House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff says Ukraine call transcript 'reflect a conversation far more damning than I or many others had imagined.' 'What those notes reflect is a classic mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader.'
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who is overseeing the congressional investigation into the whistleblower complaint concerning President Donald Trump's phone call with Ukraine's president, reacted harshly on Wednesday to the White House release of a transcript of that call, saying it read like"a classic mafia-like shakedown."
"The notes of the call reflect a conversation far more damning that I or many others had imagined," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said. "At the same time a president of the United States who immediately after the Ukraine president expresses the needs for further weapons, tells the Ukrainian president that he has a favor to ask," he said.
"What adds another layer of depravity to this conversation is that the president of the United States then invokes the attorney general of the United States as well as his personal lawyer as emissaries, in the case of the attorney general, as the official head of the U.S. Department, the Department of Justice that will be part and parcel in this,"he continued.
Republicans had mixed reactions."What we’ve seen from the transcript itself is deeply troubling," Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said in an interview at The Atlantic Festival."From my point of view, to impeach any president over a phone call like this would be insane," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said.
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