The case against Igor Danchenko is part of special counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation into the origins of the FBI’s probe into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia had conspired to tip the outcome of that year’s presidential campaign.

The indictment, the third criminal case brought by Durham and the second in a two-month span, is likely to boost complaints from Trump allies that well-connected Democrats worked behind the scenes to advance suspicions about Trump and Russia that contributed to the FBI’s election-year investigation.

The case does not undercut investigators’ findings that the Kremlin aided the Trump campaign — conclusions that were not based on the dossier, which was barely mentioned in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. But the indictment does endorse a longstanding concern about the Russia probe: that opposition research the FBI relied on as it surveilled a Trump campaign adviser was marred by unsupported, uncorroborated claims.

The five-count indictment accuses Danchenko of making multiple false statements to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 about his role in collecting information for Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose research into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was financed by Democrats.

Danchenko, a U.S.-based Russian who’d specialized in Russian and Eurasian matters as an analyst at Brookings Institution, was a significant source for Steele as Steele compiled his dossier of research. That dossier, the target of intense derision from Trump, was ultimately provided to the FBI and used by federal authorities as they applied for and received surveillance warrants targeting former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

According to the indictment, Danchenko repeatedly lied to the FBI about his sources of information. Prosecutors say that deception mattered because the FBI “devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate” the dossier’s allegations and had “relied in large part” on that research in obtaining the surveillance warrants.

A lawyer for Danchenko had no immediate comment.

The indictment says Danchenko misled the FBI by denying that he had discussed any allegations in the dossier with a contact of his who was a public relations executive and longtime Democratic operative who volunteered for the campaign of Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent.

In fact, the indictment says, Danchenko had sourced one or more allegations in the dossier anonymously to that Clinton associate. As the FBI worked to corroborate the dossier’s allegations, it would have been important to know the Democrat’s role in feeding information for it because it bore upon his “reliability, motivations, and potential bias as a source,” according to the indictment.

The individual is not named in court papers, but his lawyer confirmed his identity as Charles Dolan Jr., a former executive director of the Democratic Governors Association who advised Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and volunteered for her 2016 campaign. The lawyer, Ralph Drury Martin, declined to comment further on the ongoing investigation.

The charging documents also refer to salacious and unsupported sexual allegations involving Trump’s behavior at a Moscow hotel that were included in the dossier but that Trump has vigorously disputed, including in private conversations with former FBI Director James Comey.

The indictment says Danchenko told the FBI he had collected information about Trump’s activities at the hotel from multiple sources but didn’t himself know if the sexual allegations were true.

According to the indictment, Dolan stayed in June 2016 at the same Moscow hotel and received a tour of the presidential suite. A hotel staff member revealed that Trump had stayed there, but Dolan and another unidentified person said the staff member didn’t mention any sexual or salacious activity.

The indictment says that since Dolan “was present at places and events where Danchenko collected information” for the dossier, Danchenko’s deception about his relationship with Dolan “was highly material to the FBI’s investigation of these matters.”

The indictment also accuses Danchenko of lying to the FBI about a July 2016 phone call he claimed he received from someone he believed to be the president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. That person, according to the dossier and Danchenko’s account to the FBI, told him about a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and Russia — an assertion that prosecutors say “would ultimately underpin” the surveillance warrant applications.

The indictment says Danchenko fabricated his account and never actually received such a phone call.

Both the dossier and the Durham probe are politically charged.

Trump’s Justice Department appointed Durham as Trump claimed the investigation of campaign ties to Russia was a witch hunt. Trump pointed to the dossier, much of which the indictment says the FBI was unable to corroborate, as evidence of a tainted probe driven by Democrats.

But the dossier had no part in launching the Trump-Russia investigation, though a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report raised significant questions about the accuracy of the information and the FBI’s reliance on it. Mueller ultimately found questionable ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but not sufficient evidence to charge a conspiracy to sway the election. Democrats have lambasted the Durham probe as politically motivated, but the Biden administration has not stopped it.

The indictment is the third criminal action from Durham.

Cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was charged in September with lying to the FBI during a 2016 conversation in which he relayed concerns about potentially suspicious cyber contacts between a Trump Organization server and the server of a Russian bank. Durham’s team says he concealed from the FBI that he was passing on the concerns in his capacity as a lawyer for the Clinton campaign. He has pleaded not guilty.

