Rudy Giuliani joined cable news network One America News (OAN) and its White House correspondent, conspiracy theory purveyor Chanel Rion, for a series of interviews which allegedly “destroy” the case for Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
As part of the OAN series, Rion and Giuliani sat down in Budapest with Yuriy Lutsenko, the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine who once said “Hunter Biden didn’t violate anything.”
“Bombshell interviews” under way and “fingerprints abound,” Rion said Thursday morning.
The special is being billed as “Ukrainian Witnesses Destroy Schiff’s Case.”
Lutsenko is also a key figure in the recently revealed criminal investigation into Giuliani, as federal prosecutors are currently examining whether Giuliani, along with his recently indicted associates Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, attempted to have former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch replaced with someone more inclined to help their business interests.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Giuliani has also been accused of leveraging his “pro bono” legal work at Trump’s personal attorney to have Lutsenko sign a lucrative contract with one of Giuliani’s personal businesses.
But the clear conflicts of interest presented by the president’s personal attorney conducting a series of interviews with key figures in the impeachment inquiry are not the only difficulties facing Giuliani’s latest venture. Rion is known for promoting conspiracy theories and having a major story retracted.
Rion made national headlines in October when she pushed a since-debunked story claiming that former FBI lawyer Lisa Page had an affair with former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“Lisa Page carried on an affair with both Deputy Director McCabe and Strzok, and as lovers-three, their text messages paint a now-infamous portrait of elitist intervention and collusion to derail a U.S. presidential candidate,” Rion said.
OAN retracted the story.
Other questions about Rion pre-dated her tenure at OAN, as the Daily Beast noted Thursday. OAN hired Rion in May 2019.
“Rion claims to have produced a series of mystery books called Mystery by Design, meant for ‘traditional girls,’ that have been ‘offered as language trainers in grim and dedicated rote English-learning venues including China and South Korea,’” the report said. But an investigation last year by Wonkette revealed that, outside of Rion’s own references to the books, they did not appear to exist.
Rion didn’t respond to requests for comment from Wonkette or the Daily Beast.
Rion’s website claims she and her family moved out of the U.S. after Bill Clinton’s election because her father “wanted us to see what socialism did in the real world—how it destroyed people and human happiness in practice.”
[image via YouTube screengrab]
Follow Law&Crime:
