The Daily - ‘I Would Like You to Do Us a Favor’

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

The White House released a reconstructed transcript of President Trump’s phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine. In it, Mr. Trump asks for an investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr., a potential 2020 rival. We consider what that request means for the impeachment inquiry now underway. Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, who covers national security and federal investigations for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Different interpretations of the phone call are shaping a debate over whether the president committed high crimes and misdemeanors.Read the full declassified record of the call, with annotations.Here’s what we know so far about the whistle-blower complaint that set off this controversy.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the White House releases a reconstruction of President Trump's phone call to the leader of Ukraine. In it, Trump says, quote, I would like you to do us a favor. quote, I would like you to do us a favor. It's Thursday, September 26th. Mike Schmidt, tell us about this document that was released on Wednesday morning. So since this story began, we've all been trying to get a transcript of a July call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine who had just come into office. And today we got the closest thing to that, but not exactly that.

It's actually not a transcript. It's based on notes and voice recognition software that was apparently listening in. And it does sort of read like a transcript, but the White House says cannot be treated as such. Okay, so it's transcript-like. Correct. I have this feeling that this document, this not quite a transcript, is going to be the subject of enormous debate and scrutiny in the coming weeks and months. So I think that you and I should just read some of it. Not all of it, but a lot of it. I'm going to start at the top and ask that you read Trump and I will read Zelensky. Why do you get to choose? Most.

I'm going to give you a copy. Okay. So at the top of the document, it begins, unclassified, and then struck out are the words, eyes only, do not copy. Memorandum of telephone conversation. Subject, telephone conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine. Date, time, July 25th, 2019, 9.03 to 9.33 a.m. Eastern Time. And then

the president begins. So go ahead, Mike. Congratulations on a great victory. We all watched from the United States, and you did a terrific job. The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn't given much of a chance, and you ended up winning easily. It's a fantastic achievement. Congratulations. You are absolutely right, Mr. President.

We did win big, and we worked hard for this. We worked a lot. But I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections. And yes, it is true that these were unique elections. We were in a unique situation that we were able to achieve a unique success. I'm able to tell you the following. The first time The president laughs. That's a very good idea. I think your country is very happy about that. Okay, Mike, this is all very complimentary between the two leaders, but especially Zelensky. Zelensky's basically speaking Trump's language.

He goes on to say that he's going to drain the swamp in Ukraine. He's basically saying, I'm modeling myself after you. Correct. I'm a mini Trump. Okay. So where should we go next? Well, basically at the top, Trump lays out how good he and the United States have been to Ukraine. Okay. Let's read that section. he and the United States have been to Ukraine. Okay, let's read that section.

So Trump says, I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time, much more than the European countries are doing, and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk, and I think it's something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel, she talks Ukraine, but she doesn't do anything.

A lot of the European countries are the same way, so I think it's something you want to look at, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal, necessarily, because things are happening that are not good, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. Yes, you are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1000%. And then Zelensky says, I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically, we are almost ready to buy more javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

Okay, Mike, so what's happening here? Off the bat, Trump makes a strong argument for how good he and the United States have been to Ukraine. He lays out how that help is far better than anything they've gotten from the European countries. And it looks, on one hand, like he's building an argument towards potentially asking for something. But at the same time, it's a common refrain from Trump that we've heard from before he ran for president, that the United States pays too much to other countries and major world powers like countries in Europe don't pay their fair share. And what is Trump referring to when he says that the U.S. has been so good to Ukraine, so helpful? That the United States has given hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to help Ukraine protect themselves. They have Russia to the east of them. They're very afraid of being overrun by them. And this money has helped them

build up their military in self-defense. And what's significant about the fact that the president is bringing this up right away? So Congress had just approved $400 million in aid to go to Ukraine, but Trump had ordered his aides to put a halt on it. Money that Ukraine, from everything you just said, would probably very much want. That they say they need to protect themselves. And is President Zelensky aware of that fact when he's on the call? We don't know. But whether he knew it or not, if you're the leader of a country like that and relying on hundreds of millions of dollars from someone else, it's probably on your mind.

