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.Giuliani did not immediately respond for comment.
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.
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.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine