let s go to one of those. the new york times reports that in august two of president trump s top envoys to ukraine drafted a statement for that pu country s zelensky that would have permitted ukraine to pursuing investigations sought by mr. trump into his political rivals. they just wrote it down. the paper reports it is, quote, new evidence of how mr. trump s fixation with conspiracy theories linked to ukraine began driving senior diplomats to bend american foreign policy to the president s political agenda in the weeks after a july 25th call between the two leaders. joining us now, one of the reporters who broke that story, michael schmidt of the new york times. michael, walk us through this. who were the envoys that were drafting a statement for zelensky and how was he going to present it? he was going to come out and say i add night investigating the bidens so he could get his military assistance? here was the problem.
investigation into the gas company which joe biden s son hunter was a board member. the review is part of a long planned restructure that predates president trump s call with ukrainian president zelensky in july. according to the washington post, the prosecutor general said no foreign ukrainian official has been in touch with him to request the audit. the criminal probe which focused on tax irregularities and not on hunter biden was closed in 2016. president trump claims that was because of pressure from former vice president joe biden. there s no evidence of that. the wall street journal also reports president trump ordered the removal of america s ambassador to ukraine, career diplomat merarie yovanovitch. giuliani claimed that she was undermining trump and was obstructing efforts to per sway
insofar as it is is that we have nearly 2 1/2 centuries of examples where the checks and balances of the constitutional system have worked. they design, the framers designed the government for a moment like this. they were quite prescient in many ways. what they and what i think puts the really the weight on the rest of us is when they designed that to check and balance a president who was seemed uncheckable and unbalanced, they counted on an informed, educated, engaged citizenry. that sounds like a fourth of july homily or a sermon. but it smacks of being true. a republic is the u.s. its parts. our disposition of hearts and mind, yours and mine, matter enormously. because politicians are far more often mirrors of who we are
about was protecting foreign service officers. and most of the diplomatic corps knew that was a complete crock because, among other things, he supported the recall of ambassador yovanovitch. he has not removed an assistant secretary of state who was abusive towards career officers based on political motivations. and now we realize that essentially by supporting what giuliani and trump wanted, he essentially allowed people like kurt volker to implicate themselves in the text messages that we read. kurt volker by all accounts was an honorable diplomat when he entered into this administration. he probably tried to navigate this as best cohe could. but when his secretary of state and president make it clear that this illegal thing is a priority, they wind up engaging in text messages that make it very clear there was an an illegal quid pro quo.
want, we have tremendous tremendous power. late last night the president defended his push to have foreign governments investigate allegations of corruption. he tweeted, as the president of the united states, i have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate or have investigated corruption and that would include asking or suggesting other countries to help us out. he later added this isn t about a campaign, this is about corruption on a massive scale. so, again, michael steele, the president is very concerned about corruption around the world. he is. particularly when it involves someone who is running to perhaps be his opponent in the 2020 election. perhaps he should start with himself. that, i think, is what you re seeing now. everyone s kind of looking inward at this and saying, oh my god, i m caught in a mess. that s what those tweets especially at the end are about. the president then goes out on the white house lawn, dude, yeah, why wouldn t i? of course, yo