Donald Trump has attempted to shrug off renewed demands for his impeachment over the allegation he tried to pressure a foreign government to hurt his leading rival in next year’s presidential election.
Trump travelled to the United Nations in New York under the shadow of reports that he asked Ukraine’s leader to investigate Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2020, and that a US intelligence community whistleblower filed a report about it.
Some Democrats said the allegation was a tipping point in the dilemma over whether to begin impeachment proceedings. Asked on Monday if he took that threat seriously, the president replied: “Not at all seriously.”
Later, Trump lashed out at the media.
“Joe Biden and his son are corrupt, but the fake news doesn’t want to report it because they’re Democrats,” he said.
“If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they’d be getting the electric chair by right. Look at the double standards … You’ve got a lot of crooked journalists. You’re crooked as hell.”
It emerged last week that the whistleblower filed a report after becoming alarmed at Trump’s alleged attempt to pressure Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president – eight times, according to the Wall Street Journal – in a phone call in July.
Some reports suggest Trump tried to strong-arm Zelenskiy into targeting Biden by temporarily withholding US military aid.
The president has confirmed that he discussed corruption during the call and mentioned Biden but denies applying pressure on Zelenskiy.
“We had a perfect phone call,” he said at the UN. “Everybody knows it’s just a Democrat witch-hunt.”
The White House is refusing to release the substance of the whistleblower complaint, setting up a showdown with Congress.
The drumbeat for Trump’s impeachment has grown louder. A majority of Democrats in the House were already in favor but Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, has resisted, perhaps fearing such a move would rally Trump’s support.
Still, on Sunday, Pelosi said administration officials “will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation” if Maguire refuses to provide information to Congress.
And on Monday, the Washington Post reported that Pelosi had been “quietly sounding out top allies and lawmakers” as to whether the time for impeachment had arrived.
Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, called on the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to investigate. Schumer wrote in a letter that the Republicans’ “see no evil, hear no evil” attitude toward the president “is unacceptable and must change”.
Schumer also said Republicans should urge the White House to release transcripts of Trump’s conversation with Zelenskiy and identify who in the White House sought to delay $250m in aid to Ukraine.
Trump’s claims, echoed by rightwing media, concern Biden’s son, Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. As vice-president, Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor general, seen by many as too soft on corruption. Trump has asserted without basis that the prosecutor, who had led an investigation into the company’s owner, “was after” Hunter Biden.
The president said on Monday: “What Biden did was wrong. We’re supporting a country, so we want to make sure that country is honest. One of the reasons the new president got elected is he was going to stop corruption. So it’s very important that on occasion that you speak to somebody about corruption.”
He added what appeared to be an admission that US military aid was at issue: “If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?”
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son. The former vice-president has dismissed the claim as a political smear. He tweeted: “Let’s be clear, Donald Trump pressured a foreign government to interfere in our elections. It goes against everything the United States stands for. We must make him a one-term president.”
The chairs of three House committees are threatening to subpoena Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, if he does not produce information about whether Trump and Giuliani inappropriately tried to influence the government of Ukraine.
The heads of the House intelligence, foreign affairs and oversight and government reform committees sent a letter to Pompeo on Monday threatening subpoenas if the documents aren’t provided by Thursday.
The committees first asked for the documents two weeks ago. Since then, it has emerged that Joseph Maguire, the director of national intelligence, is holding back a whistleblower complaint from Congress.
Trump has spent much of his first term denouncing allegations he benefited from Russian interference in his 2016 win over Hillary Clinton. The special counsel Robert Mueller showed multiple contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow but did not find direct collusion.
Another sign of building momentum for impeachment came from the chair of the House intelligence committee, Adam Schiff, who told CNN: “We may very well have crossed the Rubicon here.”
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted: “There is an implicit threat in every demand that a president makes of another country, especially one so dependent on us as Ukraine. Who cares whether Trump explicitly made the interference-for-aid connection? The corruption is in the demand.”
There were few signs of Republicans breaking ranks. If Democrats do go ahead with impeachment, there is virtually no prospect of the Republican-controlled Senate convicting and removing the president before the 2020 election.
Bill Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts who is mounting a long-shot challenge to Trump, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe: “Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a US election. It couldn’t be clearer, and that’s not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason.
“It’s treason, pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the US code is death. That’s the only penalty.”
Trump and Zelenskiy plan to meet on the sidelines of the UN on Wednesday. Maguire is due to testify before the House intelligence committee on Thursday.