President Trump has released a new Ukraine transcript, but some things don't add up.
While the White House in April said Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed fighting corruption in their first phone call after Zelensky's election, a memo of the call released Friday didn't mention corruption once. White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley still defended the second release in a later statement, and then blamed any discrepancies on Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who is testifying publicly next week in the impeachment probe.
In the April readout, the White House said Trump "expressed his commitment" to work with then just-elected Zelensky to "strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption." And after receiving criticism for the mismatch, Gidley pushed its authorship onto Vindman, saying it was "prepared by the National Security Council's Ukraine expert." In this case, that would be Vindman.
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Vindman already gave a closed-door deposition to House impeachment investigators last month, and reportedly said the other rough transcript of the July Trump-Zelensky call left out critical words and phrases regarding the Bidens.
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