... Rudy Giuliani said in an interview Thursday that he plans to travel to Ukraine to push the country's leadership on several probes that may prove "very, very helpful" ...
Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky, who takes office in June, will assume stewardship of two major ongoing investigations. One concerns evidence that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton campaign may have worked with Ukrainians to illegally help Clinton by revealing damaging information about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
The other investigation pertains to allegations that former Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor in order to take the heat off the prosecutor's probe into a company that employed his son as a board member.
“I am going to tell him what I know about the people that are surrounding him, and how important it is to do a full, complete and fair investigation," Giuliani told the New York Times, referring to Zelensky.
"We’re not meddling in an election; we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” Giuliani continued, when pressed on whether his visit would be appropriate. "And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”
Last week Ukraine's embassy in Washington confirmed that "a DNC insider" or, possibly, "a DNC contractor," attempted to persuade Ukraine to approach a member of the US Congress to open hearings on Paul Manafort or to ask (then) Ukraine President Poroshenko to raise Manafort's name while visiting Washington. "A DNC insider" suggests perhaps a lawyer for Perkins, Coie--someone like Marc Elias or Michael Sussman, both of whom we've seen before. On the other hand, "a DNC contractor" would clearly seem to point toward Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson.
UPDATE: Whoops! It's off!
I'm thinking out loud here. If I were going to Ukraine, as Rudy is, I would keep the trip hush hush.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that he is telling mainstream media that he is going I infer as a signal to the plotters. Maybe to make them sweat or start ratting on each other.
He's been talking up the Ukraine angle for a couple of weeks and, while he's Trump's private attorney, the government over there will know he has a direct line.
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