The Trump administration has released details of a phone conversation in July that has triggered a US impeachment inquiry against the president. Reacting to the impeachment inquiry, Donald Trump said it was the “single greatest witch hunt in American history”.
According to the notes, Donald Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to look into corruption claims involving the son of Joe Biden, Mr Trump’s possible rival in next year’s presidential election.
Concerns about the call were initially raised by a whistleblower.
The Democrats accused Mr Trump of seeking foreign help to smear a rival.
Under the US constitution, a president can be impeached for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours” – a procedure that can lead to removal from office.
In July, Mr Trump froze military aid to Ukraine but he has insisted that this was not used to put pressure on the new government in Kiev.
In the call, the US president raised unsubstantiated allegations that former vice president Mr Biden sought to interfere with a Ukrainian prosecutor’s investigation into his son Hunter.
Speaking to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Mr Trump said: “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that.”
In the days before the phone call, Mr Trump ordered advisers to freeze $400m (£323m) in military aid for Ukraine, prompting speculation that he was holding out the money as leverage for information on the Bidens.
