Transcript of Donald Trump's call to Ukraine's president is published and reveals he DID ask leader to investigate Joe Biden and work with Rudy Giuliani but did NOT tie it to aid - and Bill Barr's Justice Department has ALREADY cleared him

The White House on Wednesday released the bombshell transcript of President Donald Trump's phone call with the president of Ukraine where Trump urges his counterpart to investigate Joe Biden and work directly with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani – and even brings up the DNC's hacked email server. 

But the transcript does not show Trump tying the investigation to aid for Ukraine as he spoke to Volodymyr Zelensky, the quid pro quo which some reports had suggested it contained.

The call forms part of the whistle-blower complaint from an unknown intelligence official which alleges a pattern of wrongdoing by the president in his dealings with Ukraine, but which has been blocked from being given to Congress. 

The unprecedented publication of a transcript of a president's call to a foreign leader is unprecedented was accompanied by two bombshell revelations from the Department of Justice, where officials said:  

• The acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, and the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, referred the whistle-blower complaint to the Department of Justice for possible criminal investigation into Trump's actions;
• The Justice Department, led by Attorney General Bill Barr, has already declined to criminally investigate the call - effectively clearing the president.

At the United Nations Donald Trump called Democratic plans to impeach him 'a political war,' and trashed critics who had suggested the phonecall was evidence of wrongdoing.

'There was no pressure, the way you had that built up, that call, it was going to be the call from hell,' he said.

'It turned out to be a nothing call other than a lot of people said, I never knew you could be so nice.' 

But Adam Schiff, Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, compared the call to a 'classic mob shakedown.' 

In the Senate, Republican Mitt Romney said it was 'deeply troubling,' but Trump ally Lindsey Graham aggressively defended it and said: 'To impeach any president over a phone call like this would be insane.'

In the call, the president mentions political rival Biden by name, seeks an inquiry into a company tied to Biden's surviving son, Hunter, and predicts Ukraine's economy will do 'better and better' - but does not explicitly tie the United States' aid to the country to the investigation he demands.

He urges the president to contact Giuliani, who this summer called off a planned mission to Ukraine after bringing up a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden served on the board. 

'There is a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great,' Trump says, according to the transcript.

'Biden went about bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... it sounds horrible to me,' the president told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

The Ukrainian president assured Trump: 'The next prosecutor general will be 100 per cent my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start. As a new prosecutor in September. 

'He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation.'

Ukraine's president Zelensky said he wanted to 'drain the swamp' and called Trump a 'great teacher for all of us,' according to the transcript.

Trump told his counterpart: 'I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.'

'Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great,' Trump said.  

Democrats were already planning to scour the transcript for any suggestion of a quid-pro-quo – which Trump has explicitly denied offering.

The transcript shows no such direct linkage – although Trump does appear to mention a variety of ways in which Ukraine might benefit from acceding to his requests.

He tells Zelensky 'I would like you do us a favor though' when he asks him to find out what happened with the Democratic National Committee's server - immediately after Zelensky thanked him for U.S. defense support and said he was about to buy American weaponry.

He appears to reference an unnamed oligarch when he says 'I guess you have one of your wealthy people …' without apparently finishing the thought.

Trump does not appear to mention $250 million in security aid to Ukraine that the president later said he held up before making the call.

He does, however, say the U.S. does 'a lot' for Ukraine, and trashes Germany's and the Europeans' efforts.

'I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it's something that you should really ask them about,' Trump said.

He adds that German Chancellor Angela Merkel 'doesn't do anything.' He said the U.S. 'has been very, very good to Ukraine.'

He also trashes the Obama-nominated ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich, who stayed over into his own administration. She is a career diplomat and remains a State Department employee. 

'The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news,' Trump said, and the people she was dealing with in Ukraine 'were bad news.'

In response, Zelenksy tells Trump that the new prosecutor will be '100 per cent my person, my candidate' and promises: 'He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned' – meaning the one affiliated with Hunter Biden.

Zelensky also bashes Yovanovich, prompting Trump to answer: 'Well, she's going to go through some things.' 

He also appeared to reference the the DNC server which was hacked before the 2016 election, asking Zelensky to 'find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine.' 

He asked Zelensky 'to do us a favor' by investigating whether Ukraine is in possession of computer data linked to hacking of a Democratic National Committee server in 2016.

He mentioned Crowdstrike, a company that helped the Democratic National Committee manage its computer network when Russian agents penetrated it.

Trump has vented at his political rallies that the FBI in 2016 never made an effort to seize the server and analyze its contents.

'I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it,' Trump said in the July call with Zelensky.

'I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.'  

The only person to directly bring up U.S. security aid for Ukraine at a time it was being held up is Zelensky – who says Ukraine is 'ready to continue to cooperate for next steps.'

Ukraine desperately wants the aid as it continues to clash with Russia following its 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea.

'The United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation,' Zelensky said, mentioning U.S. imposed sanctions that Trump resisted when Congress tightened them after his election.

'I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense,' Zelensky continues. 'We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes,' he said, mentioning Javelin missiles, a portable anti-tank munition.  

Zelensky flattered Trump and told him on his last trip to New York he stayed at Trump Tower.  

He assured Trump: 'We will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation.' 

The two men talked about meeting on Trump's then-planned trip to Poland. Zelensky suggested a joint trip to Ukraine. 'We can either take my plane and go to Ukraine or we can take your plane, which is probably much better than mine,' Zelensky said.  

Trump's presidential campaign immediately teed off on the release of the transcript, accusing Democrats of acting out of 'pure hatred.'

'Because of their pure hatred for President Trump, desperate Democrats and the salivating media already had determined their mission: take out the President,' said Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.

'The fact is that the President wants to fight the corruption in Washington, where the Bidens, the Clintons, and other career politicians have abused their power for personal gain for decades. The facts prove the President did nothing wrong,' he said. 'This is just another hoax from Democrats and the media, contributing to the landslide re-election of President Trump in 2020.'

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, however, saw no reason to back off his statement that the information is 'troubling.'

'This remains deeply troubling and we'll see where it leads but the first reaction is, troubling,' he said at a forum hosted by the Atlantic magazine. But he declined to say whether it was an 'impeachable offense.'

Asked about the quid pro quo issue, Romney said: 'I don't know that I've focused so much on the quid pro quo element … There's just the question of… if the president of the United States asks or presses the leader for a foreign country to carry out an investigation of a political nature, that's troubling. And I feel that. If there were a quid pro quo, that would take it to an entirely more extreme level,' Romney said.

The transcript became a political hot potato this week as Democrats clamored for its release with predictions that it would show Trump committing impeachable offenses.

They argue that Trump's request for a new investigation into the Bidens was motivated by a desire to politically cripple the former vice president, who was then thought of as his main rival in the 2020 presidential election. 

Trump released the call transcript the morning after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House was conducting a formal impeachment inquiry of the president. 

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