President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani said during an interview on Tuesday that the “real crime” would be to not investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. He encouraged the president not to back away from that effort after he is acquitted by the Senate on Wednesday.
Giuliani made the remarks during an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep and Ryan Lucas.
The former New York City mayor revealed that he is “still investigating” and receiving information. He also claimed President Trump “hasn’t told me not to do it,” adding, “I haven’t talked to him about this case in quite a while.”
“Biden should be investigated. Absolutely, 100%,” Giuliani said, encouraging all of this to continue post-impeachment acquittal. “[Trump]’s the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. He certainly shouldn’t back away from it.”
The president was impeached for an alleged shakedown of Ukraine in order to get that foreign nation to announce investigations of the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election. The second article of impeachment accused Trump of obstructing Congress’s investigation of those efforts and of the reasons behind the White House’s hold on congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine. Retiring Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), when announcing his vote against calling new witnesses, even said that House Managers proved Trump withheld the aid, “at least in part,” to pressure Ukraine into investigating or announcing investigations of the Bidens.
While the president and the White House argued all along the there was no first-hand proof that the hold was linked to desired investigations, Alexander said the proof was exactly why no more witnesses were needed. In the end, though, Alexander said the president didn’t commit impeachable offenses.
Giuliani had a message for Alexander.
“Lamar is wrong, and Lamar is a good friend of mine, and he’s a fine man except he doesn’t know all the facts,” Giuliani told NPR. “[He] only knows half the facts; a lot of them distorted.”
Giuliani also had a message for Democrats on the imminent Senate vote to acquit: “it’s a total vindication” of the president.
“I believe that it would be one of the great corrupt events in American history if this case is not investigated about crime at the highest levels of two governments where our government was a part of what we decry in Ukraine, corruption,” Giuliani said. “And we made millions from it. And I think it would be a real crime not to investigate the Biden family that’s been involved in corruption for over 20 years.”
“Joe Biden has been carrying on a criminal enterprise that’s so obvious that you have to be a fool not to see it,” Giuliani also alleged.
Giuliani did not go into any details about the information he continues to receive or if he’s shared a report with the DOJ.
Allegations of wrongdoing against the Bidens have not been substantiated. The claims went mainstream after John Solomon drew attention to a video of Biden bragging about getting former Ukraine prosecutor general Viktor Shokin fired. Shokin had investigated Ukrainian gas company that Hunter Biden was a board member for, but the Burisma investigation actually went dormant under Shokin’s watch.
In 2016, Republicans echoed then-Vice President Biden’s call to reform the Prosecutor General’s Office in Ukraine.
“Succeeding in these reforms will show Russian President Vladimir Putin that an independent, transparent, and democratic Ukraine can and will succeed. It also offers a stark alternative to the authoritarianism and oligarchic cronyism prevalent in Russia,” the bipartisan Feb. 2016 letter said. “As such, we respectfully ask that you address the serious concerns raised by Minister Abromavičius. We similarly urge you to press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary. The unanimous adoption by the Cabinet of Ministers of the Basic Principles and Action Plan is a good step.”
One month after this letter was sent, Shokin was fired.
The other investigation Trump sought, as the July 25 call memo shows, was of the Kremlin-sponsored CrowdStrike conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election.
Former National Security Council (NSC) official and Russia expert Dr. Fiona Hill said in her opening statement at public impeachment hearings that the CrowdStrike narrative was “fictional.”
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill said. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
Giuliani otherwise told NPR that he has not “heard a word about” a Southern District of New York investigation of him, and that he is not concerned about what Lev Parnas has to say about anything.
“Nobody’s asked for my records. I have offered through my lawyers to sit down with them any time they want if they got a specific situation that they want to ask me about I’m more than happy to show them I’m innocent,” Giuliani said. “Everything I’ve seen in the newspapers I can prove definitively I didn’t do.”
“Nobody’s delivered a subpoena,” he added.
[Image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images]
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