JUDY WOODRUFF: And now I am joined by Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump.
She joins us from the White House.
Kellyanne Conway, thank you for talking with us.
I know you heard some of what Chairman Schiff just said, but I want to come back to the
whistle-blower's complaint.
The essence of it is that the president essentially used the power of his office to try to get
a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 election, and that he came to that conclusion
after talking with over half-a-dozen U.S. officials over some four months.
KELLYANNE CONWAY, Counselor to President Trump: Well, Judy, that's false.
And we all know that, because we have the -- we have actually the complaint, but, more
importantly, we have the transcript of the conversation between President Trump and the
president of Ukraine.
And no time does he mention the 2020 race.
At no time does he talk about Joe Biden, the front-runner, who I don't know how to beat,
I need your help beating him.
This president doesn't need Ukraine's help to beat Joe Biden or anyone else, any more
than he needed Russia's help to beat Hillary Clinton.
They're terrible candidates who self-immolate all on their own.
But I really must respectfully push back, Judy.
I listened to Chairman Schiff.
And he's lying to you and to all of your viewers tonight.
When he says a president was using the sanctity of the office to dig up dirt on a political
opponent, where is that?
I'm looking at the telephone conversation here.
It simply isn't there.
At no time was a mention of aid being withheld.
At no time was a mention of 2020.
In fact, they are discussing the 2016 campaign.
And they spend more time on Emmanuel Macron of France and Angela Merkel of Germany, and
the fact that the Ukrainian president is saying that these countries are not helping Ukraine
as much as the U.S. is.
They're not sanctioning Russia as much.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, if I could -- if I could just come into the point that you were just
making.
It wasn't stated outright in that conversation, which, by the way, there was no transcript.
This was a memorandum of people who listened.
But what you have is a set of circumstances, because, a short time before this, President
Trump had stopped the -- any military aid going to Ukraine, even though his Defense
Department had signed off on that aid and said, this is a country that is cleaning up
corruption, this aid should go forward.
You had Republicans and Democrats in Congress favoring it.
And yet President Trump stopped it.
So, you look at that, and you combine it with this -- with this conversation, the reporting
that the president was angry with the Ukrainian government because of what had happened in
2016, and the conclusion is what it is.
KELLYANNE CONWAY: Well, the conclusion is what people want it to be.
And we saw that today in, I thought, a very unfortunate public hearing with the acting
DNI director, led by none other than Chairman Schiff, who loves to be on TV, whether it's
as chairman of the Intel Committee or with you or many other places.
That entire hearing could have been done behind closed doors.
How do we know that?
Because the Senate had a hearing with the same gentleman, the acting DNI director, behind
closed doors right after the Chairman Schiff theatrical production.
This is not the way these things should operate.
We do not impeach presidents because certain people who don't like him and voted against
him hate him.
Hate is not a high crime and misdemeanor.
A phone call with a foreign leader in which most of the conversation is congratulatory,
it's about helping -- helping more than France and Germany are helping, it's about the Ukrainian
president actually crediting President Trump for enforcing sanctions, whereas -- against
Russia, whereas Germany and France won't.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well...
KELLYANNE CONWAY: At no time does the president mention the 2020 election.
And yet you have the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and many others lying today, saying
that the president explicitly was trying to dig up dirt.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well...
KELLYANNE CONWAY: We just don't see that in this phone call.
And it's not fair for it to be said.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I think -- I think many people, by mentioning Joe Biden, the inference is
clearly that he's thinking about 2020.
But let me just move quickly.
KELLYANNE CONWAY: No, no.
And, Judy, no, I'm sorry.
I need -- I need to say that The New York Times had had an article in early May about
Hunter Biden and what he was doing in Ukraine.
The Hill newspaper had had an article on April 1, and wherein it had the whole transcript
of Joe Biden January 23, 2018, a year after leaving the vice presidency, bragging about
withholding $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And the reporting -- I'm sorry.
The...
KELLYANNE CONWAY: So, that -- people were talking about that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, the reporting on that is that he was referring to an international
effort to get Ukraine to clean up corruption, and he was saying, if that corruption isn't
cleaned up, there won't be aid forthcoming.
But what I also want to ask you about, Kellyanne Conway, is that a number of Democrats, not
just Chairman Schiff, but others are saying, equally more troubling than this phone call
is the allegation when -- that the president went to such great lengths to restrict all
access to records of this call, to lock them down.
I'm going to read just quickly from the whistle-blower complaint.
He said: "White House officials told me they were directed by White House lawyers to remove
the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such documents are normally
stored."
He went on to say: "Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system
that is otherwise used to store classified information, he said, "even though it didn't
contain anything remotely classified."
KELLYANNE CONWAY: Well, first of all, he's incorrect.
Any conversation with a foreign leader is classified.
This very document had to be declassified for the president to have released it.
And he has.
Isn't that the point, that -- they all want to talk about how it was handled?
Do you know who has access to this document now?
Everyone.
This president, who has led the democratization of information, whether it's through his social
media, his many press avails, having people like me speak, and, in this case, releasing
a full transcript, a full memo, as is the custom here, of a call that he had with the
Ukrainian president -- he released it.
So they want to talk about how it was handled, yet we all have access to it.
We can all read it.
And, Judy, I think that the document is remarkable for what's not there.
What's not there is a president worried about Joe Biden, who is self-destructing on the
campaign trail.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me...
KELLYANNE CONWAY: What's not there is a president saying, I'm going to withhold aid until you
do the certain things.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But...
KELLYANNE CONWAY: None of -- none of that is there.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I'm going to...
KELLYANNE CONWAY: The Ukrainian president is talking about draining the swamp.
And they're both talking about Hunter Biden when they talk about draining the swamp.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And I'm sorry to come back to this.
And I think, again, it's implied because of the timing of the withholding of funds.
KELLYANNE CONWAY: It's not.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But I want to ask you about what the president said just this morning
to the staff of the U.S. mission to the United Nations about people who talked to the whistle-blower
being spies and how this country handled spies.
Does the president believe anyone who talked to this whistle-blower is, in effect, not
loyal to this country?
KELLYANNE CONWAY: Well, he hasn't said that to me.
And I think the president is always astonished when conversations like this leak.
Early on in our -- in our -- in his presidency, conversations with the president of Mexico,
the president of Australia, I believe it was, different than the presidents of those two
countries now, those conversations leaked.
Some conversations he had with the Russian ambassador leaked.
He's always surprised that people who are entrusted with these tremendous responsibilities
and have access to top information, secret information, classified information in our
nation and take on these positions where you are a public servant entrusted with public
-- with information to protect the public, not harm the public, breach that trust.
So there is -- there may be frustration and consternation there.
But the president -- but, again, I think we should also note, people are calling this
person a whistle-blower.
The OLC actually said that this was routine diplomacy, it was not an intelligence activity
by the president.
And this whistle-blower did not have direct access.
They're getting it from other people.
So we need to find out more about that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Kellyanne Conway at the White House, thank you very much.
KELLYANNE CONWAY: Thank you, Judy.