Last year, Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer, admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of Page and was given probation.

The actions, in Trump’s waning time at the White House, bring to nearly 50 the number of people whom the president has granted clemency in the last week. The list from the last two days includes not only multiple people convicted in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia but also allies from Congress and other felons whose causes were championed by friends.

Pardons are common in the final stretch of a president����ap tenure, the recipients largely dependent on the individual whims of the nation’s chief executive. Trump throughout his administration has shucked aside the conventions of the Obama administration, when pardons were largely reserved for drug offenders not known to the general public, and instead bestowed clemency on high-profile contacts and associates who were key figures in an investigation that directly concerned him.

Even members of the president����ap own party raised eyebrows, with Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska issuing a brief statement that said: “This is rotten to the core.”

The pardons Wednesday of Manafort and Roger Stone, who months earlier had his sentence commuted by Trump, were particularly notable, underscoring the president����ap desire to chip away at the results and legacy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. He has now pardoned five people convicted in that investigation, four of them associates like former national security adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, both of whom pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

“The pardons from this President are what you would expect to get if you gave the pardon power to a mob boss,” tweeted Andrew Weissmann, a Mueller team member who helped prosecute Manafort.

Manafort, who led Trump’s campaign during a pivotal period in 2016 before being ousted over his ties to Ukraine, was among the first people charged as part of Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was later sentenced to more than seven years in prison for financial crimes related to his political consulting work in Ukraine, but was released to home confinement last spring because of coronavirus concerns in the federal prison system.

Though the charges against Manafort did not concern the central thrust of Mueller’s mandate — whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded to tip the election — he was nonetheless a pivotal figure in the investigation.

His close relationship to a man U.S. officials have linked to Russian intelligence, and with whom he shared internal campaign polling data, attracted particular scrutiny during the investigation, though Mueller never charged Manafort or any other Trump associate with conspiring with Russia.

Manafort, in a series of tweets, thanked Trump and lavished praise on the outgoing president, declaring that history would show he had accomplished more than any of his predecessors.

Trump did not pardon Manafort����ap deputy, Rick Gates, who was sentenced last year to 45 days in prison after extensively cooperating with prosecutors, or former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance crimes related to his efforts to buy the silence of women who said they had sexual relationships with Trump. Both were also convicted in the Mueller probe.

New York City prosecutors, meanwhile, have been seeking to have the state’s highest court revive state mortgage fraud charges against Manafort after a lower court dismissed them on double jeopardy grounds. A spokesman for District Attorney Cy Vance said the pardon “underscores the urgent need to hold Mr. Manafort accountable for his crimes against the People of New York.”

Manafort and Stone are hardly conventional pardon recipients, in part because both were scolded by judges for effectively thumbing their nose at the criminal justice system as their cases were pending. Manafort was accused of witness tampering even after he was indicted and was accused by prosecutors of lying while trying to earn credit for cooperation.

Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress about his efforts to gain inside information about the release by WikiLeaks of Russia-hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, was similarly censured by a judge because of his social media posts.

In a statement Wednesday, Stone thanked Trump and alleged that he had been subjected to a “Soviet-style show trial on politically-motivated charges”

Kushner is the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a wealthy real estate executive who pleaded guilty years ago to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations. Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles and their children were married in 2009.

Prosecutors allege that after Kushner discovered that his brother-in-law was cooperating with authorities, he hatched a revenge and intimidation scheme. They say he hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have a secret recording of the encounter in a New Jersey motel room sent to his own sister, the man’s wife.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has called it “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he ever prosecuted as U.S. attorney.

Trump’s legally troubled allies were not the only recipients of clemency. The list of 29 recipients included people whose pleas for forgiveness have been promoted by people supporting the president throughout his term in office, among them former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

One recipient was Topeka Sam, whose case was promoted by Alice Johnson, a criminal justice advocate whom Trump pardoned and who appeared in a Super Bowl ad for him and at the Republican National Convention.

“Ms. Sam’s life is a story of redemption,” the White House said in its release, praising her for helping other women in need.

Others granted clemency included a former county commissioner in Florida who was convicted of taking gifts from people doing business with the county and a community leader in Kentucky who was convicted of federal drug offenses.

