Rudy Giuliani claimed Monday that he’s learned that a Ukrainian laundered $3 million through Joe Biden’s son, and the Obama administration had a prosecutor fired to cover the scandal up.
The personal attorney to President Trump claimed in tweets and in a television appearance that he has ‘evidence’ to support the allegation, although he did not share it on either medium.
Giuliani demanded Democrats launch an investigation into the charges he’s levying against the former vice president and leading presidential candidate and said its Biden who should have to prove he’s innocent of criminal conduct.
‘Biden says he never talked to his son about his overseas business. Do you think we can prove, with our fact a day disclosures, it’s a lie-a false exculpatory statement. Do we have to prove, or do you already know, it’s a lie, and an incriminating statement,’ the attorney asked.
The Obama administration official says he did not discuss his son Hunter Biden’s work at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian oil and gas company, at any time while he was overseeing aid to the country. He says he fired a prosecutor investigating the business, because the international community believed the Ukrainian official to be corrupt.
A Biden campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to Giuliani’s new allegation against the former vice president and his son, who quit his job at Burisma earlier this year as his father launched a bid for the presidency.
The candidate has accused Trump of ‘enlisting the help of a foreign government — once again’ and abusing his presidential power in the dust up.
Rudy Giuliani claimed Monday that he’s learned that a Ukrainian laundered $3 million through Joe Biden’s son, and the Obama administration had a prosecutor fired to cover the scandal up
Giuliani and his client have accused the elder Biden, who’s currently atop the Democratic presidential field, of withholding billions in financial aid from Ukraine when he was in office to keep his son from going to jail.
The charges picked up steam last week when a whistle-blower complaint was revealed to have involved a charge that Donald Trump pressured the newly-elected president of Ukraine to launch a formal probe into Giuliani’s assertions.
Trump is also accused of engaging in a pay-for-play scheme in which he allegedly held military aid for Ukraine at arms length until the nation agreed to launch a probe into the Bidens.
After news reporters about the unidentified whistle-blower’s complaint, of which there are conflicting accounts, began to surface, Trump refused to discuss his conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky.
He made an about-face on Sunday as his role in the billowing controversy came under fierce scrutiny.
The U.S. president said he did not nothing wrong while admitting he did ask the Ukrainian leader to look into the unsubstantiated claims against his political rival.
‘We had a great conversation. The conversation I had was largely congratulatory. It was largely corruption — all of the corruption taking place. It was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine,’ he acknowledged.
Some congressional Democrats who are eager to add to their impeachment ammunition against the president are using the admission and claims that Giuliani has made over the last week in interviews as a new opportunity to probe Trump.
They’re demanding a transcript of the Trump call that tripped the whistle-blower complaint and a copy of the allegations, which they claim the administration is required to provide them under the law.
The president’s acting director of national intelligence claims the person is not a whistle-blower by law, and he is refusing to to hand over associated evidence.
Senior administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, argued Sunday that turning over the information would set a bad precedent.
Giuliani claimed Monday hat in this particular case, the conversation ‘can be open’ to the public to prove Trump’s innocence.
Trump also contradicted his top aides on Sunday and said he’d be willing release the call transcript to clear his name and have Giuliani testify on Capitol Hill about the saga.
He told reporters would have ‘no problem’ with Giuliani testifying about the controversy and Ukrainian corruption allegations the Republican president and his lawyer believe will bring down the Biden family.
‘I would have no problem with it,’ the president told DailyMail.com as he left the White House for a trip to Texas and Ohio on Sunday morning. ‘Rudy’s a very straight shooter.’
President Donald Trump told DailyMail.com on Sunday morning that he would have ‘no problem’ with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani testifying before Congress about his involvement in a brewing scandal linking Ukraine’s former government to the family of former VP Joe Biden
Giuliani, pictured at Friday night’s State Dinner for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, is a ‘straight shooter,’ Trump said Sunday
In a CNN appearance on Thursday, Giuliani at first denied and then admitted to pressuring Ukraine to investigate whether the Bidens engaged in any corruption there
Joe Biden (right) pressured Ukraine in 2016, when he was the U.S. vice president, to fire its top prosecutor – who had been investigating an energy company where his son Hunter Biden (left) served on the board of directors; the then-vice president had threatened to cancel $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t comply
Giuliani and Trump have accused Biden of turning a blind eye to conflicts of interest represented by son Hunter in corporate jobs in China and Ukraine during the Obama administration. Biden is also is taking flak for pressuring the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who was investigating one of the companies, Burisma.
Monday in tweets, Giuliani claimed that Burisma laundered money to Hunter Biden, on top of his regular retainer.