And what do we know about why the president is trying to withhold this U.S. aid? We have learned a lot about this story in the past week. But one of the huge unanswered questions is, why is it that Trump was holding up the money? Was it simply that he thought we were giving too much money away and he thought the Europeans should be contributing more? Or it's what he brings up next on the call. Which is what?

What he says is that he would like for Zelensky to do him a favor. But it's actually two favors. The first relates to the 2016 election. Let me read it to you. Okay. I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot, and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine.

And then the president says, I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people, and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, the whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance. Mike, how do you interpret that? believed that the real collusion was between Ukrainians and Democrats who fed bad information to the FBI to get the investigation going that ultimately becomes the Mueller investigation. Is there any evidence of that? No. It's an elaborate theory that involves allegations about a company called CrowdStrike and how the DNC was hacked and whether fake documents were created to undermine the legitimacy of Paul Manafort, the president's campaign chairman. It's a very elaborate plot. But if Trump were ever able to

prove it, he would be able to show that the Russia investigation and the allegations about ties between his campaign and Russia were built on false information. So the first favor here is Trump asking Zelensky for evidence that might confirm this theory he has about the origins of the Russia investigation. might confirm this theory he has about the origins of the Russia investigation. He's trying to show that the entire thing was built on false information drummed up by the Democrats. And Zelensky responds that he's all about it. He says, we are open to a new page of

cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. In other words, I will help you. Correct. And then he goes on to say that one of his assistants has been in touch with the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who's been leading the effort to prove these allegations true. He says he very much looks forward to having his folks meet with Giuliani, who's going to come over and look into these things. Then Trump asks a second favor. Trump asks Zelensky to investigate allegations about Joe Biden's son. Let's read that section. The president says,

Let's read that section. The president says, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. So if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me. Mike, what's happening here?

This is a longstanding theory Trump has had that Joe Biden had a prosecutor fired in Ukraine to stop him from looking into allegations about a company his son worked for. And he says, I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call, and I'm also going to have Attorney General Bill Barr give you a call. To talk about these Biden allegations. Yeah. Trump says, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. So the president is drawing his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the attorney general for the United States, Bill Barr, into this attempt to have Ukraine investigate Joe Biden, his political rival.

Correct. And hopefully the fruits of that investigation will be passed back to the Justice Department. For what purpose? Well, there's really only one thing the Justice Department does in this area, and that would be a criminal prosecution. So in addition to asking a foreign government to get involved in the election, it seems he's implying he's asking his Justice Department to do the same. Yeah. How can this foreign country help my own Justice Department go after the candidate who may run against him in a year for president? Mike, is it important that there's no explicit offer of something for something else? No explicit quid pro quo for these favors that the president is asking for. He didn't say, for example, if you don't do these favors, I won't give you aid. Or he didn't

say, by the way, I'm not sure if you know this, but I have withheld some aid and you're only going to get it if you do these favors. Sure. But in any type of scheme, it's not like someone sits down and writes in a document, here's how we're breaking the law or here's how I'm setting up the quid pro quo. But moments earlier in the call, he had brought up the aid the United States was providing to Ukraine. States was providing to Ukraine. So you could see where one reading of this document would be that the president had built the leverage at the top of the call and then moved in later on to ask for the favor. So the other side of the favor is just in the air because the president is talking about just how supportive the U.S. is of Ukraine. It was one of the major topics they were discussing literally minutes earlier. What's the other reading of this? That the discussions about aid to Ukraine and the favors are unrelated.

They just happen to be in the same call. Correct. Donald Trump is talking about a lot of different things, bringing up a lot of different topics. So let's talk about how this call ends. It sort of ends as it began, with flattery. Right. Zelensky says, it might be a very good idea for you to travel to Ukraine. We can either take my plane and go to Ukraine, or we can take your plane, which is probably much better than mine. Trump says, okay, we can work that out. I look forward to seeing you in Washington and maybe in Poland because I think we are going to be there at that time. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Congratulations on a fantastic job you've done. The whole world was

watching. I'm not sure it was so much of an upset, but congratulations. Thank you, Mr. President. Bye-bye. We'll be right back. Okay, so what comes of this call? Trump tells Zelensky that Attorney General Barr will call him. Zelensky says he will be all over this investigation and do as much as he can for President Trump.