____

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Palm Beach, Florida, and Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.

Dubbed “Secondary Infektion” by researchers, the network was part of Russia’s bid to use social media to polarize Americans ahead of the 2016 elections. It����ap been linked to similar efforts in Ukraine, France, Britain and elsewhere. Since 2014 it has posted thousands of times on more than 300 internet platforms.

Content from Secondary Infektion includes posts denigrating Muslims and immigrants, accusing Hillary Clinton of murder and calling German Chancellor Angela Merkel an alcoholic. Some posts have used forged documents or bogus commentary, such as a fake tweet supposedly sent from U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio accusing Britain of spying on President Donald Trump.

Graphika, a New York City firm that analyzes social media, published a report Tuesday that traces the network’s operations. Compared with other Russian disinformation networks operated by Russian military intelligence or the country’s Internet Research Agency, Secondary Infektion worked hard to cover its tracks — even if that hindered its work, the report found.

“They were putting a lot of emphasis on staying hidden, rather than quick virality,” said Ben Nimmo, Graphika’s director of investigations and one of the report����ap lead authors.

Many of Secondary Infektion’s posts came from “burner” accounts discarded after a single use, before they have time to grow an audience. While that made it harder for analysts to track the network, it also prevented the operation from building accounts with the kind of large, legitimate audiences that are needed to weaponize disinformation.

“Almost none of those efforts achieved measurable impact,” Graphika’s report concluded. “Another enduring mystery around the operation is what the operators thought they were doing and why they kept on doing it across six years of activity when their stories so often died unnoticed.”

Ukraine was the network’s top target, with many posts portraying the country as corrupt. Other posts attacked the U.S. as belligerent, or Europe as weak. Some posts sought to debunk allegations of doping by Russian athletes.

While the group’s work has slowed, it was operational as of this year. One recent post included a claim that the U.S. created the coronavirus as a bioweapon.

The identity of those behind the operation remain unknown, though researchers have used technical and linguistic clues to link it to the Russian government.

Secondary Infektion emerged last year after Facebook removed several accounts later linked to the operation. Researchers at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab named the network after Operation Infektion, a Soviet disinformation campaign that spread the conspiracy theory that the U.S. created HIV.

Reddit removed several dozen accounts linked to Secondary Infektion last year after concluding they were used to leak confidential government documents days before a general election in the U.K.

_____

Klepper reported from Providence, R.I.

Former U.S. District Judge John Gleeson said in a filing Wednesday that the government “has engaged in highly irregular conduct to benefit a political ally of the President.” He urged the judge handling the case to deny the motion and argued that Flynn had committed perjury.

Gleeson was appointed by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in a special role to weigh in on the case, but it will ultimately be up to Sullivan and potentially an appeals court whether to accept the Justice Department����ap motion to drop the case.

Flynn pleaded guilty, as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential transition period.

In January, Flynn filed court papers to withdraw his guilty plea, saying federal prosecutors had acted in “bad faith” and broken their end of the bargain when they sought prison time for him.

Initially, prosecutors said Flynn was entitled to avoid prison time because he had cooperated extensively with the government, but the relationship with the retired Army lieutenant general grew increasingly contentious in the months before he withdrew his plea, particularly after he hired a new set of lawyers who raised misconduct allegations against the government.

But the Justice Department filed a motion last month to dismiss the case, saying the FBI had insufficient basis to question Flynn in the first place and that statements he made during the interview were not material to the broader counterintelligence investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Officials have said they sought to dismiss the case in the interest of justice, upon the recommendation of a U.S. attorney who had been appointed by Attorney General William Barr to review the handling of the Flynn investigation.

Gleeson slammed the Justice Department����ap motion to dismiss the case, saying the arguments from prosecutors were “riddled” with legal errors.

“The Government����ap ostensible grounds for seeking dismissal are conclusively disproven by its own briefs filed earlier in this very proceeding,” Gleeson wrote. “They contradict and ignore this Court����ap prior orders, which constitute law of the case. They are riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact. And they depart from positions that the Government has taken in other cases.”

Sullivan also asked Gleeson to explore whether he should hold Flynn in “criminal contempt for perjury.”

As part of his plea, Flynn had to admit in court, under oath, that he lied to the FBI and violated federal law. It is a crime to lie under oath in court.

