(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said Monday he didn’t ask Ukraine’s president for an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden in exchange for U.S. military aid.“No, I didn’t,” Trump told reporters in a meeting with Poland’s president on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.Trump’s July 25 phone call with the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is the subject of a congressional investigation and is part of a mysterious whistle-blower complaint from an unidentified intelligence official. The official raised concerns about the call between Trump and Zelenskiy as well as other actions, according to a person familiar with the matter.Earlier on Monday, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said he couldn’t rule out the possibility that the president threatened to cut off aid to Ukraine over calls for an investigation into largely discredited allegations against former Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.Trump grew hostile as reporters questioned him about the matter at the meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda.“Joe Biden and his son are corrupt,” he said. “If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they’d be getting the electric chair by right now.”Trump alleges that as vice president, Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general in 2016 in order to stop an investigation of a company connected to Hunter Biden.It’s true that on behalf of the Obama administration, Biden demanded that Ukraine oust its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who had been accused of corruption by his deputy. Shokin had investigated a company called Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden sat on its board and received substantial compensation.Biden said in a 2018 event at the Council on Foreign Relations that he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine unless its leaders dismissed Shokin. The Ukrainian parliament wound up voting to remove the prosecutor.But by the time the Obama administration joined with other Western nations to force Shokin’s removal, the Burisma investigation had been long dormant, Shokin’s former deputy Vitaliy Kasko said in an interview with Bloomberg News earlier this year.Trump said that in his call with Zeleskiy, “I did not make a statement that you have to do this or I’m not going to give you aid.”Trump said he’s still thinking about releasing a transcript of the call, though he’s expressed misgivings about setting a precedent for conversations that are usually confidential.“I may do it because it was a very innocent call,” he said. “I hope you get to see it, and I hope you get to see it soon.”\--With assistance from Chris Strohm.To contact the reporter on this story: Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Justin BlumFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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