Sen. Mitt Romney spoke at the Atlantic Festival on Wednesday where he was asked about the memo detailing President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine where trump repeatedly pressured the foreign leader to start corruption investigations into Joe Biden. Romney called the call readout “deeply troubling.”
“My reaction was the same as I had a few days ago, which is this remains deeply troubling and we’ll see where it leads,” Romney said to the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins.
The White House released notes about the phone call between Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky where Trump pressed Mr. Zelensky several times to cooperate with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate former vice president Joe Biden. Just days before the phone call, Trump held up nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine.
Coppins asked Romney about the lack of an explicit quid pro quo of military aid in exchange for the investigation in the White House’s recreation of the call. Romney said he found the contents of the call alarming.
“I don’t know that I focused so much on the quid pro quo element as perhaps some do. There’s just the question of, and I said this in my first reaction, which is if the President of the United States asks or presses the leader of a foreign country to carry out an investigation for a political nature, that’s troubling. If there were a quid pro quo, that would take it to a more extreme level,” said Romney.
Later in the conversation, Romney was asked if he thought this rose to the level of an impeachable offense.
“I’m going to leave it at what I’ve said and let the process gather the facts that will ultimately come out,” he answered.
Watch the clip below via CNN:
