Rudy Giuliani: 'I needed Yovanovitch out of the way. She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody'
That Rudy Giuliani is really out-Giuliani-ing himself this week. What's he up to? This feels like a set-up, a prelude to a greater Act yet to come.
Said Giuliani just last night on Fox News:
"I forced her out because she's corrupt," said Rudy Giuliani, a private citizen who was once Donald Trump's personal lawyer, about America's former ambassador to Ukraine.
And a new doozy of a quote from him in the New Yorker:
"I needed Yovanovitch out of the way. She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody."
In January, 2019, Giuliani spoke by phone with Viktor Shokin, the previous prosecutor general, about alleged misconduct by the Bidens, which set him on a new path of inquiry. That month, Lutsenko flew to New York, and, in the course of several days, spoke with Giuliani at his Park Avenue office. Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman were there, too. Lutsenko knew what would interest Giuliani, so he had brought along financial information purportedly drawn from bank records, which, he said, proved that Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, had paid Hunter Biden and his business partner to "lobby" Joe Biden. "Lutsenko came in with guns blazing," Parnas told me. "He came in with records showing us the money trail. That's when it became real." Giuliani seized on Lutsenko's claims, offering to help him secure high-level meetings in Washington and encouraging him to pursue investigations beneficial to Trump.
In a long conversation with me this past November, Giuliani largely confirmed Lutsenko's account of their relationship. He, too, saw Yovanovitch as an obstacle, hindering his attempt to dig up dirt against his client's rival in advance of the 2020 election. "I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way," he said. "She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody." Giuliani compiled a dossier on the Bidens and Yovanovitch, which he sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and which was shared with the F.B.I. and with me. John Solomon, a journalist, had interviewed Lutsenko for the Washington-based publication The Hill. Giuliani promoted the project. "I said, 'John, let's make this as prominent as possible,' " Giuliani told me. " 'I'll go on TV. You go on TV. You do columns.' "
Read the full story.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor Behind Trump's Impeachment: How the efforts of Yuriy Lutsenko and Rudy Giuliani to smear Joe Biden led to a Presidential crisis.
[Adam Entous, December 16, 2019]