Joe Biden’s presidential campaign wants television networks to shun ‘dedicated liar’ Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, over comments about the ongoing Ukraine scandal.
The former New York City mayor ‘has made very clear that his only obligation is to protect Donald Trump, and that he will willingly lie to do so,’ Biden campaign officials Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield wrote in a letter to network executives.
Dunn and Bedingfield wrote that while news anchors and interviewers ‘have been aggressive in pushing back on him in real time, it is well known that the dedicated liar always has the advantage, pushing out outlandish falsehoods and disinformation in the knowledge that it is hard for the corrections to catch up,’ according to Deadline.
‘Giving Rudy Giuliani valuable time on your air to push these lies in the first place is a disservice to your audience and a disservice to journalism.’
Biden campaign officials were upset over an appearance Giuliani made on CBS’s Sunday morning show Face the Nation.
Officials with Joe Biden’s (right) presidential campaign are demanding that television networks stop booking Rudy Giuliani (left)
During the appearance, the former mayor made a number of unsubstantiated allegations against Democrats and Ukrainian prosecutors.
Giuliani claimed that Ukraine’s former top prosecutor was installed in his post at the behest of then-Vice President Joe Biden, who wanted to put an end to an investigation into a Ukrainian gas company with ties to his son, Hunter Biden.
The Biden campaign on Sunday accused Giuliani of ‘attack[ing] the credibility of the former Ukrainian prosecutor on whom he has previously staked most of his harebrained case against Biden when the prosecutor said definitively he believed there was nothing here to investigate.’
After learning of the Biden campaign’s request, Giuliani fired back on Twitter, slamming the former vice president for his ‘arrogance and entitlement to protection.’
The former mayor posted a series of tweets, writing: ‘The Bidens are clearly rattled by the affidavit showing there is a named accuser and not an anonymous source, who is ready to testify!
‘Reminds me of the reaction to the corrupt pols of the 70’s and 80’s.
‘They have their Dem media trying to destroy my reputation and silence me!’
Giuliani’s reference to ‘corrupt pols of the 70s and 80s’ likely relates to his career as a prosecutor before entering politics.
In a subsequent tweet, Giuliani wrote: ‘The Bidens have played the influence game for years and now the American people are demanding answers!’
The former mayor also tweeted late Sunday: ‘Bidens say that the apparent sale of his office, to one of the most crooked Ukrainian oligarchs, was fully investigated.
‘So where is the report? Produce it. You can’t, because it was never investigated!’
It is not clear what Giuliani is referring to.
According to the fact-checking site Politifact, the former mayor ‘has repeatedly leveled unsubstantiated allegations of corruption against Biden.’
In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Giuliani says he met Ukrainian officials in Madrid, Paris and Warsaw this year as he pushed an investigation into the former vice president.
The former mayor posted a series of tweets, writing: ‘The Bidens are clearly rattled by the affidavit showing there is a named accuser and not an anonymous source, who is ready to testify!’
After learning of the Biden campaign’s request, Giuliani fired back on Twitter, slamming the former vice president for his ‘arrogance and entitlement to protection.’
Giuliani accused Joe and Hunter Biden of ‘playing the influence game for years’
The former New York mayor has made a number of unsubstantiated allegations against Biden
Giuliani has emerged as a central figure in a scandal that has now engulfed Trump and left him facing an impeachment inquiry into whether he misused his office for his own political gains.
One of the key questions is who financed Giuliani’s globe-trotting as he pursued unsubstantiated allegations that Biden had tried to fire Ukraine’s then chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop him investigating an energy company on which his son Hunter served as a director.
‘Nobody pays my expenses,’ Giuliani said in an interview with Reuters on Friday.
‘What does it matter if I’m getting paid for it. Isn’t the real story whether he (Biden) sold out the vice presidency of the United States, not whether I got paid for it?’
Reuters was not able to independently verify how Giuliani paid for his trips.
Biden has accused Giuliani of peddling ‘false, debunked conspiracy theories.’
Giuliani has made a number of television appearances in recent days defending the president over his phone calls with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
Observers have described the former mayor’s behavior as bizarre and incoherent.
After initial reports of a whistleblower surfaced, Giuliani appeared on Chris Cuomo’s show on CNN.
During that heated September 20 interview, Giuliani first denied asking Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden and his son for bribery – only to reverse himself 30 seconds later, saying: ‘Of course I did.’
Most recently, Giuliani ranted on Sunday morning that he would not cooperate with the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation as long as Adam Schiff is chairman.
The president’s personal attorney suggested that he would be more than happy to testify and cooperate with the House committee probing Trump’s relations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky, as long as someone who doesn’t want to ‘hang the president’ was put in charge of the committee.
