Now I had a chance to review in detail the notes of the call between the President of the United States and the President of Ukraine, as well as the legal opinion drafted by the Department of Justice in an effort to prevent the whistleblower complaint from coming to our committee. And I have to say that I’m shocked by both.

The notes of the call reflect a conversation far more damning than I or many others had imagined. It is shocking at another level that the White House would release these notes and felt that somehow this would help the President’s case or cause. Because what those notes reflect is a classic mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader.

They reflect a Ukrainian president who was desperate for U.S. support – for military support to help that country in a hot war with Putin’s Russia. A country that is still occupied by irregular Russian forces and in which people face a very dangerous and continuing and destabilizing action by their aggressive neighbor. And at the same time a President of the United States who, immediately after Ukraine’s president expresses the need for further weapons, tells the Ukraine president that he has a favor to ask.

The President communicates to his Ukrainian counterpart that the United States has done a lot for Ukraine. We’ve done an awful lot for Ukraine. More than the Europeans or anyone else has done for Ukraine. But there’s not much reciprocity here.

This is how a mafia boss talks. ‘What have you done for us? We’ve done so much for you. But there’s not much reciprocity. I have a favor I want to ask you.’

And what is that favor? Of course the favor is to investigate his political rival, to investigate the Bidens.

And it’s clear that the Ukraine president understands exactly what is expected of him. And is making every effort to mollify the President.  

What adds another layer of depravity to this conversation is the fact the President of the United States then invokes the Attorney General of the United States as well as his personal lawyer as emissaries. In the case of the Attorney General , as an official head of a U.S. department, the Department of Justice, that he says will be part and parcel of this.

Now I know that the Attorney General is denying involvement in this. But nonetheless you can see why the Department of Justice would want this transcript never to see the light of day. You can see why they have worked so hard to deprive our committee of the whistleblower complaint. And in fact the opinion by the justice department is startling in its own regard because in that opinion the Department of Justice advances the absurd claim that the Director of National Intelligence has no responsibility over efforts to prevent foreign interference in our elections.

Well, that will come as news – at least it should – to the Director of National Intelligence, who is charged, among other things, with detecting foreign interference in our elections and with reporting to Congress about foreign interference in our elections. But it is apparently the view of this justice department that the Director has no jurisdiction in this area. — Congressman Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence