Trump Ally Lindsey Graham Urges President to Be 'as Transparent as Possible' About Ukraine Phone Call

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham implored President Donald Trump on Monday to be "as transparent as possible" and release more information about a phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president that is at the center of a new controversy.

"I would urge him to continue to be as transparent as possible and tell us as much as he can, without compromising executive privilege, so that we can understand what happened," Graham told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

The South Carolina lawmaker is one of Trump's closest and most conservative congressional allies, and his call for transparency came as Democrats on Capitol Hill continued to demand that the administration turn over an internal government watchdog report based on a whistleblower complaint about the call.

Trump has admitted that he pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 25 phone call to investigate potential wrongdoing involving Ukraine, former Vice President Joe Biden—a top 2020 presidential candidate—and Biden's son.

No evidence of such wrongdoing has ever been reported, but Trump has continued to suggest that Biden may have used his position as vice president to help his son and his involvement with a Ukrainian gas company.

A whistleblower complaint about the phone call was classified as an "urgent concern," but acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire has refused to provide the report to certain members of Congress. Top Democrats have cried foul, saying that refusal is against the law.

Trump has said he's considering whether to release a transcript of the call with Zelensky, a move that would fall in line with Graham's remarks to Hewitt.

"I think you're going to find more about that phone call in the coming days," Graham said. "You're going to be surprised about the level of transparency regarding that phone call. And in turn, that should put pressure on the system to find more about what Joe Biden was talking about."

Trump did not say he temporarily withheld military aid to force Ukraine to comply with his demands for an investigation against a political rival, but he suggested it wouldn't have been wrong if he did.

"We want to make sure that country is honest. It's very important to talk about corruption," he told reporters. "If you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?"

The revelations of the phone call and potential withholding of money as a quid pro quo have spurred new impeachment fervor from Trump's political opponents, with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff coming closer to publicly supporting impeachment proceedings in remarks over the weekend than ever before. Schiff, along with two other Democratic chairmen, demanded Secretary of State Mike Pompeo turn over previously requested documents and information about the Ukraine scandal by Thursday or face a subpoena.

"If the Administration persists in blocking this whistleblower from disclosing to Congress a serious possible breach of constitutional duties by the president, they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation," Pelosi wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter sent to both Republicans and Democrats.

Schiff has threatened legal action against the administration to obtain the whistleblower report. "We very well may have crossed the Rubicon here," he said during an appearance on CNN.

"I have been very reluctant to go down the path of impeachment.... This would be an extraordinary remedy of last resort, not first resort," he continued. "But if the president is essentially withholding military aid at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit, that is providing dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign, then that may be the only remedy that is coequal to the evil that that conduct represents."