House backs resolution rebuking White House efforts to block release of whistleblower report
Last edited Wed Sep 25, 2019, 07:11 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: Washington Post
The nonbinding resolution criticizes the “unprecedented and highly inappropriate efforts” to question the whistleblower's credibility. The White House released a rough transcript Wednesday of Trump's July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling him to work with U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr to investigate the conduct of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The administration transmitted the whistleblower's complaint to Congress before the vote, and members of the Intelligence committees had a chance to review it.
On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, President Trump dismissed Democrats’ move to open an impeachment inquiry against him, denied that he pressured Ukraine’s leader to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and suggested that the White House should release even more records of his communications.
The July 25 call has been the subject of intense scrutiny since The Washington Post reported last week that a whistleblower had come forward with concerns about the matter.
Trump has acknowledged publicly that he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden’s son, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that came under scrutiny by authorities there.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-ukraine-controversy/2019/09/25/9390e9b8-df82-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html
Full headline: Live updates: House backs resolution rebuking White House efforts to block release of whistleblower report about Trump’s call with Ukraine leader
Original article -
This story will be updated
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-ukraine-controversy/2019/09/25/9390e9b8-df82-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html
Here's some more info on the resolution -
September 25, 2019 BRANDI BUCHMAN
WASHINGTON (CN) – The House of Representatives voted 421-0 to pass a non-binding resolution rebuking the Trump administration’s refusal to release the whistleblower complaint and condemning its activities directly involving the President Donald Trump and Ukraine, shortly after select lawmakers got a first look at the document.
Members of the House Intelligence Committee reviewed the whistleblower complaint in a secure committee room late Wednesday afternoon. Speaking to reporters after viewing the complaint, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called the allegations “deeply disturbing” and “very credible” and said they will help chart a path forward for the committee’s investigation. “I think that what this courageous individual has done has exposed serious wrongdoing and I think it’s a travesty that this complaint was withheld as long as it was because it was an urgent matter and is an urgent matter and there was simply no basis to keep this from the committee,” Schiff told reporters Wednesday.
Representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who sits on the Intelligence Committee, said nothing in the complaint changed the “urgency and the credibility of the issue.” He would not say whether the complaint went beyond what was in a memo the White House sent out earlier in the day detailing Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president that is reportedly at the center of the complaint.
The resolution calls for the whistleblower’s complaint to be forwarded to the appropriate congressional committees for review and also calls for the whistleblower to be allowed to speak freely with committee lawmakers. It also formally calls for the preservation of all records related to the complaint and demands that Trump cease discrediting the whistleblower openly. Speaking last week in the Oval Office, Trump – who admitted he did not know the identity of the whistleblower – told reporters the complaint was a “political hack job” and “ridiculous.”
https://www.courthousenews.com/house-rebukes-trump-for-blocking-whistleblower-complaint/
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