His call with Trump may have sparked the whistleblower complaint. Who is Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky ? …..
But his unexpected rise to power in some ways mirrored the trajectory of the character he was known for playing on TV: Vasyl Holoborodko, a schoolteacher who is elected president after one of his students records him ranting against government corruption and the video goes viral.
Zelensky, 41, became a star in Ukraine for headlining the popular series, called “Servant of the People,” since 2015.
Now, he finds himself facing a new level of international scrutiny in his job in real life.
On Aug. 12, about two and a half weeks after Zelensky spoke by phone with President Trump, a complaint was filed with Michael Atkinson, the U.S. inspector general of the intelligence community, detailing an episode in which Trump allegedly committed a “serious or flagrant problem, abuse or violation of the law.”
Atkinson addressed the concern by labeling it a matter of “urgent concern,” which legally triggered mandatory notification of congressional oversight committees.
That soon sparked a standoff between lawmakers and Washington’s intelligence community, and Joseph Maguire, acting director of national intelligence, has since rebuffed requests to share details of the alleged incident with Congress.
Little else is publicly known about the nature of the complaint. On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that two former officials said it stemmed from Trump making a “promise” to a foreign leader. On Thursday, The Post reported that two people familiar with the matter specified that the complaint was focused on Ukraine, bringing the focus back to Trump’s call in July with Zelensky.
Trump denied any wrongdoing in tweets following The Post reports. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump refused to say whether he mentioned the family of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in his phone call with Zelensky. “It doesn’t matter what I discussed,” he said, adding that it was “a beautiful conversation.”
When he speaks with world leaders, he said, his conversations are “always appropriate … at the highest level, always appropriate.”
Democrats had already launched an investigation into that call over concerns that Trump and his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, are attempting to coerce the Ukrainian government into helping Trump win reelection next year. Democrats have said they believe Trump sought information linked to Biden’s positions on Ukraine that could be used to damage his presidential campaign.
As vice president, Biden took a hard line against Ukrainian corruption. On a 2016 trip to Kiev, when Biden was still in office, he encouraged Ukrainian officials to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, and threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. funding if they did not comply, the New York Times reported in May.
A number of other Western countries also took the position that Shokin needed to step down, citing allegations that he had failed to crack down on corruption.
Biden’s son, Hunter, was serving on the board of a Ukrainian-owned gas company at the time, raising suspicions in some circles that the elder Biden was trying to ensure the prosecutor general, who was investigating the company, did not complete his probe.
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