In the filing, Gleeson said it was clear that Flynn had committed perjury and should be punished but that it should be a factor considered at his sentencing, as opposed to additional charges being brought against him.

“This approach — rather than a separate prosecution for perjury or contempt — aligns with the Court����ap intent to treat this case, and this Defendant, in the same way it would any other,” Gleeson wrote.

Gleeson was a federal judge in New York for more than two decades. Before becoming a judge, he had been a federal prosecutor and handled numerous high-profile cases, including the case against late Gambino crime family boss John Gotti. He’s been in private practice since 2016.

A federal appeals court is set to hear arguments Friday about Sullivan’s refusal to immediately dismiss the case. Flynn’s attorneys have asked the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to step in and force Sullivan to end to the case. They have also accused the judge of being biased, arguing he overstepped his authority when he did not immediately grant the Justice Department����ap request to dismiss the case.

Sullivan has separately scheduled arguments on the dismissal motion for July 16.

The action was a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Flynn himself admitted as much, pleading guilty before later asking to withdraw the plea, and he became a key cooperator for Mueller as the special counsel investigated ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 political campaign.

Thursday’s action was swiftly embraced by Trump, who has relentlessly tweeted about the “outrageous” case and last week pronounced Flynn “exonerated.” It could also newly energize Trump supporters who have taken up the retired Army lieutenant general as a cause.

But it will also add to Democratic complaints that Attorney General Barr is excessively loyal to the president, and could be a distraction for a Justice Department that for months has sought to focus on crimes arising from the coronavirus.

Shortly before the filing was submitted, Brandon Van Grack, a Mueller team member and veteran prosecutor on the case, withdrew from the prosecution, a possible sign of disagreement with the decision.

After the Flynn announcement, Trump declared that his former aide had been “an innocent man” all along. He accused Obama administration officials of targeting Flynn and said, “I hope that a big price is going to be paid.” At one point he went further, saying of the effort investigating Flynn: “It’s treason. It’s treason.”

In court documents filed Thursday, the Justice Department said that after reviewing newly disclosed information and other materials, it agreed with Flynn’s lawyers that his interview with the FBI should never have taken place because he had not had inappropriate contacts with Russians. The interview, the department said, was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”

The U.S. attorney reviewing the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, formally recommended dropping it to Barr last week, the course of action vehemently and publicly recommended by Trump, who appointed Barr to head the Justice Department.

Barr has increasingly challenged the federal Trump-Russia investigation, saying in a television interview last month that it was started “without any basis.” In February, he overruled a decision by prosecutors in the case of Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend and adviser, in favor of a more lenient recommended sentence.

Jensen said in a statement: “Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case. I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.”

The department����ap action comes amid an internal review into the handling of the case and an aggressive effort by Flynn’s lawyers to challenge the basis for the prosecution. The lawyers cited newly disclosed FBI emails and notes last week to allege that Flynn was improperly trapped into lying when agents interviewed him at the White House days after Trump’s inauguration. Though none of the documents appeared to undercut the central allegation that Flynn had lied to the FBI, Trump last week pronounced him “exonerated.”

Thursday’s filing was the latest dramatic development in a years-old case full of twists and turns. In recent months, Flynn’s attorneys have leveled a series of allegations about the FBI’s actions and asked to withdraw his guilty plea. A judge has rejected most of the claims and not ruled on others, including the bid to revoke the plea.

Earlier this year, Barr appointed Jensen, the top federal prosecutor in St. Louis to investigate the handling of Flynn’s case.

As part of that process, the Justice Department gave Flynn’s attorneys a series of emails and notes, including one handwritten note from a senior FBI official that mapped out internal deliberations about the purpose of the Flynn interview: “What����ap our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” the official wrote.

Other documents show the FBI had been prepared weeks before its interview of Flynn to drop its investigation into whether he was acting at the direction of Russia. Later that month, though, as the White House insisted that Flynn had never discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, FBI officials grew more concerned by Flynn’s conversations with the diplomat and decided to keep the investigation open so they could question him about that. Two agents visited him at the White House on Jan. 24., 2017.

