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In his comments during Thursday’s House Intelligence hearing, Texas GOP Rep. John Ratcliffe suggested that President Trump’s actions during his call with Ukrainian President Zelensky were fully above board and referred to them as “legal communications.”
Though the rationale he provided for that conclusion is misleading.
During his comments, Ratcliffe claimed that “The United States is allowed to solicit help from a foreign government in an ongoing criminal investigation, which is exactly what President Trump did in that conversation.”
However, the two investigations mentioned in the call had been terminated long before July 25, 2019, when the call occurred.
During the call, President Trump referenced two investigations:
- Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into foreign interference in the 2016 US presidential election
- Ukraine’s investigation into the owner of Burisma Holdings, a company for which Hunter Biden had sat on the board of directors.
President Trump further asked Zelensky to “find out” about “talk” that former vice president Joe Biden had “stopped the prosecution.”
Back when he was vice president, Biden had indeed called for the firing of the prosecutor overseeing the Burisma investigation, but not for any end to the investigation itself. Biden’s push against the prosecutor was based on several allegations of corruption and part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to fight corruption in Ukraine.
Burisma said all investigations against the company were closed as of 2017 and Special Counsel Mueller submitted his report on March 22, 2019, signaling the end of that investigation.