Trump sought to exploit Ukraine relations since early this year, news report says

U.S. President Trump’s alleged attempt to pressure
Ukrainian President Zelensky followed a months-long fight inside the White
House that sidelined national security officials and empowered political
loyalists – including the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani – to
exploit the U.S. relationship with Ukraine, current and former U.S. officials
told the washingtonpost.com news site in a report published on Sept. 24. The
sequence, which began early this year, involved the abrupt removal of the U.S.
ambassador to Ukraine, the circumvention of senior officials on the National
Security Council, and the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid
administered by the Defense and State departments.

Several officials described tense meetings on Ukraine
among national security officials at the White House leading up to the
president’s July 25 phone call, the news site said. These sessions led some
participants to fear that Trump and those close to him used U.S. leverage with
with Zelensky for the U.S. president’s political gain. As those worries
intensified, some senior officials worked behind the scenes to hold off a Trump
meeting or call with Zelensky out of concern that Trump would use the
conversation to press Ukraine for damaging information on Trump’s potential
rival in the 2020 race, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and his son
Hunter. “An awful lot of people were trying to keep a meeting from happening
for the reason that it would not be focused on Ukraine-U.S. relations,” one
former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the
sensitive matter, the washingtonpost.com reported.

White House officials have disputed these accounts,
saying that no such concerns were raised in National Security Council meetings
and that Trump’s focus was on urging Ukraine to root out corruption. Trump
admitted this week that he had done some of what his own advisers feared, using
the call to raise the issue of Biden with Zelensky, the news site said. The
July 15 call led someone in U.S. intelligence to submit an extraordinary
whistleblower complaint, setting in motion a sequence of events that now
includes the start of the impeachment inquiry.