But Thursday’s filing says the FBI had no basis to continue investigating Flynn after failing to find that he had done anything wrong. It says there was nothing on his Russia calls “to indicate an inappropriate relationship between Mr. Flynn and a foreign power,” and that none of the statements he made to the FBI had any relevance to the underlying investigation into whether the Trump campaign and Russia were illegally coordinating.

It also cites internal uncertainty within the FBI over whether Flynn had lied, noting that the agents who interviewed him reported that he had a “very sure demeanor” and that-then FBI Director James Comey had said it was a “close” call.

Flynn pleaded guilty that December, among the first of the president����ap aides to admit guilt in Mueller’s investigation. He acknowledged that he lied about his conversations with Kislyak, in which he encouraged Russia not to retaliate against the U.S. for sanctions imposed by the Obama administration over election interference.

He provided such extensive cooperation that prosecutors said he was entitled to a sentence of probation instead of prison.

However, his sentencing hearing was abruptly cut short after Flynn, facing a stern rebuke from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, asked to be able to continue cooperating and earn credit toward a more lenient sentence.

Flynn’s views about the case were already on display when his then-attorneys pointedly noted in their sentencing memo that the FBI had not warned him that it was against the law to lie when they interviewed him.

He later hired new attorneys, including conservative commentator Sidney Powell, who have taken a far more confrontational stance to the government. The lawyers accused prosecutors of withholding documents and evidence they said was favorable to the case and have repeatedly noted that one of the two agents who interviewed Flynn was fired for having sent derogatory text messages about Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Yet its nuanced conclusions deny a clear-cut vindication for Trump’s supporters or critics. It rejects theories and criticism spread by Trump and his supporters while also finding errors and misjudgments likely to be exploited by Republican allies as the president faces a probable impeachment vote this month.

Trump, in remarks at the White House shortly after the report’s release, claimed that the report showed “an attempted overthrow and a lot of people were in on it.”

The president has repeatedly said he was more eager for the report of John Durham, the hand-picked prosecutor selected by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a separate review of the Russia probe.

Barr rejected the inspector general’s conclusion that there was sufficient evidence to open the investigation.

“The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr said in a statement. His remarks were an unusual twist in that the attorney general typically does not take issue with an internal investigation that clears a Justice Department agency of serious misconduct.

In an interview with The Associated Press, FBI Director Chris Wray said the inspector general found problems that are “unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution.” But he also noted that political bias did not taint the opening of the investigation, or the steps that followed. He said the FBI is implementing more than 40 corrective actions.

Durham, in a brief statement, said he has informed the inspector general that he also doesn’t agree with the conclusion that the inquiry was properly opened, and suggested his own investigation would back up that assertion.

The inspector general identified 17 “significant inaccuracies or omissions” in applications for a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and subsequent warrant renewals. The errors, the watchdog said, resulted in “applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.”

But the report also found the bureau was justified in eavesdropping on Page and that there was not documented or testimonial evidence of any political bias.

Republicans have long criticized the process since the FBI relied in part on opposition research from a former British spy, Christopher Steele, whose work was financed by Democrats and the Clinton campaign, and that fact was not disclosed to the judges who approved the warrant.

The watchdog found that the FBI had overstated the significance of Steele’s past work as an informant, omitted information about one of Steele’s sources who Steele had called a “boaster” and who Steele said the source “may engage in some embellishment.”

The report’s release, coming the same day as a House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing centered on the president’s interactions with Ukraine, brought fresh attention to the legal and political investigations that have entangled the White House from the moment Trump took office.

The FBI’s Russia investigation, which was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, began in July 2016 after the FBI learned that a former Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, had been saying before it was publicly known that Russia had dirt on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the form of stolen emails. Those emails, which were hacked from Democratic email accounts by Russian intelligence operatives, were released by WikiLeaks in the weeks before the election in what U.S. officials have said was an effort to harm Clinton’s campaign and help Trump.

The report said the FBI was authorized to open the investigation to protect against a national security threat.

Months later, the FBI sought and received the Page warrant. Officials were concerned that Page was being targeted for recruitment by the Russian government, though he has denied wrongdoing and has never been charged with a crime.

The inspector general also found that an FBI lawyer is suspected of altering an email to make it appear as if an official at another government agency had said Page was not a source for that agency, even though he was.

