President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is currently in the Ukraine and can’t quite keep quiet about it. But the former mayor of New York City’s micro-blogged travelogue is a record of his crimes in real time, one former federal prosecutor says.
“This is insane,” said Pace Law scholar, Westchester district attorney candidate and former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Mimi Rocah. on Friday. “Giuliani is committing crimes on behalf of the POTUS and live tweeting about it. There’s a lot going on but this should be getting a lot more attention than it is.”
Rocah explained further in a message to Law&Crime:
There are a multitude of crimes that could cover Giuliani’s conduct. The same crimes that would apply to the conduct at the heart of impeachment. Giuliani was in Ukraine getting information from someone linked to a foreign government ([Russian Federation President Vladimir] Putin) to help with Trump’s political campaign.
Giuliani recently made waves by traveling to the Ukraine amidst the increasingly contentious impeachment process aimed at his friend and client, the 45th president. Those efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives stem, in large part, from the shadow diplomatic efforts conducted in the Ukraine by Giuliani himself.
Giuliani’s Ukrainian adventure got a boost of publicity on Thursday when journalist Jack Laurenson tweeted an image that showed Giuliani hanging out with former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko.
“Here are @AndriyUkraineTe and @RudyGiuliani here in Kyiv, #Ukraine,” he wrote. “At midnight, they are in [the] lounge bar of the Premier Palace Hotel, owned by close Putin ally, Russian oligarch Alexander Babakov. Hotel known as den for Kremlin agents & Babakov is alleged Russian intel himself.”
To be clear: Laurenson’s tweet wasn’t much of a scoop because Telizhenko shared the image and bragged about the meeting himself.
In fact, Telizhenko, who now says he works as a consultant, was quite certain to make sure his relationship with Giuliani went public.
“With America’s Mayor @RudyGiuliani prepping for tomorrow another hard working day in meetings with Mr. Shokin and Mr. Lutcenko,” the conservative political consultant tweeted. “To all conspiracy theorist [sic] there is no secret on what we are doing. The TRUTH will come out. God Bless Ukraine and God Bless the United States of America.”
Giuliani’s trip to the Ukraine was widely pilloried back home—even erstwhile Trump partisan Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said he was confused as to why Giuliani was currently in the Ukraine.
But, throwing caution into the transatlantic air, Giuliani went anyway—intent on following up on his since-discovered shadow work by just telling everyone he’d be conducting it publicly from now on.
Giuliani tweeted:
Schiffs impeachment is a FARCE because1. There was no military aid withheld.2. The conversation about corruption in Ukraine was based on compelling evidence of criminal conduct by then VP Biden, in 2016, that has not been resolved and until it is will be a major obstacle…
The man formerly known as hizzoner continued:
…to the US assisting Ukraine with its anti-corruption reforms.The American people will learn that Biden & other Obama administration officials, contributed to the increased level of corruption in Ukraine between 2014 to 2016.This evidence will all be released very soon.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent also weighed in, describing the audaciousness of Giuliani’s overseas high-wire act as a confession made “in broad daylight.”
“To empirically grounded observers, this will blow up a key Trump defense: that in conditioning official acts on getting Ukraine to announce the investigations he wanted, he was correctly concerned with cleaning up corruption there,” Sargent wrote.
His Friday Post column continues:
After all, Giuliani just confirmed that in pressuring Ukraine, “investigate corruption” actually meant, “smear Trump’s political rival.” We already knew this — Giuliani and Trump have said it publicly for months — but that’s an unusually stark way to admit it.
[image via Alex Wong/Getty Images]
Editor’s note: this article has been amended post-publication to include additional information.