Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney who curiously doesn’t get paid, has been on a mission for the better part of a year to develop a relationship (or leverage his existing relationships) in the Ukraine for the primary purpose of smearing Joe Biden and his son ahead of the 2020 election.
From at least late 2018 onward, Giuliani has been visiting with Ukrainians in New York City and Europe, really ratcheting up the conspiracy in spring of 2019, appearing on Fox News to promote the conspiracy theory about the Bidens, something Donald Trump also began doing on Twitter.
So, Donald Trump calls president-elect Zelensky, after putting a hold on the $250 million in aid (that mysteriously became $400 million in aid) and asked him for this “favor” to investigate the Bidens.
Only a few days later, on July 31, Rudy Giuliani met with Ukrainian Mayor of Kiev Vitaliy Klitschko in New York City. After that meeting, Giuliani traveled to Spain where he met with the Andriy Yermak, senior aide to Zelensky. Once news broke that the president’s private, personal attorney was meeting with representatives of a foreign leader critical to the national security of the U.S. and Europe, with $400 million in financial and military aid on the line, Giuliani went on to claim that he’d been sent to the meeting as a “mission” from the State Department.
Needless to say, that set off alarm bells. The State Department swiftly denied the unelected, unconfirmed personal attorney of the president was not representing the United States in any way, shape or form and there was no mission. They essentially threw Giuliani under a Ukrainian-sized bus.
Giuliani doubled down, waving his phone on Fox News claiming to have the evidence: text messages proving the State Department contacted him. He’s now provided the text of those messages to CNN and I’m not sure what he thought these would prove, but they definitely prove that Rudy Giuliani should himself be getting a lawyer. The texts are reportedly between Giuliani and U.S. special representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker.
From CNN:
Giuliani said Volker informed him that the July 25 phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky went well. He also said that days earlier, around July 19, Volker first contacted him about connecting Giuliani with one of Zelensky's top advisers, Andriy Yermak.
Giuliani shared with CNN what he claimed was a text message from Volker on July 19.
"Mr Mayor — really enjoyed breakfast this morning," read the message shared with CNN. "As discussed, connecting you here with Andrey Yermak, who is very close to President Zelensky. I suggest we schedule a call together on Monday — maybe 10am or 11am Washington time? Kurt"
Now why would a U.S. special representative to the Ukraine, which is a part-time, unpaid position, be reaching out to Rudy Giuliani to be setting up meetings? Are we really to believe this was all Kurt Volker’s idea? No. As we read in the call memorandum, Donald Trump was the one seeking for Zelensky’s people to meet with Rudy Giuliani.
In fact, the whistleblower complaint detailed ways in which Volker was doing damage control because of Giuliani’s actions. From NBC:
But a whistleblower's complaint made public Thursday paints a different picture: One of Volker scrambling to "contain the damage" to national security inflicted by Giuliani, Trump''s personal lawyer, and back-channeling with the Ukrainian leadership about how to navigate the conflicting messages that Giuliani and U.S. officials were sending.
The day after Trump’s call to Zelensky, Volker traveled to meet with Zelensky in person, presumably to discuss the meeting with Giuliani that Donald Trump was personally seeking in exchange for $400 million in aid.
In the newly released complaint, the whistleblower says that the day after Trump's July call with Zelenskiy, Volker traveled to the Ukrainian capital to meet with Zelenskiy along with the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. Giuliani has previously named Sondland as the other U.S. diplomat he coordinated with on his efforts in Ukraine.
The whistleblower says that multiple U.S. officials told him or her that Volker and Sondland "provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to 'navigate' the demands that the president had made of Mr. Zelenskiy." Volker and Sondland, according to the whistleblower, also gave advice on how to "understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving" from Giuliani versus U.S. officials who represent the United States on Ukraine issues.
Unlike the 2016 collusion case in which U.S. attorneys essentially concluded Donald Trump’s son was too dumb to know he was violating federal election law, the same cannot be said of a man who is a former U.S. attorney.