"Giuliani sought a
payments of $200,000 from the recently dismissed prosecutor general of Ukraine
earlier this year. So, Mr. President, about that corruption in Ukraine you said
you were so worried about..."
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Public optics for Rudy
Giuliani continued to get worse on Wednesday after the New
York Times and Washington
Post both reported that President Donald Trump's personal attorney
earlier this year sought hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of business
opportunities in Ukraine from the same government officials he was working with
to uncover dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.
The Post reported
that Giuliani negotiated a contract earlier this year to represent Yuri
Lutsenko, then Ukraine's top prosecutor, for at least $200,000. The
negotiations came at the same time Giuliani was working with Lutsenko to dig up
damaging information on Biden for the benefit of Trump.
"The agreements were
never executed, and there is no indication that Giuliani was ultimately paid by
Lutsenko or other Ukrainian officials," the Post noted.
"But the negotiations proceeded far enough that legal agreements were
drafted under which Giuliani's company would have received more than $200,000
to work for the Ukrainians."
According to the Times,
Giuliani and lawyers close to him were engaged in a months-long effort to take
on "various Ukrainian officials or their agencies as clients."
The Times reviewed
"a proposal signed in February by Mr. Giuliani," which "called
for the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice to pay his firm $300,000."
"In return, Mr. Giuliani
would help the government recover money it believed had been stolen and stashed
overseas," the Times reported. "The Times could
not determine whether the documents it reviewed comprise the entirety of the
efforts by Mr. Giuliani and other lawyers to represent Ukrainian government
officials."
Giuliani downplayed the talks
in an interview with the Times and said he "never received a
penny" from Ukrainian officials.
The new reporting was viewed
by progressives and analysts as further evidence that Giuliani and Trump were
pursuing corrupt ends in Ukraine while publicly claiming to be fighting
corruption.
Reflecting on the new
revelations, Post columnist Paul Waldman wrote:
Why would Giuliani be
simultaneously pursuing what former national security official Fiona Hill
called a “domestic political errand” on Trump’s behalf — pressuring Ukraine to
announce an investigation that would smear former vice president Joe Biden —
while simultaneously looking to cash in himself?
The better question is, why
wouldn't he?
"Trumplandia is just a
massive criminal enterprise," tweeted Adam
Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic.
No comments:
Post a Comment