Trump aide told Ukrainian president to probe Bidens if he wanted to visit the White House hours before controversial call
President Donald Trump's aide to Ukraine reportedly told President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden and the 2016 election if he wanted to visit Washington DC, according to 23 pages of text messages released by Adam Schiff and House Democrats.
The US aide delivered the information to the foreign leader just hours before Trump's controversial phone call with Zelensky, which prompted an impeachment inquiry.
The inquiry was launched against Trump after a whistleblower lodged a complaint, stating that Trump had attempted to seek "favor" from the Ukrainian leader, asking him to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter. White House later released a transcript of the controversial conversation which confirmed that Trump had asked Zelensky to probe Biden.
Trump's former envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, reportedly told one of Zelensky's aides that the US would only "nail down" a date of the foreign leader's DC visit once he assures to "get to the bottom of what happened."
Volker was reportedly referencing unfounded claims that Biden, as vice president, had intervened in a Ukrainian investigation into a gas company, Burisma Holdings, where his son Hunter was a board member.
"Heard from the White House—assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate/'get to the bottom of what happened' in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington," Volker wrote in a text message to the Ukrainian adviser on the morning of July 25, according to CNN.
Volker reportedly handed over the text messages to the Congress as part of his testimony to lawmakers in their impeachment inquiry into the president.
The messages released by Schiff suggest that Trump's aides had put pressure on Ukraine to probe an unsubstantiated theory of corruption on Joe Biden's part.
Biden is the Democratic frontrunner of the 2020 election. Although Biden's name is not mentioned in the messages, the subtext of their conversation is clear.
The text messages also mention Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani's name who is one of the biggest advocates of the Biden corruption theory.
Although Trump has admitted that he told Zelensky to probe the Bidens, he has consistently denied pressuring Ukraine or offering a "quid pro quo". However, the conditional Washington DC visit offered to the Ukraine president in the text messages suggests otherwise.
Shortly after the texts were released on Friday, Trump took to Twitter arguing that he was attempting to weed out "corruption" and not conducting a political campaign against the Bidens.
"As President I have an obligation to end CORRUPTION, even if that means requesting the help of a foreign country or countries. It is done all the time. This has NOTHING to do with politics or a political campaign against the Bidens. This does have to do with their corruption!," the president wrote on Twitter on Friday.