President Trump told his Ukrainian counterpart to work with the U.S. attorney general to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and offered to meet with the foreign leader at the White House after he promised to conduct such an inquiry, according to a rough transcript of the call released Wednesday.
Those statements and others in a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were so concerning that the intelligence community inspector general thought them a possible violation of campaign finance law. In late August, intelligence officials referred the matter to the Justice Department as a possible crime, but prosecutors concluded last week that the conduct was not criminal, according to senior Justice Department officials.
The document released Wednesday, in keeping with White House practice, is a memorandum of a telephone conversation and is not a verbatim account. A cautionary note on the memo of the call warns that the text reflects the notes and memories of officials in the Situation Room and that a number of factors “can affect the accuracy of the record.”