This morning on NPR, I discussed the latest controversy triggered by President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. We have previously discussed the often conflicting statements made by Rudy Giuliani in this representation of President Donald Trump and the failure to follow a type of legal Hippocratic oath to first do no harm to one’s client. Last night Giuliani triggered another firestorm of criticism on CNN after he first denied speaking to Ukraine about investigating Joe Biden and then immediately contradicted himself and said that he did.
The interview with Chris Cuomo seemed at times unhinged and uncontrolled. The entire interview is below.
Reports indicate that the subject of the whistleblow complaint found credible and “urgent” by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz was the Ukraine. Specifically, it is alleged that Trump called the head of Ukraine to pressure the country to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
In fairness to the White House, Hunter Biden was responsible for highly disturbing conflicts of interest while his father was Vice President. He made a huge about of money in Ukraine and China and even conducted business in China when accompanying his father to China. The New York Times and others have said that, at a minimum, Hunter Biden presented a serious appearance of conflict of interest for Biden.
However, the merits are not at issue on those allegations. The issue is whether Trump used $250 million in withheld military aid to pressure a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent.
For his part, Giuliani first said that he did not ask for Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and then immediately said that he did.
Cuomo asked “Did you ask the Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?”
Giuliani responded “No, actually I didn’t. I asked Ukraine to investigate the allegations that there was interference in the election of 2016 by the Ukrainians for the benefit of Hillary Clinton for which there already…”
Cuomo then asked “Your never asked anything about Hunter Biden? You never asked anything about Joe Biden to the prosecutor?” Cuomo pressed.
Giuliani then said “The only thing I asked is to get to the bottom of how it was that the guy who was appointed dismissed the case against Antac.”
Cuomo then correctly noted “So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden.”
“Of course I did,” Giuliani responded.
Giuliani then says that CNN would cover up the proof of Biden’s corruption, but when asked for the proof, Giuliani declares that he would not show CNN the proof because it would “just cover it up.” That all seems utterly incomprehensible.
Ok, it is another misstep, but the more serious question is the looming separation of powers fight over this call. This is a classic executive privilege context but hardly the classic executive privilege conversation. If true, this would be self-dealing with $250 million in military aid to try to get an investigation into one’s political opponents. It is ironic since Trump has long objected to the Obama Administration using the FBI to investigate him.
There are good arguments on both sides in any court fight over this conversation. However, executive privilege, as shown in Nixon v. United States, can be overcome by congressional oversight needs. Self-dealing is an abuse of office, which was part of the second article of impeachment against Richard Nixon.
Click to Read More and View Comments
Giuliani says that Biden’s recorded statement is that he would withhold $1B if the president of Ukraine did not fire the prosecutor (15:45). It is ludicrous for Cuomo to say that he will report that when Giuliani gives him proof. CNN is quite capable of investigative reporting and does not rely on news landing in their lap. In this case, where the Biden statement is made in public, is recorded and is available on the internet Cuomo is obviously trying to justify not reporting on Biden’s actions. It took me 10 seconds to find YouTubes from ~5 months ago showing Biden’s statement admitting bribery yet Cuomo says CNN cannot run with the story unless Giuliani provides evidence. I have little doubt that CNN has the same information and that Cuomo is lying.
https://youtu.be/KCF9My1vBP4
https://youtu.be/9PALJAC72GA
Well this is an unfortunate twist of fate for the anti-Trump cabal.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/52069/yup-looks-big-anti-trump-whistleblower-story-was-ashe-schow
Lie after lie from the left. Buried in the CNN report at the site Olly provided was:
“The whistleblower didn’t have direct knowledge of the communications
, an official briefed on the matter told CNN. Instead, the whistleblower’s concerns came in part from learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work, and those details have played a role in the administration’s determination that the complaint didn’t fit the reporting requirements under the intelligence whistleblower law, the official said”.
What type of person sees lie after lie and keeps believing them? We have a number on this blog. Will we hear them admit they were wrong? Of course not.
