The accounting of the telephone call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine's president is a "memorandum," not a transcript, but it is still "striking" the While House released it, considering its content, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Thursday.
"This is striking that we have the president of the United States on an open call with the president of the Ukraine, a country that has faced five years of withering attacks from Russian supported separatists and is eagerly awaiting hundreds of million dollars of aid from the United States that had been suspended," Coons told CNN's "New Day." "This strikes me as a call more appropriate to be reading a transcript from a mob wiretap than from the presidents of two democracies."
Coons added he thinks Trump decided to release the letter, and then the whistleblower's report detailing the call and other actions because his Republican colleagues in the Senate and the president's strong supporters sent signals he should come forward with the information.
"He either doesn't know or doesn't care about what the line is between his personal and political interests," Coons said.
"In reading the memo summarizing that conversation, I see a there, there," Coons said. "I see very clear evidence of a new president eager to receive assistance from the United States and the president of the United States saying to him, do us a favor and then later saying meet with my personal attorney Rudy Giuliani who is not a representative of the State Department, the Defense Department."
Coons said he also has questions about what roles Attorney General William Barr and Giuliani have in the call and the fallout.
"That is the sort of matter that would properly have been referred through the Department of Justice from our attorney general to their attorney general," Coons said. "If nothing like that was done, and, in fact, the only follow-up was there Rudy Giuliani, that is important to know."