WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Saturday dismissed news reports that he urged the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son as little more than a "witch hunt" and said his dealings were "perfectly fine" and routine.
"Now that the Democrats and the Fake News Media have gone 'bust' on every other of their Witch Hunt schemes, they are trying to start one just as ridiculous as the others, call it the Ukraine Witch Hunt," Trump wrote on Twitter. He said that any effort to investigate him would fail, comparing it with the investigation by Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, into whether Trump had ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign.
The news reports Trump was referring to have revealed the existence of a secret whistleblower complaint that is believed to have been filed, at least partly, in response to Trump's dealings with Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The New York Times reported Friday that Trump, in a July call, pressed the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden's son, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
Biden on Saturday called for Trump to release a transcript of his phone call with Ukraine's president to see whether he pressured the foreign leader to investigate the former vice president.
Biden, who has framed himself as the Democratic candidate most likely to defeat Trump in the general election, said the president would take such action with Ukraine only because "he knows I'll beat him like a drum."
Reports of the whistleblower complaint have created a showdown between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration, which has refused to turn over the formal complaint by a national security official or describe its contents.
Trump has defended himself against the complaint, asserting that it comes from a "partisan whistleblower," though the president also says he doesn't know who had made it.
Trump said Saturday that the real problem was Biden.
"The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, want to stay as far away as possible from the Joe Biden demand that the Ukrainian Government fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son," Trump wrote, "so they fabricate a story about me and a perfectly fine and routine conversation I had with the new President of the Ukraine."
Trump and his allies reportedly wanted Zelenskiy to look into Biden's reported efforts in 2016 to persuade Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, who at the time was also investigating a natural-gas company that employed Biden's son, Hunter, according to people familiar with the matter.
Biden contends that he knew nothing of his son's business dealings and was acting on behalf of the United States, which saw the prosecutor as ineffective at stamping out corruption.
No evidence has surfaced to bolster Trump's claim that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the dismissal.
Biden, campaigning Saturday in Des Moines at the Iowa Steak Fry, said the House needs to investigate Trump's conversation with Zelenskiy.
"This appears to be an overwhelming abuse of power, to get on the phone with a foreign power who is looking for help from the United States and ask about me, if that's what happened, that's what appears to have happened," Biden told reporters. "Trump's doing this because he knows I will beat him like a drum and is using the abuse of power and every element of the presidency to try and smear."
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., also noted Trump's purported conversation with the Ukrainian president when she spoke to voters Saturday in Iowa.
"Just in the last 48 hours, yet again, we find that he is in cahoots with a foreign government to manipulate the outcome of this election for president of the United States," Harris said.
And Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois who has opened a long-shot challenge to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, urged others in his party who were alarmed by the president's behavior to step forward.
"He doesn't believe in the rule of law," Walsh wrote Saturday morning on Twitter . "He abuses his power whenever he wants. He lies at will. He doesn't know the meaning of checks & balances. And he sees nothing wrong with telling a foreign government to dig up dirt on his opponents. Come on Republicans. Be better than this."
The U.S. government's intelligence inspector general has described the whistleblower's Aug. 12 complaint as "serious" and "urgent."
The inspector general said the matter involves the "most significant" responsibilities of intelligence leadership.
Democrats say the administration is legally required to give Congress access to the whistleblower's complaint. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has said he will go to court in an effort to get it if necessary.
Joseph Maguire, acting director of national intelligence, has refused to discuss details of the whistleblower complaint, but he has been subpoenaed by Schiff's committee and is expected to testify publicly on Thursday. Maguire and the inspector general, Michael Atkinson, also are expected this week at the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Trump and Zelenskiy plan to meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly summit this week.
Information for this article was contributed by Katie Rogers of The New York Times; by Jonathan Lemire, Michael Balsamo and Lisa Mascaro, Deb Riechmann, Eric Tucker, Alan Fram, Mary Clare Jalonick and Matthew Bodner of The Associated Press; and by Colby Itkowitz and Holly Bailey of The Washington Post.
A Section on 09/22/2019