Agents were concerned that if Page had worked as a source for another government agency, they would’ve needed to tell the surveillance court about that, the report said, and tasked the lawyer with contacting the other agency to obtain additional information. But the lawyer “did not accurately convey, and in fact altered, the information he received from the other agency,” the report said.

The lawyer is not identified by name in the report but people familiar with the situation have identified him as Kevin Clinesmith. The inspector general’s report says officials notified the attorney general and FBI director and provided them with information about the altered email.

The inspector general conducted more than 170 interviews involving more than 100 witnesses, including former FBI director James Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the Russia investigation, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, along with FBI agents and analysts.

The first hearing in the House impeachment inquiry will begin at 8 a.m. MST, Wednesday. The first witnesses will be Ambassador Bill Taylor and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary at the State Department overseeing European and Eurasian affairs.

Trump repeatedly prodded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to work with Attorney General William Barr and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer. At one point in the conversation, Trump said, “I would like for you to do us a favor.”

The president’s words set the parameters for the debate to come — just the fourth impeachment investigation of an American president in the nation’s history. The initial response highlighted the deep divide between the two parties: Democrats said the call amounted to a “shakedown” of a foreign leader, while Trump — backed by the vast majority of Republicans — dismissed it as a “nothing call.”

The call is one part of a whistleblower complaint on the president’s activities. After being stymied by the administration, lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees will get their first look at the complaint on Wednesday. Congress is also seeking an in-person interview with the whistleblower, who remains anonymous.

Trump spent Wednesday meeting with world leaders at the United Nations, a remarkable TV split screen even for the turbulence of the Trump era. Included on his schedule: a meeting with Zelenskiy.

In a light-hearted appearance before reporters, Zelenskiy said he didn’t want to get involved in American elections, but added, “Nobody pushed me.” Trump chimed in, “In other words, no pressure.”

The next steps in the impeachment inquiry were still developing a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched the probe. Moderate Democrats, including some from districts where Trump remains popular, urged the speaker to keep the inquiry to Ukraine and not expand into other issues Congress had already been investigating.

“We need to be disciplined about how we communicate,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. “The minute we’re talking about the intricacies of process is the minute that we are losing people.”

Pelosi announced the impeachment probe on Tuesday after months of resistance to a process she has warned would be divisive for the country and risky for her party. But after viewing the transcript on Wednesday, Pelosi declared: Congress must act.”

Trump, who thrives on combat, has all but dared Democrats to move toward impeachment, confident that the specter of an investigation led by the opposition party will bolster rather than diminish his political support.

“It’s a joke. Impeachment, for that?” Trump said during a news conference in New York. He revived the same language he has used for months to deride the now-finished special counsel investigation into election interference, declaring impeachment “a hoax” and the “single greatest witch hunt in American history.”

Republicans largely stood by the president and dismissed the notion that the rough transcript revealed any wrongdoing by Trump.

“I think it was a perfectly appropriate phone call, it was a congratulatory phone call,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican. “The Democrats continually make these huge claims and allegations about President Trump, and then you find out there’s no there there.”

The memo released by the White House was not a verbatim transcript, but was instead based on the records of officials who listened to the call. The conversation took place on July 25, one day after special counsel Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill about his investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference.

In the 30-minute phone call with Zelenskiy, Trump encourages the Ukrainian leader to talk with Giuliani and Barr about Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. Immediately after saying they would be in touch, Trump references Ukraine’s economy, saying: “Your economy is going to get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets. It’s a great country.”

At another point in the conversation, Trump asked Zelenskiy for a favor: his help looking into a cybersecurity firm that investigated the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee and determined it was carried out by Russia. Trump has falsely suggested Crowdstrike was owned by a Ukrainian.

In the days before the call, Trump ordered advisers to freeze $400 million in military aid for Ukraine — prompting speculation that he was holding out the money as leverage for information on the Bidens. Trump has denied that charge and the aid package does not come up in the conversation with Zelenskiy.

Trump has sought to implicate Biden and his son in the kind of corruption that has long plagued Ukraine. Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. Though the timing raised concerns among anti-corruption advocates, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son.

Biden said it was “tragedy” that Trump was willing to “put personal politics above his sacred oath.” He singled out Trump’s attempts to pull Barr and the Justice Department into efforts to investigate Biden, calling it “a direct attack on the core independence of that department, an independence essential to the rule of law.”

