House Speaker Nancy Pelosi voiced concern Friday over U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments that suggested retaliation against people who helped an intelligence whistleblower whose complaint about Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s leader is at the centre of the House impeachment probe.
In the call, Trump prods President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden, who was involved in the Barack Obama administration’s policy on Ukraine, in part during a time when his son Hunter sat on the board of a holding company for an energy company based there.
White House officials took extraordinary steps to “lock down” information on Trump’s call, even moving the transcript to a secret computer system, according to the whistleblower’s complaint.
Trump lashed out Thursday, saying whoever provided information to the whistleblower is “close to a spy.” He suggested that was treason, an act punishable by death.
Pelosi said she was concerned for both the whistleblower and those who spoke to the unidentified person.
“I’m very worried. Very worried,” Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I think what the president said goes beyond irresponsible. It’s dangerous.”
In what was meant to be a salute to the workers from the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Trump let loose with a threatening tone Thursday.
“I want to know who’s the person — who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy,” Trump said, according to audio released by the Los Angeles Times. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason — we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
Pelosi told MSNBC’s Morning Joe earlier in the day that the House panels conducting the impeachment probe will make sure there’s no retaliation against people who provided information in the case. She declined to provide a timeline for the House impeachment investigation, saying “the facts will lead us.”
“They will take the time that they need, and we won’t have the calendar be the arbiter,” she said, but she added, “it doesn’t have to drag on.”
AG ‘has gone rogue’: Pelosi
She said she expects the impeachment probe to focus on Trump’s pressure on the Ukrainian president at a time when he was temporarily withholding military aid to the country.
“I think we have to stay focused, as far as the public is concerned, on the fact that the president of the United States used taxpayer dollars to shake down the leader of another country for his own political gain,” she said.
Pelosi was responding to a question on whether she was concerned about the handling of Trump phone calls with other foreign leaders. The whistleblower alleged they learned that senior White House officials were “directed” by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system where such records are typically stored.
Pelosi also had some choice words for Attorney General William Barr, who is mentioned in the rough transcript the White House released this week of the July 25 call in which Trump urges Zelensky to work with Barr and with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate Biden.
Barr is the nation’s top law enforcement officer and has found himself repeatedly thrust into the political fray, as he did when he cast special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe as a vindication for Trump. Mueller pointedly said he was not exonerating Trump of obstructing justice.
“He’s going rogue,” Pelosi said of the attorney general, although the Justice Department insists he was unaware the Republican president had said he would help investigate a political rival.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s majority leader, told NPR on Friday that if the House goes ahead and impeaches the president, “the Senate immediately goes into a trial.”
The Kentucky Republican had not previously indicated whether the Senate would act on any articles of impeachment, though the Constitution anticipates that it would. A conviction would require a two-thirds majority in the event of a trial in the Republican-held chamber.
No major push to re-investigate in Ukraine
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) said Friday it still had an open investigation into activity at gas company Burisma between 2010 and 2012.
“Changes to the board of Burisma Limited, which are currently the object of international attention, took place only in May 2014, and therefore are not and never were the subject of [the anti-corruption bureau’s] investigation,” the bureau’s statement said.
At the moment, detectives and prosecutors do not understand what they are supposed to be investigating.– Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine prosecutor
But Nazar Kholodnytsky, the head of anti-corruption investigations at Ukraine’s Prosecutor’s Office, told a national radio network there that the investigation related to the 2010-2012 period is not particularly active.
“At the moment, detectives and prosecutors do not understand what they are supposed to be investigating,” Kholodnytsky said.
Hunter Biden was a director on Burisma’s board from 2014 to 2018, according to documents filed by the company in Cyprus, where it is registered.
The open investigation into Burisma covers a period when Ukraine was governed by a pro-Russia ally, Viktor Yanukovich. Burisma hired Biden after Yanukovich was toppled in a popular revolt in 2014 and replaced by a pro-Western government.
At the time, many Ukrainian firms were seeking to distance themselves from their relationships with the previous, pro-Moscow authorities, and some invited Western public figures to sit on their boards.
Joe Biden led an international push to oust Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was perceived to be lax on dealing with allegations of corruption within the country. Petro Poroshenko, the president at the time, fired Shokin in 2016, a move that had the support of the European Union and International Money Fund.
Shokin says he was fired to prevent him from investigating Hunter Biden, despite the multilateral nature of the effort.
Kholodnytsky said that were Poroshenko to make a statement about being pressured into removing Shokin from his post, then an investigation must be launched.
However, he said, neither his agency nor the NABU had received such a statement thus far.
Likewise, he said his department couldn’t initiate an investigation based solely on comments made in the United States.