‘I wouldn’t cooperate with Adam Schiff,’ Giuliani asserted on ABC’s This Week on Sunday morning.
‘I think Adam Schiff should be removed.’
Giuliani said he would cooperate ‘if they remove Adam Schiff, if they put a neutral person in who hasn’t pre-judged the case. If they put someone in – a Democrat who hasn’t expressed any opinion yet.’
Giuliani’s comments come after revelations of a July 25 phone call between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that a whistle-blower alleges was setting a quid pro quo of military aide in exchange for the foreign government to investigate Joe Biden
‘If I had a judge in a case, and he had already announced, ‘I’m going to impeach,’ if he already went ahead and did a whole false episode, wouldn’t I move to recuse that judge?’ Giuliani argued.
He said he would consider cooperating even if the California Democratic representative, who he labeled an ‘illegitimate chairman,’ were heading the committee’s investigation, claiming he was at the will of his client.
‘I will consider it [cooperating],’ Giuliani conceded, but added he would only do so if his client – the president – decides he wants him to testify.
‘I have to be guided by my client, frankly. I’m a lawyer, it’s his privilege, not mine,’ he said. ‘If he decides that he wants me to testify, of course I’ll testify, even though I think Adam Schiff is an illegitimate chairman because he has already prejudged the case.’
The former New York mayor said if the probe were actually ‘fair’ it would be charged by someone who hasn’t already issued a judgement.
‘If we want fairness here, we’ve got to put someone in charge of that committee who has an open mind. Not someone who wants to hang the president, who said I have evidence of Russian collusion. Adam, where’s the evidence?’ he traded against the committee chairman.
Schiff spoke with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos directly after Giuliani, and denied prejudging the case, adding he wasn’t even sure if the attorney would be called to testify.
‘We want to flesh out the facts, then we’ll make a determination whether it would be productive to bring in a witness like Rudy Giuliani,’ he said.
‘Well he seems to think that I’m the judge and jury here,’ Schiff said of Giuliani’s assumptions.
‘My role is to do the investigation, my role is to make sure that the facts come out. If it were to lead to an impeachment – and I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves – it will be the Senate that makes the determination whether the president’s conduct should result in his removal from office.’
‘I intend to hold the president accountable, I intend to do a thorough investigation, and what we have seen already is damming,’ he continued.
Trump released an unredacted transcript of the phone call, claiming it proves he did not pressure Zelensky to dig up dirt on his political rival
‘Because what we have seen in that call record is a President of the United States using the full weight of his office with the country beholden to America for its defense… to try to commerce that leader to manufacture dirt on his opponent, and interfere in our election. It’s hard to imagine a series of facts more damning than that. So yes, we’re going to get to the bottom of that.’
The president has railed against Schiff, who has been hesitant to call for impeachment, after the Intelligence chairman earlier this week flip-the-switch.
The switch came as allegations from a whistle-blower emerged that in a July 25 call the president pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden regarding potential corruption.
Trump released on Wednesday an unredacted transcript of the phone call, which he said would prove there was no foul play. But the transcript showed that the president did urge an investigation.
During a hearing with Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire this week, Schiff put words in the president’s mouth in what he said was intended to be a ‘parody’ of the transcript.
‘I have a favor I want from you,’ Schiff read aloud Thursday without disclosing that he was about to read from a parody of the call.
‘And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it, on this and on that.’
The president erupted on Twitter.
‘HE WAS DESPERATE AND HE GOT CAUGHT,’ Trump wrote.
‘Adam Schiff therefore lied to Congress and attempted to defraud the American Public. He has been doing this for two years. I am calling for him to immediately resign from Congress based on this fraud!’
Officials say that Giuliani got involved in U.S.-Ukraine relations after the conclusion of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and the attorney insists he only did so after the State Department asked him to intervene.
Part of his initiative to shake up the relationship included pushing out then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was called back to Washington a few months ahead of the end of her three-year assignment there.
The decision angered advisors and aides, including then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, who were confused by Giuliani’s role in the foreign policy initiative.
In the transcript of the call, Trump offered Giuliani’s services to investigate the Biden’s.
Hunter Biden accepted a board position with Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings in 2014, when his father was still serving as Obama’s vice president. He reportedly earned $50,000 per month from the post, which he stepped-down from last year.
His position raised eyebrows in Washington, many claiming there was a conflict of interest.
But the Obama administration at the time claimed there was nothing improper about the move since Hunter is a private citizen.
Joe Biden also claimed he never discussed his son’s position with the Ukraine company – something that was disproven by Hunter’s own interview earlier this summer when he recounted a 2015 conversation he had with his father about his post at Burisma.