Report: Trump involved Pence in Ukraine pressure campaign

Mike Pence.
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

On multiple occasions, President Trump involved Vice President Mike Pence in his attempts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into launching an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, U.S. officials told The Washington Post.

Trump brought up the Bidens several times during his July 25 phone call with Zelensky, and officials said Keith Kellogg, Pence's national security adviser, was listening in on the conversation. In May, Trump ordered Pence not to attend Zelensky's inauguration, and in early September, he had Pence inform Zelensky that U.S. aid "was still being withheld while demanding more aggressive action on corruption," the Post reports. The Ukrainians, the Post says, "probably understood action on corruption to include the investigation" of the Bidens.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.