Mr. Giuliani was not deterred.
During the time surrounding Ambassador Yovanovitch’s recall, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Parnas connected over a flurry of calls around a planned trip to Ukraine by Mr. Giuliani, which he would eventually cancel after growing public scrutiny. As previously described in Chapter 1, call records obtained by the Committees show a series of contacts on April 23 and 24 between Mr. Giuliani, the White House, Mr. Parnas, and John Solomon, among others.138
On April 25, 2019, former Vice President Biden publicly announced his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States and launched his effort to unseat President Trump in the 2020 election.139
That evening, Mr. Solomon published a new opinion piece in The Hill entitled, “How the Obama White House Engaged Ukraine to Give Russia Collusion Narrative an Early Boost.” Like Mr. Solomon’s previous work, this April 25 piece repeated unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.140
Meanwhile, in Kyiv, David Holmes, Counselor for Political Affairs at U.S. Embassy Kyiv, learned on April 25 that Mr. Giuliani had reached out to Mr. Zelensky’s campaign chair, Ivan Bakanov, seeking a channel to the newly-elected leader. Mr. Bakanov told Mr. Holmes “that he had been contacted by, quote, someone named Giuliani, who said he was an advisor to the Vice President, unquote.”141 Mr. Holmes clarified that Mr. Bakanov was “speaking in Russian” and that he did not “know what he [Bakanov] meant” by his reference to the Vice President, “but that’s what he [Bakanov] said.”142 Regardless of Mr. Bakanov’s apparent confusion as to who Mr. Giuliani represented, Mr. Holmes explained that by this point in time, Ukrainian officials seemed to think that Mr. Giuliani “was a significant person in terms of managing their relationship with the United States.”143
At 7:14 p.m. Eastern Time on April 25, Mr. Giuliani once again received a call from an unknown “-1” number, which lasted four minutes and 40 seconds.144 Minutes later, Mr. Giuliani held a brief 36 second call with Sean Hannity, a Fox News opinion host.145
On the night of April 25, President Trump called into Mr. Hannity’s prime time Fox News show. In response to a question about Mr. Solomon’s recent publication, President Trump said:
- It sounds like big stuff. It sounds very interesting with Ukraine. I just spoke to the new president a little while ago, two days ago, and congratulated him on an incredible race. Incredible run. A big surprise victory. That’s 75 percent of the vote. But that sounds like big, big stuff. I’m not surprised.146
As Mr. Holmes later learned on July 26 from Ambassador Sondland, President Trump did not care about Ukraine, he cared about this “big stuff”—such as the investigation into Vice President Biden.147
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