Lutsenko and Mr. Kulyk in meetings with U.S. officials regarding alleged “evidence” of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, and to represent Mr. Shokin “for the purpose of collecting evidence regarding his March 2016 firing as Prosecutor General of Ukraine and the role of Vice President Biden in such firing, and presenting such evidence to U.S. and foreign authorities.”82 On July 25, President Trump would personally press President Zelensky to investigate these very same matters.
On April 23, Mr. Parnas had a call with Mr. Solomon, and multiple phone contacts with Mr. Giuliani.83 On that same day, Mr. Giuliani had a series of short phone calls (ranging from 11 to 18 seconds) with a phone number associated with the White House, followed shortly thereafter by an eight minute, 28 second call with an unidentified number that called him.84 Approximately half an hour later, Mr. Giuliani had a 48 second call with a phone number associated with Ambassador John Bolton, National Security Advisor to the President.85
- That same day, Mr. Giuliani tweeted:
- Hillary is correct the report is the end of the beginning for the second time...NO COLLUSION. Now Ukraine is investigating Hillary campaign and DNC conspiracy with foreign operatives including Ukrainian and others to affect 2016 election. And there’s no Comey to fix the result.86
The next day, on the morning of April 24, Mr. Giuliani appeared on Fox and Friends, lambasting the Mueller investigation. Mr. Giuliani also promoted the false conspiracy theories about Ukraine and Vice President Biden:
- And I ask you to keep your eye on Ukraine, because in Ukraine, a lot of the dirty work was done in digging up the information. American officials were used, Ukrainian officials were used. That’s like collusion with the Ukrainians. And, or actually in this case, conspiracy with the Ukrainians. I think you’d get some interesting information about Joe Biden from Ukraine. About his son, Hunter Biden. About a company he was on the board of for years, which may be one of the most crooked companies in Ukraine. … And Biden bragged about the fact that he got the prosecutor general fired. The prosecutor general was investigating his son and then the investigation went south.87
Later that day, Mr. Giuliani had three phone calls with a number associated with OMB, and eight calls with a White House number.88 One of the calls with the White House was four minutes, 53 seconds, and another was three minutes, 15 seconds.
Later that evening, the State Department phoned Ambassador Yovanovitch and abruptly called her home because of “concerns” from “up the street” at the White House.89
Ambassador Yovanovitch Was Informed That the President “Lost Confidence” in Her
When Ambassador Yovanovitch returned to the United States at the end of April, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan informed her that she had “done nothing wrong,” but “there had been a concerted campaign” against her and that President Trump had “lost confidence” in her
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