While the possibility of impeachment has hung over Trump for many months, the likelihood of a probe had faded after special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation ended without a clear directive for lawmakers.

Since then, the House committees have revisited aspects of the Mueller probe while also launching new inquiries into Trump’s businesses and various administration scandals that all seemed likely to drag on for months.

But details of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine prompted Democrats to quickly shift course. By the time Pelosi announced the probe, about two-thirds of House Democrats had announced moving toward impeachment probes.

The burden will probably now shift to Democrats to make the case to a scandal-weary public. In a highly polarized Congress, an impeachment inquiry could simply showcase how clearly two sides can disagree when shown the same evidence rather than approach consensus.

Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Laurie Kellman, Andrew Taylor, Eric Tucker and Zeke Miller in Washington and Jonathan Lemire and Deb Riechmann in New York contributed to this report.

The deal, announced by Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., appears to forestall possible criminal contempt proceedings against Attorney General William Barr, who has been locked in a standoff with Nadler and House Democratic leaders over access to redacted parts of Mueller’s report as well as evidence gathered during his two-year investigation.

Nadler said in a statement that the Justice Department would be “opening Robert Mueller’s most important files to us, providing us with key evidence that the Special Counsel used to assess whether the President and others obstructed justice or were engaged in other misconduct.”

“All members of the Judiciary Committee — Democrats and Republicans alike — will be able to view them,” he said. “These documents will allow us to perform our constitutional duties and decide how to respond to the allegations laid out against the President by the Special Counsel.”

The deal represents a victory for House Democrats in their quest to focus public attention on Mueller’s report and the alleged abuses of power they say the report contains. But it is a limited victory: It moves them no closer to securing testimony from Mueller or other figures, such as former White House Counsel Donald McGahn, who could galvanize the country at an open hearing.

The House is expected to proceed with a vote Tuesday on legislation authorizing the Judiciary Committee to seek court enforcement of its subpoenas, according to two senior Democratic aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal decisions. The committee said Monday that further action could be necessary to secure documents and testimony not covered under the new agreement.

The agreement does not address the committee’s request for testimony from McGahn — a key source for Mueller’s report who has declined to testify, citing the wishes of Trump administration lawyers.

One of the Democratic aides said that while court action against Barr is on hold pursuant to the deal, the Judiciary Committee still intends to ask a judge to order McGahn to testify.

Meanwhile, Nadler remains in negotiations over securing Mueller’s testimony, which many Democrats see as a crucial factor in focusing public attention on the investigation. Mueller, however, has so far resisted those requests, saying in his only recent public appearance, on May 29, that his report speaks for itself. Democrats have not accepted that posture, and Nadler has said he could subpoena Mueller if he does not agree to testify.

Rep. Douglas Collins, R-Ga., the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, also praised the agreement and said any attempt to hold Barr in contempt would be “baseless.”

“Today’s good faith provision from the administration further debunks claims that the White House is stonewalling Congress,” he said, pointing to a similar accommodation already reached between the Justice Department and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The standoff between Barr and the House dates back to March, when Mueller delivered his 448-page report to the Justice Department. Barr quickly released a summary that President Trump and his allies seized on to declare vindication, while it took weeks longer to release a fuller version of the report.

Democrats throughout called on Barr to release the report wholly unredacted and allow lawmakers unfettered access to his investigative records — a request Barr resisted, prompting the House Judiciary Committee to issue a subpoena on April 19 for those materials. Since then, the parties have been locked in negotiations — and including public threats of contempt — over enforcement of that subpoena.

Nadler said the first documents provided under the deal could be released to Congress on Monday.

“If the Department proceeds in good faith and we are able to obtain everything that we need, then there will be no need to take further steps,” he said. “If important information is held back, then we will have no choice but to enforce our subpoena in court and consider other remedies. It is critical that Congress is able to obtain the information we need to do our jobs, ensuring no one is above the law and bringing the American public the transparency they deserve.”

The letters from the White House to the Judiciary panel are the latest effort by the White House to thwart congressional investigations into President Donald Trump. Trump has said he will fight “all of the subpoenas” as Democrats have launched multiple probes into his administration and personal financial affairs.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler issued subpoenas for documents and testimony from Hicks, former White House communications director, and Donaldson, a former aide in the White House counsel’s office, last month. Both are mentioned frequently in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report , along with former White House counsel Donald McGahn. The White House has also directed McGahn to refuse to provide documents or testify before the committee.