Think about this. Obama’s hot mike moment with Medvedev gets a collective yawn from the left. Biden’s bragging about threatening Ukraine is on video and all the Democrats want to do is impeach Trump because an anonymous source claimed something without direct knowledge or evidence.
All of this nonsense is a pre-IG disinformation campaign.
Olly, that is the problem when the press lies and the people believe in the press.
The Russians are better off MSM wise because they know in advance Pravda lies.
Add to the fact that the left has been educating our children and one sees a leftist shift until the young realize that they have been had and the shift destroys their lives.
The Trump appointed IC IG found the information serious and of urgent concern.
Anon1 – let me point out that the IG has no plenary powers.
Then he has some splaining to do.
In all fairness to the good Prof, he did think that Trump wants to use nukes to stop the hurricanes. That’s another one where he lost the plot…some call it Trump Derangement Syndrome, I call it stupidity. He’s obviously not well.
Ignorant in that particular case.
JT: “The interview with Chris Cuomo seemed at times unhinged and uncontrolled. The entire interview is below.”
It’s so unhinged I’ve only been able to get through the first six minutes. The reason it’s unhinged is because it’s not an interview- Cuomo has an agenda. Empirically, the corporate media(and DOJ) has not covered the apparent corruption in the Biden’s dealings with Ukraine and China. It’s also empirical that the same corporate media has not reported on the apparent Ukrainian interference in our election: namely the fake “ledger” that “showed” Manafort getting $12 million…or the involvement of DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa in these efforts. But Cuomo doesn’t want to talk about any of that and neither does Turley.
Joe Biden can be seen in multiple places on youtube openly bragging about how he personally strong-armed the Ukrainian government into firing the prosecutor by withholding a billion dollar payment they desperately needed, yet, at 5:20 in the video posted, you’ll see Cuomo spin this action as the decision of all the European powers. Baloney. Alright, back to the rest of the “interview.”
There is a very long comment from Anon1 arguing that Joe Biden forcing the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor was not done to to protect his son. Summing up the commentator said: “There is, in short, no there there.”
Perhaps not. But we have seen virtually no coverage in the corporate media of this question or of others that have been raised. Here is a rare exception from Politico:
“Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.”
So, when Anon1 says “there is no there there,” he’s speaking solely about the firing of the prosecutor. He says nothing about the fake “black ledger” that was used to take down Manafort.
From the Hill:
“The Steele dossier, which was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC was used by the FBI to obtain FOUR FISA warrants on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, but there is another fake dossier known as the “black cash ledger” that was used to take down Paul Manafort.
According to John Solomon, the “black cash ledger” which emerged in the Ukraine in the summer of 2016, was used to remove Manafort from Trump’s campaign and eventually used by the US government to prosecute Manafort — in fact, FBI agents mentioned this ledger in an affidavit supporting the July 2017 raid on Manafort’s home.
“On August 19, 2016, after public reports regarding connections between Manafort, Ukraine and Russia — including an alleged ‘black ledger’ of off-the-book payments from the Party of Regions to Manafort — Manafort left his post as chairman of the Trump Campaign,” the July 25, 2017, FBI agent’s affidavit stated.
According to documents, the FBI used the “black cash ledger” as a reason to rehash a criminal case against Paul Manafort that was previously dropped in 2014 — the FBI needed search warrants in 2017 to look through his bank records to prove Manafort worked for a Russian-backed political party in the Ukraine.
The kicker? The FBI received several early warnings that the “black cash ledger” was likely a fake, yet they used it anyway. Mueller’s office was also warned that the document was a fraud, according to John Solomon.”
Ivan, link please?
Ivan, your claim about Biden in this post has already been debunked as you note later, but to add to that we have for Bloomberg today:
“Ukraine’s prosecutor general said in an interview that he had no evidence of wrongdoing by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden or his son, despite a swirl of allegations by President Donald Trump’s lawyer…..”
