Jake Tapper Confronts Mnuchin on Trump Ukraine Call: What If Obama Asked a Foreign Leader to Investigate Don Jr?

CNN’s Jake Tapper spoke this morning with Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin about Iran, but he opened confronting the Trump Cabinet member about the reporting that President Donald Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden‘s son.

Mnuchin dismissed the reporting and repeatedly told Tapper they should be talking about the U.S. response to Iran.

Tapper pressed him several times on whether anything about the call bothers him, asking why Congress can’t just hear from the intel whistleblower.

Mnuchin said that would be a “terrible precedent,” arguing, “Conversations between world leaders are meant to be confidential and if every time someone for political reasons raised a question and all of a sudden those conversations were disclosed publicly, and when you disclose them to Congress, lots of times they leak into the press, then why would world leaders want to have conversations together?”

Tapper asked him if the Trump administration’s position is that “it is acceptable for politicians to pressure foreign leaders to look into and investigate political rivals.”

Mnuchin said he has “no reason to believe that the president pressured or anything else any foreign leader.”

Tapper questioned him on whether he’s being consistent:

“If, for instance, President Obama had pressured a foreign leader, Putin or the president of Ukraine, anyone, and said I want you to look into Donald Trump Jr. or I want you to look into Eric Trump, international businessmen, both of them, would you not find that inappropriate?”

“I’m not going to speculate on that,” Mnuchin responded. “What I do find inappropriate is the fact that Vice President Biden at the time’s son did very significant business dealings in Ukraine. I, for one, find that to be concerning and to me that is the issue perhaps that should be further investigated.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

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