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How a new government report strongly implicates Giuliani in a Russian interference effort
By Philip Bump
March 17, 2021 at 11:39 a.m. EDT
By early May 2019, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani must have looked like the international espionage equivalent of a wide-eyed tourist walking around with his wallet hanging out his back pocket. He’d announced his intention to travel to Ukraine and seek out derogatory information about Joe Biden, then a newly announced presidential candidate and someone well positioned to face President Donald Trump, then Giuliani’s boss, in the 2020 election. For any Russian officials interested in finding a conduit for misinformation that both cast their geopolitical rival Ukraine as corrupt and that bolstered Trump’s chances of reelection, Giuliani must have been an irresistible target.
A report released by the Director of National Intelligence on Tuesday strongly suggests that this is exactly what happened.
Giuliani spent months explicitly arguing that Biden’s son Hunter had engaged in dubious activity while serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. This claim was fact-checked over and over again, particularly as Trump faced impeachment for his efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce a probe of the Bidens. At no point did credible evidence emerge to suggest that the core claims being rigorously promoted by Giuliani and Trump were accurate. Giuliani nonetheless continued to hammer on the allegations, repeatedly insisting that he had or would provide evidence to prove wrongdoing.
At one point, as the second impeachment investigation into Trump was underway, Giuliani returned to Ukraine with credulous employees of the pro-Trump network One America News in tow to interview those who he claimed had evidence of Biden’s malfeasance. One of those sources was Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament who had been a member of a Pro-Russia political party for which Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort once worked.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/17/how-new-government-report-strongly-implicates-giuliani-russian-interference-effort
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