainian officials during the presidential election for the express purpose of exposing alleged ties between then-candidate Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, and Russia.[3] Politico also reported on a Financial Times story that quoted a Ukrainian legislator, Serhiy Leschenko, saying that Trump’s candidacy caused “Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election.”[4] – READ MORE