Report: Trump involved Pence in Ukraine pressure campaign
On multiple occasions, President Trump involved Vice President Mike Pence in his attempts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into launching an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, U.S. officials told The Washington Post.
Trump brought up the Bidens several times during his July 25 phone call with Zelensky, and officials said Keith Kellogg, Pence's national security adviser, was listening in on the conversation. In May, Trump ordered Pence not to attend Zelensky's inauguration, and in early September, he had Pence inform Zelensky that U.S. aid "was still being withheld while demanding more aggressive action on corruption," the Post reports. The Ukrainians, the Post says, "probably understood action on corruption to include the investigation" of the Bidens.
People close to Pence told the Post he didn't know anything about Trump trying to get an investigation of Biden launched. White House officials said Pence would have received the transcript of Trump's phone call with Zelensky by July 26, and it would have been in the briefing materials he received ahead of his Sept. 1 meeting with Zelensky in Warsaw.