More details at the article.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/ukraine-prosecutor-says-no-evidence-of-wrongdoing-by-bidens
I did not say that it was debunked, but maybe I should have: “Debunked” has quite a negative connotation implying that it’s the debunker that is engaged in a fraud. All I noted was that we don’t know, but much more importantly that the media covers virtually none of it. I also noted that you made no mention of the black ledger, etc., but neither does the corrupt corporate media and thats par for the course.
The links you wanted:
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/06/john-solomon-fbi-was-warned-several-times-black-cash-ledger-on-manafort-might-be-fake-used-it-anyway-to-raid-manaforts-home/
And if Trump Jr had done what Hunter “the Snowman” Biden has done, then the Dems and their acolytes would have had a collective coronary…instead we see virtually no scrutiny, crickets in fact. You’ll note the same collective behavior when it comes to the obvious Russia Hoax: those who listen to the corporate media don’t know who Mifsud, Halper, Downer, Turk, Tawil, etc are. And, frankly, they don’t want to know that they have been taken for fools.
I feel sorry for you guys, but mostly I feel sorry for our great nation- we’re being done in by our own population.
With regards to the latest “accusation” against Trump, we know nothing. We don’t know what was said or wasn’t said. I’ll keep an open mind until we get something concrete. There have been so may false stories about Trump where the media claims they “finally got him” only to shortly slink away and try to forget they ever reported such nonsense in the first place.
Fair enough Ivan, and I assume, given the Trump appointed IC IG finding that the information is serious and urgent, you agree that Congress should be presented with the information as required by law.
Thanks for the Politico link Ivan. You realize the person highlighted was not a DNC employee when working the Manafort-Russia connection and was of Ukrainian ancestry, and like the Ukrainian government concerned with his work with the previous expelled Russian agent president. The article makes no claim of any actions taken by the Clinton campaign or coordination with Chalupa.
One of the authors of the article later clarified their belief that Chalupa was an independent actor and there was no parallel between the Russian government’s organized attack on our election and some individual Umrainian officials understandable concern with Manafort and therefore Trump. CNN New Day , 7/17/2017
“Politico’s David Stern pointed out that “what we said in the article is that we don’t have, as far as we can see, the type of top-down and wide, broad attack on the American election that was being alleged” about the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Stern added that the DNC consultant mentioned in the report who spoke to officials at the Ukrainian Embassy “was possibly, you could say freelancing when she spoke to them,” and not directed by the DNC.
“….You’ve got the Ukrainian government, which is a huge thing, and when we say officials, we’re also talking about people who are just deputies in the parliament and not necessarily connected with the president. And then you have Alexandra Chalupa, who is a consultant for the DNC and who had left in June. Now, there’s questions about exactly where the work between the two or where they connected. Chalupa herself said that she did talk to the embassy, at least when she spoke to us. Now, she also said that there were no papers exchanged. And it’s not uncommon, as we put in our report, for outside intermediaries to coordinate work ….
Biden goes on the attack over the Ukraine controversy
To protect cocaine crack head son, Hunter Biden.
More on the Biden China cocaine crack head $1 billion dollar deal on air force 2 later.
Hunter Biden’s Response:
Diamonds and business conflicts Hunter Biden tackles cocaine use.
Hunter Biden, is opening up about his foreign business dealings and tumultuous personal life.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Hunter Biden spoke candidly about his struggle with alcohol and drug addiction, his complicated relationships with women, his lucrative overseas work – and the implications those controversies could have on his father’s political fortunes, even as the former vice president remains atop the gaggle of Democratic presidential candidates.
Hunter Biden described several drug relapses over the past decade – including after his dismissal from the Navy Reserve in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine. In one incident he described from 2016, he says he had a gun pointed to his head while attempting to purchase crack in Los Angeles. During another incident, in 2017, police in Arizona found a crack pipe in his rental car after it was damaged in an accident.