Trump says that Giuliani “found plenty” in latest Ukraine visit and wants to testify before Congress
As Donald Trump faces impeachment due to his attempt to withhold congressionally allocated military aid to Ukraine in exchange for illegal foreign assistance in his reelection campaign, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani — himself reportedly under criminal investigation for his involvement in the foreign entanglement — has just returned from his latest trip to Ukraine where he has been continuing to do the very things that he and the president have been accused of doing in violation of the law.
Before he left the White House today to attend a Republican fundraiser in Florida, Trump did his usual session of answering reporters’ shouted questions over the roar of helicopter blades and said this about his lawyer’s activities of late and what Giuliani’s next move could be:
“Rudy, as you know, has been one of the great crime fighters of the last 50 years,” Trump said, as if his lawyer belonged in the Marvel or DC Comics universe. “And, he did get back from Europe just recently and I know — he has not told me what he found, but I think he wants to go before Congress and say, and also to the attorney general and the Department of Justice,” Trump relayed Giuliani’s intentions. “I hear he has found plenty,” he continued.
Giuliani’s latest Ukraine visit was in conjunction with a documentary crew working for the One America News Network, an upstart conservative media rival to Fox News for the title of the president’s most obsequious “news” purveyor.
They reportedly conducted on-camera interviews with a collection of disgraced former Ukrainian politicians including Yuriy Lutsenko, a former Minister of Internal Affairs who was convicted of embezzlement and abuse of office; Viktor Shokin, a former Prosecutor General of Ukraine who was forced from office by international pressure over corruption issues; and Kostiantyn Kulyk, another Ukrainian prosecutor with pending corruption charges and “ties to a warlord in eastern Ukraine accused of working for the Russian intelligence services,” according to The New York Times.
That Giuliani has continued to pursue politically motivated dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter using disgraced and allegedly corrupt foreign sources has shocked and outraged Americans who see the former New York City mayor’s actions as inexplicable given the testimony about his interference in the normal course of our nation’s diplomacy thus far in the Ukraine scandal.
However unreliable his sources, Giuliani will surely find a welcome audience for his “findings” among congressional Republicans eager to distract attention from the Trump administration’s crimes to the president’s Democratic opponents.
The Democrats will also welcome getting Giuliani on Capitol Hill under oath to testify about his contacts with Ukranian officials during the secretive Trump administration campaign to illegally leverage military aid for political assistance. With his two associates in his activities, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, already under indictment for campaign finance crimes, and Parnas ready to turn state’s witness, anything that Giuliani might say under oath other than assert his Fifth Amendment rights could prove quite dangerous for his future outside of prison, barring a presidential pardon.
The public can likely expect to soon hear a new set of allegations against the Bidens from Trump’s attorney based on Giulian’s conversations with the corrupt Ukranian politicians. The accusations will be as credible as their source which is to say not in the least.
You can watch Donald Trump talk about Rudy Giuliani and his latest Ukraine “findings” in the video excerpt below.
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Original reporting by Evan Semones at Politico.
