President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that he may read the transcript of his phone call with Ukraine’s president that’s at the heart of the House impeachment proceedings.
“This is over a phone call that is a good call,” Trump said of the inquiry in an interview with the Washington Examiner. "At some point, I’m going to sit down, perhaps as a fireside chat on live television, and I will read the transcript of the call, because people have to hear it. When you read it, it’s a straight call.”
Trump then signaled that he has no intention of cooperating with the impeachment proceedings despite the recent House vote that outlined the rules of the process, saying, “you are setting a terrible precedent for other presidents.”
He added later that the charges against him are nothing when compared to what other presidents have been charged with.
“Everybody knows I did nothing wrong,” Trump said. “Bill Clinton did things wrong; Richard Nixon did things wrong. I won’t go back to [Andrew] Johnson because that was a little before my time. But they did things wrong. I did nothing wrong.”
“I got stenographers and all these other people on the line,” he said. “I am going to make a statement that is illegal or bad? Who would do a thing like that?”
Trump later insisted that he withheld aid to Ukraine out of concern for corruption in the country, not to pressure them to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
“We are giving them money, we are giving them weapons,” he said. “We have an obligation to look at corruption.”