President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani had admitted that an ‘outline’ of his accusations against Joe and Hunter Biden were included in a dossier provided to Congress by State Department inspector general Steve Linick on Wednesday.
Linick says he first received the mysterious dossier back in May, which came encased in a manila folder with ‘White House’ handwritten as the return address.
Among the documents included in the packet were notes written by Giuliani when he interviewed fired Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin back in January.
According to Fox News, Shokin reportedly told Giuliani that he was ordered ‘to back off an investigation involving a natural gas firm that was linked to Joe Biden’s son Hunter’.
Speaking with CNN on Wednesday night, Giuliani said that he subsequently ‘routed’ those notes to the office of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
‘They told me they were going to investigate it,’ he told the news network.
Giuliani’s admission that he forwarded his notes to Pompeo appears to demonstrate that he was interested in forcing a State Department investigation of Hunter Biden – as well as his father, Joe Biden, who was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings at the time.
President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani had admitted that an ‘outline’ of his accusations against Joe and Hunter Biden were included in a dossier provided to Congress by State Department inspector general Steve Linick on Wednesday
The dossier provided to Congress on Wednesday included an ‘outline’ of his accusations against Joe and Hunter Biden as made by Giuliani
However, it remains unclear how the notes came to be included in the dossier, which was originally sent to Pompeo from a mysterious sender.
On Wednesday night, Giuliani stopped short of saying he and his associates were directly behind the creation of the entire dossier.
After it was sent to Pompeo, the package ended up in the hands of inspector general Linick, who subsequently forwarded it to the FBI.
The FBI allowed the release of the dossier to Congress, which suggests that they are not actively investigating it.
Other documents contained in the mysterious package included ‘a collection of conspiratorial memos, news clippings and pages photocopied so poorly they were barely legible’, The New York Times reports.
The paper’s reporter, Caitie Edmondson, shared a photo to Twitter of the manila folder which contained all of the documents.
After it was released on Wednesday, the dossier was blasted by several Democrats.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland described it as ‘a series of hallucinatory propagandist suggestions’.
Meanwhile, Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel and Oversight Chairman Elijah Cumming claimed that the inclusion of Giuliani’s notes in the dossier raises ‘troubling questions about apparent efforts inside and outside the Trump Administration to target specific officials’ – namely the Bidens.
Giuliani is currently under fire amid accusations he was pushing an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden on behalf of his client, President Trump
Guiliani is currently in the hot seat with Schiff, Engel and Cummins’ committees all subpoenaing him for documents related to his bid to get Ukraine to look into the Joe Biden on behalf of his client, President Trump.
They announced the subpoenas on Monday as they examine Trump’s efforts to have Ukraine investigate political rival Joe Biden and his family. Giuliani assisted in that effort.
The panel cites Giuliani’s contentious prime time interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN last week, where at one point he admitted ‘of course’ he asked Ukraine to look into Biden.
‘In addition to this stark admission, you stated more recently that you are in possession of evidence—in the form of text messages, phone records, and other communications—indicating that you were not acting alone and that other Trump Administration officials may have been involved in this scheme,’ Schiff, Engel and Cummins wrote.
They referenced Giuliani’s own claims on Twitter, as well as an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show where he brandished a tablet containing some of his texts to make the case that he wasn’t freelancing and had State Department buy-in.
The chairmen – Schiff, Engel and Cummins- are demanding he turn over the documents by October 15.
President Trump again Monday called his phone call with the President of Ukraine where he urged him to get in touch with Giuliani ‘perfect’
But Giuliani suggested Sunday that he would not cooperate with the expected subpoenas.
‘I wouldn’t cooperate with Adam Schiff. I think Adam Schiff should be removed,’ Giuliani said on ABC.
Host George Stephanopoulos responded, ‘So that’s your answer? You’re not going to cooperate?’
‘I didn’t say that. I said I will consider it,’ Giuliani told him, saying he’d consult his client. ‘If (Trump) decides that he wants me to testify of course I’ll testify — even though I think Adam Schiff is an illegitimate chairman.’
Both Trump and Giuliani have acknowledged the efforts to influence Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Hunter Biden’s membership on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. No evidence of wrongdoing by either of the Bidens has been produced.
A secret complaint from the whistle-blower, whose name is not publicly known, detailed a July phone call between Trump and Zelensky in which Trump urged the probe. It also revealed White House efforts to keep the conversation private.
