'Wrong and Appalling': Romney Slams Trump on China, Ukraine
U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney became the first Republican senator Friday to criticize President Donald Trump’s appeal to Ukraine and China to investigate one of his main political opponents, calling the overture “wrong and appalling.”
Romney said that Trump’s soliciting a probe into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter was “brazen and unprecedented” and rejected Trump’s assertion that he was concerned only with corruption and not with weakening Biden, a leading contender in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.
“When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated,” Romney said in a statement, which he also tweeted. “By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”
Romney’s comment comes a day after Trump openly urged China to look into the Bidens' behavior.
Romney had earlier tweeted that facts needed to come out regarding reports that Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had been pressuring the president of Ukraine for the investigation. Trump withheld nearly $400 million in military aid that Congress had approved for Ukraine to fend off Russian aggression, though the money was eventually released. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
"If the President asked or pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate his political rival, either directly or through his personal attorney, it would be troubling in the extreme. Critical for the facts to come out."
Democrats began an impeachment inquiry into Trump’s actions, after the White House released a memo about Trump’s July 25 private conversation with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. During the call, Trump pressed Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens in Ukraine. The former vice president worked with Ukrainians to try to end corruption there. Hunter Biden, meanwhile, had a paid position on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas producer, whose owner had been under investigation.
On Friday, Ukraine’s general prosecutor, Russian Ryaboshapka, said his office was reviewing that earlier probe as part of wider audit of at least 15 cases closed or dismissed by his predecessor. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden.
A whistleblower submitted a complaint to Congress regarding the Ukraine phone call and later the handling of a word-for-word transcript of the call, which as stored in a separate electronic system reserved for particularly sensitive classified information. He wrote that he had received information from multiple government officials that “the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
Trump has demeaned the whistleblower, questioned his motives and insisted he has a right to know his identity.
Two Republicans senators have come forward to defend the whistleblower, who remains anonymous — Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of Iowa.
“This person appears to have followed the whistleblower protection laws and ought to be heard out and protected," Grassley said on Tuesday. "We should always work to respect whistleblowers,”
And Ernst said Thursday said, “Whistleblowers should be protected.”
In Congress, Texas Republican Rep. Will Hurd, a former CIA undercover officer who is not seeking re-election, said Friday morning on CNN: "It's terrible....China is an adversary.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray, meanwhile, declined to comment in response to Trump's public call for China and Ukraine to investigate his election rival or the release of text messages late Thursday that showed how American diplomats dangled a White House meeting for Ukraine's president in return for a Biden probe.
In May, Wray had testifed before Congress: "I think my view is that if any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation state or anybody acting on behalf of a nation state about influencing or interfering with our election, then that’s something that the FBI would want to know about."
Photo Credit: AP
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