US President Donald Trump on Sunday said he wants and deserves to meet the anonymous whistle-blower at the center of the fast-moving scandal that has triggered an impeachment probe against him.
The whistle-blower, who could testify soon before the US Congress, fears for their safety if their identity is revealed, a lawyers’ letter released by CBS News said.
Battling the deepest crisis of his presidency, Trump in a series of tweets railed against accusations that he should be impeached for urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden, his potential White House challenger in next year’s presidential election.
“Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called ‘Whistle-blower,’ represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way,” Trump said.
Trump accused Adam Schiff, chairman of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, of lying to Congress last week about what Trump said to Zelenskiy in the July telephone call.
“He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump’s Republican aides have sought to turn the tables on Democrats pushing for his impeachment, insisting that the president was the true “whistle-blower” as he had asked Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son for corruption.
“This individual is a saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government,” Trump adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News Sunday. “Getting to the bottom of a corruption scandal in Ukraine is in the American national interest.”
Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has emerged as his point man in the Ukraine scandal, led the charge along with Miller in combative Sunday talk show appearances.
Brandishing what he said were affidavits incriminating Biden’s son Hunter over his work at a Ukrainian company, Giuliani said Trump was duty-bound to raise the issue with Kiev.
“If he hadn’t asked them to investigate Biden, he would have violated the constitution,” Giuliani told ABC’s This Week, saying that “Donald Trump was framed by the Democrats.”
The Democratic-led House of Representatives launched an official impeachment inquiry last week accusing Trump of a “mafia-like shakedown” of Zelenskiy aimed at damaging Joe Biden.
Trump and his allies claim Joe Biden, as then-US president Barack Obama’s vice president, pressured Kiev to fire the country’s top prosecutor to protect his son, who sat on the board of a gas company, Burisma Holdings, accused of corrupt practices.
There has been no evidence of illegal conduct or wrongdoing in Ukraine by the Bidens.
However, a transcript of the July call shows Trump pushing for Kiev to revisit the matter, saying both Giuliani and US Attorney General Bill Barr would be in touch.
For Democrats, that amounted to a smoking gun, leading US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to finally approve an impeachment process she opposed as a risky distraction from next year’s election battle.
Pelosi on Sunday called for Trump to “speak the truth. Honor your oath of office to the Constitution of the United States.”
“Don’t make this any worse than it already is,” she said.
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