Does any of that stuff actually come to fruition? So as the readout of the call was released, Barr puts out a statement saying that he knows nothing of this and that he's had no discussions with the Ukrainians on this subject. What about Zelensky and what he did? We have no evidence that these investigations have actually been conducted. So it's possible that what was discussed in this call kind of just fizzled out. Maybe, but I think that there's still a lot here that we don't know.

Okay. So Mike, we're learning about the contents of this call the day after the Democrats announced that they would open an impeachment inquiry. What does this do to that process? Well, I certainly think it strengthens it. It's a fresh stream of evidence that shows the president trying to get a foreign country

to meddle in our election and to help our Justice Department go after his rivals. And it's pretty clear. It's this self-contained document. And it's sort of simple and easy to understand. It's a back and forth between two leaders you can see what trump wants and how he's trying to use his influence on the other side remember trump has been accused of so many different things many of them incredibly complicated involving ideas like collusion or obstruction of justice or Russian names that we've never heard of. And in this case, it's a simple call. And I think that that's what makes it so powerful. It feels like a week ago, there was a whistleblower complaint.

And then suddenly reporting on the existence of a phone call. And I know that there's a lot about the whistleblower complaint that we don't know, but if you're the whistleblower, it feels like a fair bit has been accomplished by filing that complaint at this point. And he still hasn't spoken to Congress. He still hasn't testified or laid it out for the entire country to see. So it's been pretty powerful in this short period of time. I wonder if the reason why this feels so powerful and compelling to so many of these Democrats in a way that the Russia investigation did not is because it's the president's own words. We never

had testimony from the president in the Mueller investigation. He always declined to do that. And when it came to conversations that were claimed to have been had by James Comey, for example, the president just said, there were two of us in a room, I dispute it. It was always secondhand. It was someone like Comey testifying, or we were reading his memos. In this case, you see the president behind closed doors in his own words. And the documents are being released by his White House. Correct. And you

can see exactly how he tries to use his office when he's quietly on the phone with a foreign leader. Mike, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. On Wednesday night, the White House sent a copy of the whistleblower's complaint to Congress. The Times reports that the intelligence officer who filed the complaint

raised alarms not just about the content of the call between Trump and Zelensky, but also about how the White House handled records of the conversation. In the House, support for an impeachment inquiry reached a major milestone, with 218 members supporting the move, a majority of those in the chamber.

Of those, 217 are Democrats, one is independent, and zero are Republican. In the Senate, where any impeachment would eventually arrive, Republicans appeared deeply divided over the contents of Trump's call with Ukraine's president. I did read the transcript. It remains troubling in the extreme. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah expressed disapproval, while Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wrote on Twitter, quote, Wow. Impeachment over this. quote, wow, impeachment over this.

During a news conference, President Trump denied that he had offered anything to Ukraine's president in return for his request to investigate Biden and his son. You take a look at that call. It was perfect. I didn't do it. There was no quid pro quo. But in a statement, the heads of the House Democratic committees investigating the president rejected Trump's claim that a quid pro quo was essential to their inquiries. Let's be clear, the statement read. No quid pro quo is required to betray our country. Trump asked a foreign government to interfere in our elections. That is betrayal enough.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. So we will give the head of the state a compensation. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been chosen to try to form a new government, despite a close election that seemed to represent a defeat for him. Israel's president chose Netanyahu, a right-wing leader, over his chief opponent, Benny Gantz, a more moderate figure, after concluding that Netanyahu stood a better chance of creating a majority coalition. But Netanyahu failed to do just that five months ago, after the last election, and he remains, for now, many seats short of a majority.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you tomorrow.