At least two candidates used the same phrase: Both Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Julián Castro, the former housing secretary, who have been calling for Trump’s impeachment for months, labeled the reconstruction of the phone call a “smoking gun.”
“If this is the version of events the president’s team thinks is most favorable, he is in very deep jeopardy,” Warren said. “We need to see the full whistleblower complaint and the administration needs to follow the law. Now.”
The call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine has been at the center of accusations that Trump pressured a foreign leader to open a potential corruption investigation tied to a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, who is seeking to challenge Trump in 2020.
According to the reconstructed transcript, which the White House released Wednesday morning, Trump urged Zelenskiy to contact Attorney General William Barr about opening an investigation connected to Biden, saying “whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.”
The news of the call — which was first revealed by a whistleblower who works in the intelligence community — have prompted House Democrats to say they would formally open an impeachment inquiry. And Wednesday, after reviewing the contents of the reconstructed transcript, several Democratic candidates renewed their calls for Trump to be impeached.
“Congress should cancel recess and begin impeachment proceedings immediately,” Castro said.
Sen. Kamala Harris’ campaign highlighted an exchange during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in May between Harris and Barr, in which she asked the attorney general whether Trump had ever asked him to open an investigation into anyone else. After much hesitation, Barr said he did not know.
Harris, D-Calif., posted a screen shot of the transcript on Twitter, writing, “They admit it: Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to work with the U.S. Attorney General to investigate a political opponent. He must be impeached.”
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said in a statement that the document released Wednesday amounted to “apparent proof that Trump had pressured a foreign nation to meddle in our democracy again.”
“History will remember those who put politics aside at this time of crisis and treated it like the moral moment that it is,” he said.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who has said she supports the impeachment inquiry, said that the record of the call was “deeply disturbing,” adding that Trump had “violated the public’s trust.”
Several other Democratic candidates for president, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, renewed their calls for an impeachment inquiry to begin.
“Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in the modern history of this country,” Sanders tweeted, echoing a line he uses frequently on the campaign trail.
Biden said Tuesday that if Trump continued to stonewall attempts by Congress to investigate his conduct, he would “leave Congress no choice but to initiate impeachment.”
Tom Steyer, the former hedge fund manager who pledged to spend millions of dollars on a campaign to impeach Trump before entering the presidential race, was blunt Wednesday.
“There it is,” Steyer said. “He did it. Donald Trump is a traitor.”
This article originally appeared in
.