House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) did not directly answer questions on Sunday about whether it was acceptable for President Trump to ask Ukraine to look into his political opponents.
Asked by ABC’s “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos whether he agrees that it is wrong for the president to solicit investigations into political opponents, Scalise said “that’s not what was happening on the phone call.”
“When the president said ‘will you do me a favor’…that wasn’t about Joe Biden,” Scalise said.
{mosads}“The transcript clearly shows the president was asking [the] Ukrainian president to investigate his political opponents,” Stephanopoulos said, referring to a rough transcript of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, released by the White House.
“Do you think that was appropriate?” the ABC host then asked.
“That wasn’t, first of all, about political opponents,” Scalise said. “The law, George, requires President Trump or any president, when they’re sending foreign aid…to another country, to first ensure that that country’s rooting out corruption. He and Zelensky were talking about that on the phone call.”
“Do you think it’s appropriate for the president to ask the Ukrainians or the Chinese, which he’s also done in public, to investigate his domestic political opponents?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“He was not talking about the 2020 election or political opponents,” Scalise said. “He was talking about corruption relating to the 2016 election.”
The July 25 phone call is at the center of the House impeachment inquiry into Trump. On the call, Trump asked Zelensky to “look into” Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate and his son, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, according to the White House transcript.
Trump has denied wrongdoing.
He has also publicly said China should look into the Bidens.