A new senior legal adviser to President Donald Trump has commented that the now infamous Ukraine call between the commander-in-chief and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was "perfect" because "there was no impeachable offense."
Repeating a line used by the president himself in describing the phone call as "perfect," legal adviser Jenna Ellis said in an interview with SiriusXM's Dan Abrams that Trump had done nothing that was impeachable in the call.
Abrams asked Ellis if she could "at least concede that when one reads the call, the president has described this as a perfect call, and when he uses language like 'I'd like you to do us a favor though' and talks about investigations that don't exist right... the problem is he's not asking him to follow up on an investigation he's asking him to reopen an investigation because it would benefit him—isn't that a problem, putting aside whether it's impeachable?"
But Ellis responded that the crux of the matter was whether or not an impeachable offense was committed.
"You can be like everybody else and have your own opinion on whether or not you personally approve of whatever happened... but the bottom line here is that... it was a perfect phone call because the president of the United States did not commit an impeachable offense," she responded.
"That's the standard for perfection," Abrams asked.
"That's what the president means by perfect," Ellis confirmed.
The July phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy has become the center of an impeachment inquiry after a whistleblower raised concerns about the conversation between the two leaders.
In a summary transcript of the call released by the White House, Trump said to Zelenskiy: "There's a lot of talk about [Joe] Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me."
Aid to the country was withheld around the same time as the phone call, in which Trump is accused of pressuring Zelenskiy to investigate potential political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter—who was previously on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
Trump has denied there was any pressure or quid pro quo in the call. However, in public testimony as part of the House's impeachment inquiry, US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland suggested otherwise.
Meanwhile the president has continued to decry the inquiry as a witch hunt, his supporters recently chanting "bulls***" as Trump discussed the Democrats' impeachment inquiry.
