Trump says he didn't dangle aid to Ukraine in exchange for Biden probe

President Donald Trump on Monday asserted that the transcript of his call with Ukraine’s president would show he never directly threatened to withhold military aid if the country didn't investigate Joe Biden and his son.

Then Trump quickly wavered about whether he would let the transcript be released.

While he appeared earlier to indirectly link rooting out corruption in the country — which he claims an investigation into Biden and a company connected with his son Hunter would turn up — with receiving U.S. aid, Trump walked it slightly back later in the afternoon.

“I did not ask for — I did not make a statement that you have to do this or I'm not gonna give you aid. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that,” a visibly irritated Trump told reporters Monday at the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Trump added that he hoped the media would get to “see the call” with President Volodymyr Zelensky that took place in July. Moments later, however, Trump interjected when a reporter said that the president wanted the transcript released.

“I didn't say that at all. I didn't say that at all,” he said, appearing resigned to the idea that “it may get released,” and explaining that he believed it would set a bad precedent to release a president’s calls with a foreign leader.

Earlier Monday, Trump intensified his attempts to justify the call with Zelensky in which he reportedly pushed around eight times for an investigation into Biden and his son, maintaining that he‘s merely concerned about stamping out corruption.

Trump’s defense comes as reports of the call have reinvigorated a push for his impeachment by Democrats who say the president’s decision to urge an investigation into Biden was out of bounds.

At the heart of critics’ allegations is $250 million in foreign aid meant for Ukraine that the White House mysteriously withheld before releasing under bipartisan pressure early this month. There is no evidence that Trump directly tied the release of foreign aid to an investigation into Biden and his son, though some have argued no explicit linkage was necessary.

Trump’s story has evolved somewhat in the days since House Democrats’ struggle to get their hands on an anonymous whistleblower complaint spilled out into the public and details about the contents of the complaint began leaking out into the press. Trump first danced around the subject of whether he brought up Biden, whom Trump has accused of using his vice presidential perch to fire a Ukranian prosecutor investigating the company connected to his son, Hunter.

Trump once again dismissed the latest accusations — that he was using his position of power to pressure a foreign government into investigating the Bidens — as a “witch hunt.” But Trump appeared to connect the idea to the issue of foreign aid.

“If we're supporting a country, we want to make sure that country is honest,” Trump told reporters after arriving for the U.N. General Assembly. “If you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt? One of the reasons the new president got elected is he was going to stop corruption. So it's very important that on occasion you speak to somebody about corruption. Very important.”

Biden, for his part, has forcefully denied any wrongdoing and ripped Trump and his allies for suggesting otherwise. Over the weekend in Iowa, Biden called reports of Trump’s outreach an apparent “overwhelming abuse of power.” He's also called for Trump to release the transcript of his phone call with Zelensky.

Trump also said he was “not at all” taking seriously the threat of impeachment in light of the latest revelations and again insisted that everything he said to President Volodymyr Zelensky during a late-July phone call had been aboveboard.

“We had a perfect phone call with the president of Ukraine — everybody knows it,” he said, casting the issue as a repeat of the Russia investigation, which he alleged was meant to derail his presidency. “Here we go again. They failed with Russia, they failed with recession, they failed with everything. And now they’re bringing this up.”

Monday afternoon, Trump insisted that the call with Zelensky was “innocent.” But he also blurred the line some, saying that “I think it would probably, possibly have been OK if I did” put pressure on the Ukranians to investigate the Bidens.

“But I didn't. I didn't put any pressure on them whatsoever,” he added.

Trump also pointed to a recent interview in which Ukraine‘s top diplomat appeared to back him up.

“I know what the conversation was about and I think there was no pressure,“ Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko told the Ukranian outlet Hromadske.

“There was talk, conversations are different, leaders have the right to discuss any problems that exist. This conversation was long, friendly, and it touched on a lot of questions, including those requiring serious answers,” he continued, adding that Ukraine was an independent state and wouldn't interfere to help either party in the U.S. even if it could do so “in theory.“

While Prystaiko said that world leaders should have an expectation of confidentiality when speaking, he noted that he believed that American investigtors had the right to “clear this up“ if there are allegations of undue pressure.

On Sunday, Trump appeared to acknowledge for the first time that he raised the subject in his call with the newly elected leader.

“The conversation I had was largely congratulatory. It was largely corruption — all of the corruption taking place,” Trump told reporters while departing the White House. “It was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine.”

Trump on Monday also cast doubt on the whistleblower whose complaint set off the scramble to learn more about Trump’s phone call with Zelensky. Though the intelligence community’s internal watchdog, a Trump appointee, deemed the complaint urgent and credible enough to meet the statutory threshold requiring it be turned over to Congress, Trump and his allies have painted the complainant as a partisan adversary of the president.

“These people are stone cold Crooked,” Trump said of his detractors in a tweet, before accusing the whistleblower of getting unspecified facts wrong.

“Also, who is this so-called ‘whistleblower’ who doesn’t know the correct facts. Is he on our Country’s side. Where does he come from. Is this all about Schiff & the Democrats again after years of being wrong?” he asked.

Trump also suggested that the drive to investigate the newest allegations came from Democratic disdain that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was insufficiently politically damning.

“If you look at what Biden did, Biden did what they would like to have me do,” Trump claimed Monday to reporters. “Except for one problem: I didn't do it.”