[ad_1]
Rudy Giuliani's contacts with State Department officials as part of his controversial efforts to detach Joe Biden's land in Ukraine are more extensive than has been publicly reported. And they raise other questions about the extent to which senior Trump administration officials have been involved – or have become aware of – attempts by the president to scramble a potential political foe.
Over the past year, Giuliani has been involved in a large-scale campaign led by Trump's allies to find damaging information about Biden and his son Hunter. As part of this effort, Giuliani urged the Ukrainian government to investigate previously untrue allegations of corruption involving Bidens in the country. At the time, Hunter Biden was accused of using his father's political status to create lucrative business opportunities abroad. The Prosecutor General of Ukraine will later say that he has no evidence of any wrongdoing.
This summer, Giuliani briefed US diplomats, including Ukraine 's special representative, Kurt Volker, about his work in Ukraine and his efforts to convince the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky' s. open an investigation on the Bidens. But Giuliani confirmed to the Daily Beast that he had also informed another diplomat: the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. President Trump's attorney said he informed both Volker (the "principal" regarding his contacts with the states) and Sondland of several conference calls earlier this year on his progress in pursuing a investigation in Ukraine.
It was not really an unknown subject for Sondland. The ambassador was also closely associated with Trump's phone call with Zelensky, during which Trump repeatedly lobbied the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens.
"I spoke with both before and after this conversation," Sondland told the Ukrainian official news agency after the phone call. "The conversation was very successful. They immediately found a common language. "The two leaders discussed the civil war, energy security and the" rule of law "in Ukraine, Sondland said in July.
On the same day, Zelensky met Sondland and Volker to discuss the war in Ukraine with pro-Russian rebels. It was a particularly poignant subject at the time; the United States withheld nearly $ 400 million worth of equipment promised in Kiev to deter Moscow and its allies.
Whereas Giuliani m said publicly that his dealings with Ukrainians were negotiated in part by the State Department, the details of his contacts with Foggy Bottom remained opaque, including what US Secretary Mike Pompeo knew best about of work in Ukraine. According to two sources inside the ministry, US diplomats, including Sondland and Volker, were aware of the details of Giuliani's work in Ukraine on Biden this spring. These sources said senior department officials had been read during Giuliani's calls with Volker and Sondland.
"I spoke to Kurt Volker the most, but I had conference calls with [Sondland], Says Giuliani. Giuliani also asserted that he had not been asked to be put in contact with Sondland, but that one day unexpectedly, he ended up "in conference call with him" to discuss Ukraine's efforts.
They are not the only important members of the Trump administration to participate in the president's efforts to use a foreign government to reduce a political enemy. According to Washington PostTrump ordered Mick Mulvaney, his acting chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget, to halt hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, a few days later. just before the July phone call between Trump and Zelensky. CAMO MPs in Mulvaney then ordered defense and state officials not to distribute military aid.
Giuliani's work on Ukraine had begun months earlier. Trump's work, carried out with the express blessing of the President, consisted of looking for insights into the possible origins of the Mueller inquiry. This eventually led to his attempts to unearth the Biden family. All this was happening while Trump was preparing to embark on a presidential election year, Trump and his advisers considering Biden, the 2020 Democrats' favorite, as a leading political foe.
Giuliani planned to visit Ukraine in May to investigate allegations of corruption involving Bidens. The trip was fired. The president's lawyer met last month with Andrei Yermak, a close adviser to Zelensky, in Spain. It was before this meeting that Giuliani had stated that the ministry had contacted him and asked him to take a call with Yermak. And after the meeting, Giuliani informed the Daily Beast that he had informed Volker and Sondland.
While Volker is known in diplomatic circles as the United States' special representative for Ukraine, Ambassador Sondland has, until recently, kept a low profile. The founder and president of Provenance Hotels, Sondland seemed uncomfortable with his status as a Trump supporter during the 2016 campaign.
Sondland was on a trump list for Trump distributed by the RNC in July 2016 and was among the co-organizers of a fundraising campaign organized by Seattle for the Trump campaign. When the Seattle weather reported Sondland's fundraising participation, he and his wife said they were moving away from the event after Trump's treatment of a Muslim Gold Star family. "Trump's ever-changing positions diverge from their personal beliefs and values on so many levels" that the couple can no longer support him, according to a spokesman.
But like L & # 39; interception Subsequently, Sondland seemed to have changed after Trump's election victory. The hotel's magnate donated a million dollars to Trump's inauguration committee by using limited liability companies, thus hiding his name from the list of donors. This decision resulted in a complaint from the Federal Election Commission from a campaign finance body, the legal center of the campaign, but relations between Sondland and the Trump administration were not hampered by his apparent discomfort. Trump appointed him as US Ambassador to the European Union in May 2018.
Sondland attended Zelensky's presidential inauguration as a member of the US delegation in May 2019, shortly after Giuliani announced that he was canceling plans to visit the country in search of dust on the Biden family .
Sondland is known within the State Department as a key element to help the administration promote better trade relations between the United States and Ukraine. Along with the US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, Sondland has ruled against the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline project, claiming that it was undermining Ukraine's sovereignty by bypassing the country. and preventing its export of natural gas to Europe. In a tribune, the ambassadors of Grenell, Sondland and the United States in Denmark, Carla Sands, said the pipeline would "bring more than Russian gas". "The leverage and influence of Russia will also go under the Baltic Sea and Europe.Moscow to further undermine the sovereignty and stability of Ukraine"
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on this story and did not specify whether he had contacted Giuliani to take a call with Yermak.
But it seems that the State Department and other officials of the Trump administration were about to establish a connection with the Zelensky team. At the time of Giuliani's accounts in August, Ivan Bakanov, Zelensky's main ally, had already made two trips to Washington – once in April and once after the inauguration of Zelensky. Bakanov, who now heads the country's security services, met with members of Congress, including representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), one of the leaders of the Ukrainian caucus, and officials of the administration. including Fiona Hill, who was the first White House advisor for Russia. Bakanov also met with George Kent, Deputy Undersecretary of the European and Eurasian Office at the State Department.
Volker and Sondland also traveled to Kiev twice – one in May and another after Trump's phone call with Zelensky on 25 July. They traveled to Ukraine with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and briefed the White House during their visit a few days later. Sondland and Volker met Zelensky on July 26 to express their "unwavering support for Ukrainian democracy," according to a US embassy. tweet.
[ad_2]
Source link