A former member of the Ukrainian parliament and adviser to Ukraine's president told CBS News it was a "well-known fact" there that President Donald Trump wanted "compromising" information on former Vice President Joe Biden. Serhiy Leshchenko added that Ukraine's president knew that U.S. aid to his country was at stake.
"I am sure that issue of Biden was forever on the table between Zelensky and Trump," said Leshchenko. As a former lawmaker and adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Leschenko believes it was clear that President Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals.
"Of course, he wanted political privileges, favors, for his re-election from Ukraine," he said.
"In return for military aid?" asked correspondent Roxana Saberi.
"I would say yes," Leshchenko replied.
"Do you have any evidence of that?" asked Saberi.
"It was, like, well-known fact in Ukraine," Leshchenko replied.
In 2016, Leshchenko was at the center of exposing Paul Manafort's dealings in Ukraine. He said he recused himself from working with Zelensky in May this year, after it became clear that could threaten relations with President Trump's administration.
Ukraine’s former top law enforcement official says he repeatedly rebuffed demands by President Trump’s personal lawyer to investigate Joe Biden and his son, insisting he had seen no evidence of wrongdoing that he could pursue.
In an interview, Yuri Lutsenko said while he was Ukraine’s prosecutor general he told Rudolph W. Giuliani that he would be happy to cooperate if the FBI or other U.S. authorities began their own investigation of the former vice president and his son Hunter but insisted they had not broken any Ukrainian laws to his knowledge.
Lutsenko, who was fired as prosecutor general last month, said he had urged Giuliani to launch a U.S. inquiry and go to court if he had any evidence but not to use Ukraine to conduct a political vendetta that could affect the U.S. election.
“I said, ‘Let’s put this through prosecutors, not through presidents,’ ” Lutsenko told The Times.
“I told him I could not start an investigation just for the interests of an American official,” he said.
False accounts pedaled by members of President Trump’s inner circle threatened to poison U.S.-Ukrainian relations this year and gave Trump a cover for suspending military aid, a top advisor to Ukraine’s president said in his first interview with a U.S. news outlet.
“The fact is that some American politicians were not informed in the right degree about what is going on here,” Andriy Yermak said Saturday in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“This is both our problem and their problem,” said Yermak, who is a top advisor and longtime friend of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Clearly, over the years,” he added, “President Trump had developed a negative impression of Ukraine, which was not what we wanted.”
Yermak said he spent weeks this summer attempting to change U.S. officials’ decision to suspend a military aid package to Ukraine and was dismayed that the country had been dragged into Washington’s political fights and Trump’s possible impeachment.
Yermak chose his words carefully to avoid overt criticism of Trump advisors. But he clearly communicated a sense of betrayal and a hope that damage to Ukraine, which has depended on U.S. and European help against Russia, would be temporary.
Yermak was asked if he could trust the U.S. under Trump after all that had transpired in recent weeks, and a lengthy pause followed.
