‘No comment’: Ukraine president won’t say if Trump personally asked for his country’s help with Joe Biden

Al-Monitor reporter Laura Rozen tweeted a list of all of the foreign leaders that President Donald Trump called from June to August 12, 2019. Of those leaders, House committee chairs said they intend to look specifically at a July 25 conversation between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Independent reported Wednesday that Trump allegedly told Zelensky to "reopen" an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.

Monday, three House committees opened investigations into Trump and advisor Rudy Giuliani for pressuring the Ukraine government to find a scandal about the former vice president or his son Hunter Biden.

Trump's team alleged that Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion from Ukraine if a prosecutor wasn't fired. The prosecutor was investigating a gas company on which Hunter Biden sits on the board. The problem for Trump and Giuliani is that the investigation had been moved to the back burner in 2015, well before Biden's trip because the Obama administration was trying to crack down on corruption in the country.

“There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky,” former official Vitaliy Kasko told Bloomberg News. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.”

There was also a U.K. probe into the company, but the problem there too was that the younger Biden joined the board after the U.K. authorities asked for information in their probe against Zlochevsky about possible money laundering allegations

“Putting himself before his country, Donald Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2016 election," Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to CNBC in early September. "His campaign’s leadership also met with a foreign national offering ‘high level and sensitive information’ as ‘part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.’ Now he is abusing the office of the presidency and jeopardizing national security aid to a key ally in order to pressure them to prop-up a comprehensively discredited conspiracy theory that The Washington Post editorial board has labeled ‘bogus on its face.’”

“This is beneath us as Americans, and it reinforces a truth that Trump and his allies have made patently clear for months: he is terrified of facing Joe Biden,” Bates said.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that a whistleblower knew of a conversation between Trump and a foreign leader in which Trump made a request that the whistleblower found to be so disturbing they reported it to the inspector general. Intelligence officers are required to sign an agreement that they are mandated to report such issues, according to one former FBI agent.

BBC reporter Jonah Fisher asked Zelensky’s office about the call with Trump, but didn't receive an answer.

"I asked her whether Trump asked Zelensky to start [an] investigation into Biden in return for US military support," tweeted Fisher.