Rep. Chris Stewart said Tuesday night on CNN that it was not unusual for President Donald Trump to request that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter because “we do that all the time.”
Stewart told host Chris Cuomo that Trump was completely justified in raising the Bidens in a phone call to the Ukranian president, which touched off the current impeachment inquiry in the House.
“The president said before we give these guys $400 million, a country that is steeped in corruption for generations, I want to understand where they are in their deposition,” said Stewart.
The House is investigating whether President Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political rival in exchange for military aid and a visit to the White House.
Stewart likened Trump’s interactions with Ukraine to the effort by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
“It makes no difference if the president asks those questions or if he goes through his attorney general,” he said.
Stewart also dumped on the impeachment inquiry as unnecessary and providing no new information about what happened.
“Why do we need any of these witnesses?” asked Stewart. “We have the transcript of the phone call. Every American can read it and make their own judgment.”
The transcript Stewart refers to is a memo summarizing Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president. On Tuesday, the White House top adviser on Ukraine testified that key passages were left out of the official transcript of the phone call and he was rebuffed when he tried to add them back into the official record.
Watch the clip below via CNN:
