The White House has finally released a rough transcript of US president Donald Trump’s first phone call with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, days after Trump promised to release the phone conversations.
The April telephone conversation he had with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine differed from a summary of the call released by the White House months ago where the White House claimed both president’s discussed corruption.
Unlike Trump’s July phone call that has become the focus of an impeachment inquiry in Congress where he told Zelensky to investigate Joe Burden’s son for corruption, the April phone call was more light hearted and mild where both lwaders praised each other and said they’ll like to improve ties between both nations.
In the April call, Trump invited Zelenskiy to the White House, according to the four-page memo, which says in a footnote that it is “not a verbatim transcript of a discussion.” Zelenskiy had just won the election that day, defeating incumbent Petro Poroshenko by about 75% to 25%.
“The President took the unprecedented steps to declassify and release the transcripts of both of his phone calls with President Zelensky so that every American can see he did nothing wrong,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement
Read the rough transcript released Friday below.