- It’s a big story. It’s a dramatic story. And I guarantee you, Joe Biden will not get to election day without this being investigated, not because I want to see him investigated. This is collateral to what I was doing.175
The next morning, on May 10, amidst the press coverage of his trip, Mr. Giuliani tweeted:
- Explain to me why Biden shouldn’t be investigated if his son got millions from a Russian loving crooked Ukrainian oligarch while He was VP and point man for Ukraine. Ukrainians are investigating and your fellow Dems are interfering. Election is 17 months away. Let’s answer it now176
He then had another flurry of calls with Mr. Parnas. Shortly after 2:00 p.m., Eastern Time, Mr. Giuliani also spoke with Ambassador Volker on the phone.177 Ambassador Volker had learned that Mr. Giuliani intended to travel to Ukraine “to pursue these allegations that Lutsenko had made, and he was going to investigate these things”—specifically, the debunked story that Vice President Biden had improperly pressured Ukraine to fire a corrupt prosecutor general, as well as the Russian-backed conspiracy that the Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.178 Ambassador Volker testified that he had a simple warning for Mr. Giuliani: Prosecutor General Lutsenko “is not credible. Don’t listen to what he is saying.”179 Call records obtained by the Committees reveal that their call lasted more than 30 minutes.180
Call records also show that around midday on May 10, Mr. Giuliani began trading aborted calls with Kashyap “Kash” Patel, an official at the National Security Council who previously served on Ranking Member Devin Nunes’ staff on the Intelligence Committee. Mr. Patel successfully connected with Mr. Giuliani less than an hour after Mr. Giuliani’s call with Ambassador Volker. Beginning at 3:23 p.m., Eastern Time, Mr. Patel and Mr. Giuliani spoke for over 25 minutes.181 Five minutes after Mr. Patel and Mr. Giuliani disconnected, an unidentified “-1” number connected with Mr. Giuliani for over 17 minutes.182 Shortly thereafter, Mr. Giuliani spoke with Mr. Parnas for approximately 12 minutes.183
That same afternoon, President Trump conducted a 15-minute long phone interview with Politico. In response to a question about Mr. Giuliani’s upcoming visit to Kyiv, the President replied, “I have not spoken to him at any great length, but I will … I will speak to him about it before he leaves.”184
Recently, when asked what Mr. Giuliani was doing in Ukraine on his behalf, the President responded: “Well, you have to ask that to Rudy, but Rudy, I don’t, I don’t even know. I know he was going to go to Ukraine, and I think he canceled a trip.”185 Prior to that, on October 2, the President publicly stated; “And just so you know, we’ve been investigating, on a personal basis—through Rudy and others, lawyers—corruption in the 2016 election.”186 On October 4, the President publicly stated: “If we feel there’s corruption, like I feel there was in the 2016 campaign—there was tremendous corruption against me—if we feel there’s corruption, we have a right to go to a foreign country.”187
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