WASHINGTON — President Trump insisted on Friday that there was nothing inappropriate about his administration’s dealings with Ukraine, playing down a series of texts between American diplomats and a Ukrainian official that were released Thursday night that outlined his attempt to tie a possible White House meeting and military aid to investigating former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Trump homed in on a comment from Gordon D. Sondland, a major Republican fund-raiser whom Mr. Trump appointed as ambassador to the European Union, who in one of the texts defended the president’s intentions and said there were no “quid pro quos of any kind.”
“If you look, he also said there was no quid pro quo,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s the whole ballgame.”
Mr. Trump made his comments the day after openly calling on China to also examine unfounded allegations against Mr. Biden and his younger son, Hunter Biden. The president’s request came only moments after he discussed upcoming trade talks with China and said that “if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.”
Speaking to reporters on Friday as he left the White House to visit wounded military service members at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, the president said again that he had done nothing wrong in seeking the information.
Mr. Trump said his focus on Mr. Biden and his son was driven by a concern about corruption, not politics.
“This doesn’t pertain to anything but corruption,” Mr. Trump said of his interest in investigating the Bidens. “And that has to do with me. And I don’t care about politics. I don’t care about anything. But I do care about corruption.”
Mr. Trump claimed he “never thought Biden was going to win” and that “he’d be an easy opponent,” even as his campaign was set to air $1 million in ads targeting Mr. Biden in the early-voting states.
Mr. Trump also cited the reconstructed transcript of a call in July with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that was released by the White House as evidence that there was no quid pro quo in his dealings with him.
“When I released that call, they were jumping around like you wouldn’t believe,” Mr. Trump said on Friday. “And then they found out that the call itself was so bad for them. It was a perfect call.”
He added that “we’re very proud of that call.”
But during the call, Mr. Trump did press Mr. Zelensky to “do us a favor” and investigate supposed Ukrainian efforts to help Democrats in the 2016 presidential election as well Mr. Biden and Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
Mr. Zelensky assured the president he would, according to the transcript released by the White House. Before the meeting, Mr. Trump’s team had made clear to Mr. Zelensky that he would have to agree to the investigations in order to confirm a visit to the White House that had been promised but held up for two months, according to the texts.
Those messages as well as the ones cited by Mr. Trump were provided to three Democrat-led House committees by the former special envoy for Ukraine, Kurt D. Volker, and released Thursday night.
“Heard from White House — assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington,” Mr. Volker wrote to Andriy Yermak, a top Ukrainian presidential adviser at 8:36 a.m. the day of the phone call.