Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) repeated his belief that there was no quid pro quo demand by President Donald Trump when he asked Ukraine for help in investigating the financial dealings of the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. Johnson made his defense of Trump on the Mark Levin Show that aired Sunday night on Fox News.
Johnson said he spoke with Trump at the White House in May and the president did not mention the Biden investigation as a reason for withholding military aid.
“It’s obvious. Ukraine is a corrupt place and any president ought to be asking a pretty hard question, is this a place where we really ought to be providing support to,” Johnson said. “And secondly, and he’s been very consistent on this, why isn’t Europe stepping to the plate?”
Johnson said he left the meeting realizing that he had “a sales job” to do.
Biden’s son Hunter served on the board of one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies while Biden was Vice President and spearheading the United States’ effort to combat political corruption in the former Soviet republic. Ukraine has been in conflict with Russia since the latter country seized Crimea, a peninsula on the Black Sea.
The United States is backing Ukraine in the conflict, but military aid was temporarily halted by the Trump Administration. At issue is whether the aid halt was meant to get Ukraine to cooperate with investigating a domestic opponent of Trump.
A transcript of a phone conversation released by the White House shows Trump asking Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy about an investigation into a conspiracy theory involving a missing server from the Democratic National Committee and a supposed coverup by a rich Ukrainian. Trump mentions it right after Zelenskiy’s request for more arms for Ukraine’s self-defense.
Trump also requested Zelenskiy to meet with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who is acting as Trump’s lawyer and is doing opposition research in Ukraine on Hunter Biden’s activities there.
Johnson, who serves as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and is a supporter of Zelenskiy, told Levin he was told by the president in August that there was no quid pro quo on military aid. He said Trump told the senator that the United States was withholding aid because of a lack of a European commitment and because of corruption in Ukraine.
“I then brought up this rumor I heard, is there something in the works, I mean does Zelenskiy have to do something or Ukraine have to show you something in order for this support to be released?” Johnson said. “And that’s where he made the adamant, vehement, angry denial. Again, I describe it as, expletive deleted that no way, no, no I would never do that, who told you that?”
Johnson reiterated that the conversation with Trump came before the revelation that a “whistle blower” within the government alleged that the president was withholding aid to Ukraine until they cooperated with Giuliani.
The senator blamed bias in the media for promoting the idea that Trump was holding aid back from Ukraine until they helped investigate his domestic foes instead of investigating ties between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president and the Ukrainian government at the time.
“When people say that the only campaign that was literally cooperating and colluding with a foreign government, it wasn’t the Trump campaign. It was the Hillary Clinton campaign,” Johnson said.
Levin asked Johnson if the FBI and the CIA “set up” Trump.
“I have my suspicions, let’s put it that way,” Johnson said. “And again, when you got {former FBI investigator} Peter Strzok texting Lisa Page about his ‘sisters’ {in the CIA} that are leaking like mad, what are they worried about? He talks about them being political. They’re kicking in overdrive.”
Johnson was referring to past reports of Strzok referring to leaks coming from the CIA about the investigation into Russian ties with the Trump presidential campaign, a point Johnson attempted to make on Meet the Press two weeks ago when he was interrupted by NBC’s Chuck Todd.