‘Today though it’s the $3 million laundered payment, classical proof of guilty knowledge and intent, that was kept from you by Swamp Media. Ukraine-Latvia-Cyprus-US is a usual route for laundering money. Obama’s US embassy told Cyprus bank not to disclose amount to Biden. Stinks!’ he said.
He’d said overnight that he had a ‘NEW FACT’ to present in the case: ‘One $3million payment to Biden’s son from Ukraine to Latvia to Cyprus to US. When Prosecutor asked Cyprus for amount going to son, he was told US embassy (Obama’s) instructed them not to provide the amount. Prosecutor getting too close to son and Biden had him fired.’
He provided no proof for the claim in the tweets or during a subsequent Fox Business appearance.
‘You start asking Biden, he’s going to fall apart. Maria, it’s not over. There’s a lot more evidence I’m going to put out. I put one out today, money laundering. I’ve got a bigger one for tomorrow, a bigger one for the day after,’ he told Maria Bartiromo on her morning shows. ‘And on China — on China, if they can escape China, we literally don’t have a system of justice left in this country. $1.5 billion, when you are negotiating with China on sensitive issues, and your family gets enriched with an investment in a private equity fund.’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with Trump on Wednesday at the United Nations in New York City
The president’s personal lawyer claimed on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that Biden’s family ‘has been taking money from his public office for years’ and he could prove it if the media and the public would only listen to him.
‘I went there to get dirt on Joe Biden,’ Giuliani said of outreach to Ukraine he claims he did not pursue on Trump’s orders. ‘I got a nice straight case of Ukrainian collusion.’
He insisted, ‘And the minute I say “Biden” the Washington press corps is going to go nuts. They’ve been covering it up for years.’
Giuliani also cleared up a mistake he made in an interview with CNN host Chris Cuomo on Thursday night in which he mangled a question about whether he had asked Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son.
In that interview, Giuliani at first denied and then confirmed reports that he had asked Ukraine’s government to investigate the Bidens.
He said Sunday that he misspoke the first time and immediately corrected himself.
Giuliani also insisted that Trump didn’t direct him to lobby Ukraine for anything Biden-related and was acting in personal capacity.
‘I did what I did on my own,’ he told Cuomo.
The suggestion that Trump or someone in his inner circle asked Zelensky to consider prosecuting the son of a Democratic White House rival has roiled Washington for the past week.
A news report claimed that Trump pressed Zelensky at least eight times during a July phone call to probe Hunter Biden’s activities, but the president claimed Sunday that the information is fabricated.
‘This supposedly comes from a so-called “whistleblower” who they say doesn’t even have a first hand account of what was said. More Democrat/Crooked Media con,’ the president charged.
He said in follow-up message, ‘Breaking News: The Ukrainian Government just said they weren’t pressured at all during the “nice” call. Sleepy Joe Biden, on the other hand, forced a tough prosecutor out from investigating his son’s company by threat of not giving big dollars to Ukraine. That’s the real story!’
Giuliani said Sunday on Fox News that Biden corruption is a regular feature of Democratic politics, and that the former VP’s family ‘has been taking money from his public office for years’
Aggressive Democrats on Capitol Hill are eager to prove the president is guilty of corruption, so they can impeach him. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would not use that word on Sunday but said the recent allegations against Trump have opened up a new front in their investigation.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN on Sunday that President Trump may have ‘crossed the Rubicon’ on impeachment, adding that Trump ‘is pushing us down this road.’
Biden in Iowa on Saturday told reporters that ‘depending on what the House finds, it could be impeachment. I’m not making that judgment now.’
‘This appears to be an overwhelming abuse of power. To get on the phone with a foreign leader who is looking for help from the United States, and ask about me and imply things – if that’s what happened. That appears to be what happened,’ the said. This is outrageous. You have never seen anything like this.’
Initial news reports suggested Trump used the promise of military aid as an inducement to persuade the Ukrainian leader to put the Bidens under a spotlight.
He says he held up the aid because Ukraine had not adequately dealt with rampant government corruption.
As vice president, Biden threatened during a 2016 trip to Kiev to would withhold $1 billion in American loan guarantees if Ukrainian leaders failed to fire the country’s prosecutor general – an official who had been probing Burisma while it employed Hunter Biden as a board member.
The Ukrainian Parliament bowed to the pressure by voting to remove the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
Giuliani said Thursday night that he had asked Ukraine to examine the circumstances surrounding Shokin’s decision to pull the plug on a separate investigation of AntAC, a George Soros-funded nonprofit.
He said AntAC was behind ‘all of the dirty information that ended up being a false document that was created in order to incriminate [Paul] Manafort.’
Manafort, President Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, is serving prison time for a laundry list of federal offenses including tax evasion, bank fraud, obstruction of justice and violations of lobbying laws.