Mueller’s investigation concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in hopes of getting Trump elected, though his report said there was not enough evidence to establish a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. Last week Mueller emphasized he had not exonerated Trump on the question of whether he obstructed justice — in effect leaving it to Congress to decide what to do with his findings. 

In a letter to Nadler, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said Hicks and Donaldson “do not have the legal right” to disclose White House documents to the panel. Cipollone said requests for the records should be directed to the White House, adding that they remain “legally protected from disclosure under longstanding constitutional principles, because they implicate significant executive branch confidentiality interests and executive privilege.”

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Hicks’ lawyer wrote Nadler on Tuesday and confirmed that she would be withholding documents in her possession, as well as her lawyers’ possession, from her tenure at the White House as well as some from the transition period. The lawyer, Robert Trout, said in the letter that they would not provide those materials because they were not authorized by the White House or the transition and there were “institutional interests at stake.”

Trout said they would provide documents from Hicks’ time on the Trump campaign, however, and said she had also previously provided some documents in March, after Nadler sent out his original requests for information.

In directing witnesses not to comply, the White House has frequently cited executive privilege, or the power to keep information from the courts, Congress and the public to protect the confidentiality of the Oval Office decision-making process.

But that only extends so far. Nadler said in a statement that while the White House had instructed the former aides not to turn over materials, Hicks has agreed to turn over some documents related to her time on Trump’s presidential campaign. Those materials are not covered by executive privilege.

Nadler said he thanked Hicks for “that show of good faith.” But it was unclear how much material the committee would receive.

The committee is arguing that the documents would not be covered by executive privilege if they left the White House months ago.

“The president has no lawful basis for preventing these witnesses from complying with our request,” Nadler said. “We will continue to seek reasonable accommodation on these and all our discovery requests and intend to press these issues when we obtain the testimony of both Ms. Hicks and Ms. Donaldson.”

The subpoenas also demanded that Hicks appear for a public hearing on June 19 and that Donaldson appear for a deposition on June 24. They have not yet said whether they will appear.

As the White House has pushed back on the investigations, some Democrats have ramped up their calls for Nadler to open an impeachment inquiry, arguing it would improve congressional standing in the courts as they try to enforce subpoenas. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been reluctant to launch impeachment proceedings, despite a growing number in her caucus who have called for it.

On Tuesday, progressive groups expressed “deep disappointment” over Pelosi’s unwillingness and called on her to act, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. The groups said in the letter that voters gave Democrats control of the House “because they wanted aggressive oversight of the Trump administration.”

Pelosi says impeachment requires more public support and would detract from the legislative agenda. She has instead favored a slower, more methodical effort.

As part of that approach, the House is expected next week to hold McGahn and Attorney General William Barr , who has refused to turn over the full Mueller report, in contempt of Congress. The resolution scheduled for a June 11 vote will allow the Judiciary Committee to seek court enforcement of its subpoenas.

With that vote approaching, the Justice Department sent a letter to Nadler Tuesday with a final offer to resume negotiations over access to redacted portions of the Mueller report and underlying documents — but only if the Judiciary panel nullifies its May vote to recommend contempt for Barr and cancels the June 11 vote in the full House.

Nadler rejected that offer, saying: “We urge you to return to the accommodation process without conditions. We are ready to begin negotiating immediately.”

Nadler has also said his panel will launch a series of hearings on “the alleged crimes and other misconduct” in Mueller’s report as Democrats try to keep the public’s focus on his findings in the Trump-Russia investigation.

The hearings will serve as a stand-in of sorts for Mueller, who said last week he would prefer not to appear before Congress and would not elaborate on the contents of his report if he were forced to testify.

The first hearing, on June 10, looks at whether Trump committed obstruction of justice by intervening in the probe. It will feature John Dean, a White House counsel who helped bring down President Richard Nixon’s presidency.

Democrats have suggested they will compel Mueller’s appearance if necessary, but it����ap unclear when or if that will happen. Negotiations over Mueller’s testimony are ongoing.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Tuesday that his panel will also hold hearings on the Mueller report, focusing on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo and Alan Fram contributed to this report.