Kellyanne Conway Confirms Trump Withheld Aid From Ukraine, Admits Biden is ‘Relevant’
Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox & Friends to fight back against the steady raft of reports on President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating a political opponent. In the interview, she confirmed new reporting that Trump withheld military aid from the country before a call with its president about Joe Biden.
After comparing the Ukraine controversy to the Russia investigation, Conway argued pundits have stated: “things they don’t possibly know could be true.”
“Like what?” Fox host Steve Doocy asked.
“The president pressured him eight times to investigate Joe Biden — how can they possibly know that?” Conway said.
“The Washington Post and the New York Times,” co-host Brian Kilmeade noted. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump asked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to investigate Joe Biden. Shortly after that reporting, Trump confirmed that he had spoken with Zelensky about Biden.
Conway downplayed Trump bringing up Biden with the president of Ukraine, casting it as part of a broader effort to ensure the country cracked down on corruption.
“The president had a congratulatory call with the newly elected president of Ukraine. He won in a landslide based on his anti-corruption agenda,” Conway said. “And yes Joe Biden is relevant here.”
Conway referenced a video of Biden speaking at a 2018 event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, in which he recounted his efforts as vice president to have Ukraine’s top prosecutor fired.
Viktor Shokin — widely seen as corrupt — was voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament shortly after Biden’s efforts. But the vice president wasn’t alone in pushing for Shokin’s ouster. Per the New York Times:
His dismissal had been sought not just by Mr. Biden, but also by others in the Obama administration, as well other Western governments and international lenders. Mr. Shokin had been repeatedly accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his office and among the Ukrainian political elite, and criticized for failing to bring corruption cases.
There isn’t any evidence that the push to oust Shokin was motivated by Hunter Biden’s job on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. While that position raised questions about a potential conflict of interest during the Obama administration, the investigation was reportedly dormant by the time Shokin was pushed out.
As Kilmeade pointed out about Shokin on Fox & Friends, “even the World Bank wanted him fired, the whole international community wanted him fired.”
Doocy then brought up the latest reporting from the Washington Post, which found that “Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine at least a week before a phone call in which Trump is said to have pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the son of former vice president Joe Biden.”
Conway confirmed that reporting on Fox & Friends, but maintained that Trump was withholding the money over broader concerns about corruption in Ukraine (of which she apparently believes Biden is a part).
“Yes. The president wanted to talk to him first,” Conway said of Ukraine’s president Zelensky. “Make sure that this new president who won in a landslide in an anti-corruption agenda was actually going to execute on that and keep the promises of his presidential elective platform.”
But according to the Washington Post, Ukraine’s president felt the call was less about corruption in general, and more about Biden:
It appears the Ukrainian leader came away from the discussion with a different impression. [US Sen. Chris] Murphy, who spoke with Zelensky during an early September visit to Ukraine, said Monday that the Ukrainian president “directly” expressed concerns at their meeting that “the aid that was being cut off to Ukraine by the president was a consequence” of his unwillingness to launch an investigation into the Bidens.
Watch above, via Fox News.
