Democrats call for more witnesses to be heard on Trump-Ukraine case

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats are urging people to learn more about President Donald Trump's efforts to persuade Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden as Trump struggles to limit the scandal's consequences.

A whistleblower report, released on Thursday, said Trump had not only abused his office in an attempt to solicit Ukraine's intervention in the US elections of 2020 for its political benefit, but that the White House had tried to "put aside" the evidence of this behavior.

In fact, on July 25, Trump telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to congratulate him on his election victory.

In that call, according to a summary released Wednesday by the Trump administration, Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who were working for a Ukrainian gas company for several years.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that Biden and his son acted improperly, but he provided no evidence to support this claim.

Biden, a former vice president, is one of the main opponents of the race for democracy who will face Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

A growing number of Democrats say this call was an abuse of Trump's position and want to see him removed. But the chances of dismissal of the Republican President seem slim since his party controls the Senate where a trial for impeachment will be organized.

Democrat Adam Schiff, chairman of the House's intelligence committee and one of Trump's biggest opponents, has called for more people to hear about Ukraine.

"I hope that these witnesses will choose to cooperate, will volunteer. But I must say that I am deeply concerned now that the President, on the eve of our hearing or during our hearing, has threatened these witnesses, "Schiff told CNN on Thursday.

Schiff spoke after Trump declared that he wanted to know who had provided information to the whistleblower, according to an audio recording provided to the Los Angeles Times by a participant.

"I want to know who the person is, who is the person who gave the information to the whistleblower. Because it's close to a spy, "says Trump on the recording made during his address Thursday in New York for the staff of the United States Mission to the United Nations.

"Do you know what we did in the past when we were smart? Right? Spies and betrayal, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now, "said Trump.

The White House did not dispute the comments.

"The threats of violence emanating from the head of our country have a deterrent effect on the whole process of denunciation, with serious consequences for our democracy and our national security," said Thursday evening a joint statement by three presidents of House Democracy Committees – Schiff, Eliot Engel Foreign Affairs and Elijah Cummings of Oversight.

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"It's another witch hunt. Here we are again, "Trump told reporters on Thursday, accusing Democrats of Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi of launching a dismissal investigation against him this week.

Trump and his Republican allies said he was simply relying on Zelenskiy to keep his own campaign promise of eliminating corruption in Ukraine.

Nonetheless, Trump's political allies are worried, given that the indictment investigation will likely result in negative media coverage of Trump for weeks or months and will distract attention from his bid for reelection.

The investigation casts a new veil over his presidency just months after it emerged from the dark cloud of special advocate Robert Mueller's investigation into whether he was colluding with Russia in the 2016 election .

Three US House committees have announced that they will send subpoenas to the White House and State Department as soon as Friday if the Trump administration fails to meet the deadline set for sending a wide range of documents relating to his relations with Ukraine.

Committees of the House of Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Surveillance opened an investigation into this case earlier this month, before the whistle-blower complaint that allowed Pelosi to announce the formal indictment investigation. .

In a letter of September 9, the presidents of three committees set September 26 as the deadline for handing over documents and threatened to issue subpoenas if their application was not satisfied.

Schiff has set Friday, Attorney General William Barr, a deadline for submitting a whole series of documents, including a legal opinion or analysis relating to a whistleblower's complaint, to communications from the Department of Justice and to the corresponding to the subject of the complaint.