House panels launch investigation into Giuliani's dealings with Ukraine
A trio of House committees on Monday announced a new investigation into President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, over his interactions with Ukrainian officials and whether the Trump administration’s withholding of foreign aid from Ukraine had any underlying political motives.
The leaders of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees demanded information from the White House and State Department regarding Giuliani’s contacts with Ukraine and a decision to hit pause on more than $250 million in security assistance already appropriated by Congress.
In letters to White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings charge that Trump and Giuliani “appear to have acted outside legitimate law enforcement and diplomatic channels to coerce the Ukrainian government into pursuing two politically-motivated investigations under the guise of anti-corruption activity.”
Engel, Schiff and Cummings said they found the notion that Trump was enlisting his government to increase pressure on Ukraine and its justice system “in service of President Trump’s reelection campaign” especially concerning as next year’s election pulls closer.
Earlier this year, Giuliani, who served as both a lawyer and public attack dog for the president during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, canceled a trip to Ukraine after being blasted for saying he’d meet with the country’s new president while there.
He’d said he planned to meet with then-President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky, to encourage him to look into Hunter Biden’s involvement with a Ukrainian energy company and former Vice President Joe Biden’s attempts as vice president to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor accused of ignoring corruption among the country’s elite. Biden has maintained a lead in the Democratic primary of presidential hopefuls looking to unseat the president next year.
The committee chairmen also accused Trump of attempting to secure the prosecution of Ukrainians who provided key evidence against his onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Mueller’s probe.
Then, in a July phone call between Trump and Zelensky, the U.S. president focused at least in part on completing investigations of corruption cases there, “which inhibited the interaction between Ukraine and the USA,” according to a readout from Kiev.
Days later, Giuliani met with a top aide to Zelensky in Spain, where Giuliani urged investigations into the Biden matter and suggested a meeting between Trump and Zelensky. Though the State Department told The New York Times at the time that Giuliani, who holds no official role in the Trump administration, was there as a private citizen, the Zelensky adviser expressed confusion over whether Giuliani was speaking on behalf of Trump.
Giuliani defended his talks with Zelensky’s aide in an interview Monday, claiming that Biden is staring down “serious ethical problems” but denied that his push for investigations had anything to do with Biden’s presidential ambitions.
He slammed the Democrats’ probe, calling it “amazing that three committees are interested” in his discussions and ripping Schiff and Cummings as “disingenuous” investigators. He added that the investigation had no possible legislative purpose, dismissing the chairmen as “a bunch of political hacks.”
“The biggest telltale sign of that is three committees — how about one with someone who hasn’t prejudged the case?” he asked.
He said it was up to the government whether they turned over the documents Democrats were requesting but but still asserted that everything he’d done was above board in his capacity as the president’s defense attorney.
“They may regret they wrote the letter just like they regretted calling Mueller” to testify before Congress, Giuliani added, claiming that what he was accusing the Biden family of “stinks to high heaven.”
And late last month, POLITICO reported that the administration has been slow-walking $250 million in military assistance to Ukraine, prompting bipartisan backlash and irking advocates who argue the funding is critical to keeping Russia at bay.
“If the President is trying to pressure Ukraine into choosing between defending itself from Russian aggression without U.S. assistance or leveraging its judicial system to serve the ends of the Trump campaign, this would represent a staggering abuse of power, a boon to Moscow, and a betrayal of the public trust,” Engel, Schiff and Cummings stated.
They added that the State Department’s admission it played some role in facilitating the meeting between Giuliani and the Zelensky adviser “raises serious concerns that the Department is complicit in a corrupt scheme that undercuts U.S. foreign policy and national security interests in favor of the President’s personal agenda.”
Monday's investigation is just the latest probe into the president or those in his inner circle by House Democrats. The Giuliani-Ukraine investigation joins a slew of others targeting everything from the president's tax returns to his touting of his real estate empire in office to his attempts to silence women who alleged extramarital affairs.
Biden's presidential campaign applauded the move, linking Giuliani's outreach to members of Trump's 2016 campaign who met with Russians offering dirt on his opponent Hillary Clinton.
In a statement, Biden spokesman Andrew Bates accused Trump of "abusing the office of the presidency and jeopardizing national security aid to a key ally in order to pressure them to prop-up a comprehensively discredited conspiracy theory."
Andrew Desiderio contributed to this story.
