FILE PHOTO – Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani greets Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump at the Trask Coliseum at University of North Carolina in Wilmington, North Carolina, U.S., August 9, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Thayer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three U.S. House of Representatives committees said on Monday they had begun “a wide-ranging investigation” into reports that President Donald Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and possibly others pressured Ukraine’s government to assist Trump’s re-election campaign.
The Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees wrote to the White House and State Department seeking records related to what they described as efforts to “manipulate the Ukrainian justice system.”
Trump and some of his fellow Republicans have questioned whether it represented a conflict of interest that Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden, a presidential candidate, had served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
White House aides did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the announcement of the probe by the Democratic-led House committees.
Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Rosalba O’Brien; editing by Jonathan Oatis