Trump ad claims Democrats trying to 'steal' election

A new re-election campaign ad for U.S. President Donald Trump is accusing Democrats of trying to "steal" the 2020 election, as he fends off an impeachment probe by House Democrats.

The TV ad also attacks Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, highlighting his efforts to make U.S. aid to Ukraine contingent on that country firing its chief prosecutor. The ad claims that the fired prosecutor was investigating the former vice-president's son.

In fact, the prosecutor had failed to pursue any major anti-corruption investigations, leaving Ukraine's international donors deeply frustrated. In pressing for the prosecutor's ouster, Biden was representing the official position of the U.S. government, which was shared by other Western allies and many in Ukraine.

Trump's re-election campaign says the new ad is the subject of a $10-million US ad buy, with $2 million coming from the Republican National Committee.

Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager, says, "This is a Joe Biden scandal, and the Democrats are trying to use it to steal the election."

Concerned over possible retaliation

Earlier Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi voiced concern over Trump's comments that suggested retaliation against people who helped an intelligence whistleblower whose complaint about Trump's phone call with Ukraine's leader is at the centre of the House impeachment probe.

In the call, Trump prods President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, who was involved in advancing the Barack Obama administration's policy on Ukraine, in part during a time when his son Hunter sat on the board of a holding company for an energy company based there.

White House officials took extraordinary steps to "lock down" information on Trump's call, even moving the transcript to a secret computer system, according to the whistleblower's complaint.

Trump lashed out Thursday, saying whoever provided information to the whistleblower is "close to a spy." He suggested that was treason, an act punishable by death.

Pelosi said she was concerned for both the whistleblower and those who spoke to the unidentified person.

"I'm very worried. Very worried," Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill. "I think what the president said goes beyond irresponsible. It's dangerous."

In what was meant to be a salute to the workers from the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Trump let loose with a threatening tone Thursday.

"I want to know who's the person — who's the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that's close to a spy," Trump said, according to audio released by the Los Angeles Times. "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason — we used to handle it a little differently than we do now."

Pelosi told MSNBC's Morning Joe earlier in the day that the House panels conducting the impeachment probe will make sure there's no retaliation against people who provided information in the case. She declined to provide a timeline for the House impeachment investigation, saying "the facts will lead us."

"They will take the time that they need, and we won't have the calendar be the arbiter," she said, but she added, "it doesn't have to drag on."

Pompeo subpoenaed

Three House committees have jointly issued a subpoena to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to the impeachment inquiry against Trump.

The chairmen of the House foreign affairs, intelligence and oversight committees set an Oct. 4 deadline for Pompeo to produce the documents, including many that the lawmakers have been seeking for weeks. The committees also sent a separate letter notifying Pompeo that they have scheduled depositions for five State Department officials over the next two weeks, including former ambassadors Marie (Masha) Yovanovitch and Kurt Volker.

Pelosi said she expects the impeachment probe to focus on Trump's pressure on the Ukrainian president at a time when he was temporarily withholding military aid to the country.

I think we have to stay focused, as far as the public is concerned, on the fact that the president of the United States used taxpayer dollars to shake down the leader of another country for his own political gain.- Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker

"I think we have to stay focused, as far as the public is concerned, on the fact that the president of the United States used taxpayer dollars to shake down the leader of another country for his own political gain," she said.

Pelosi was responding to a question on whether she was concerned about the handling of Trump phone calls with other foreign leaders. The whistleblower alleged they learned that senior White House officials were "directed" by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system where such records are typically stored.  

Hunter Biden was a director on the board of gas company Burisma from 2014 to 2018, according to documents filed by the company in Cyprus, where it is registered.

An open Ukrainian anti-corruption investigation into Burisma covers a period when Ukraine was governed by a pro-Russia ally, Viktor Yanukovich. Burisma hired Biden after Yanukovich was toppled in a popular revolt in 2014 and replaced by a pro-Western government.

At the time, many Ukrainian firms were seeking to distance themselves from their relationships with the previous, pro-Moscow authorities, and some invited Western public figures to sit on their boards.

Joe Biden led an international push to oust Ukraine's top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was perceived to be lax on dealing with allegations of corruption within the country. Petro Poroshenko, the president at the time, fired Shokin in 2016, a move that had the support of the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Shokin says he was fired to prevent him from investigating Hunter Biden, despite the multilateral nature of the effort.

Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of anti-corruption investigations at Ukraine's Prosecutor's Office, said that were Poroshenko to make a statement about being pressured into removing Shokin from his post, then an investigation must be launched.

However, he said, neither his agency nor Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau had received such a statement thus far.

Likewise, he said his department couldn't initiate an investigation based solely on comments made in the United States.