Ukrainian officials released a transcript of a phone call Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani made in 2019 to pressure officials to help Trump’s re-election campaign, Time reports.
“Let these investigations go forward,” Giuliani said on the 40-minute call to two Ukrainian officials in July of 2019. “Get someone to investigate this.”
The call was part of Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine to investigate President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in hopes it would damage his candidacy.
“Be careful,” Giuliani repeatedly warned the officials.
“My only motive—it isn’t to get anybody in trouble who doesn’t deserve to be in trouble,” Giuliani said, according to the report.
“For our country’s sake and your country’s sake, we [need to] get all these facts straight,” he added. “We fix them and we put it behind us.”
Ukrainian official offers to help DOJ:
While Ukraine avoided speaking up about the effort during Trump’s presidency, officials are now opening up about the pressure campaign.
Igor Novikov, a former top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told Time that he is willing to cooperate with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York in their investigation of Giuliani.
Novikov said he has also provided assistance to a campaign to strip Giuliani of his law license.
“If I get an official request from SDNY or any other non-partisan effort, such as potential disbarment of Rudy Giuliani, I would be open to helping them,” he told Time. “That is because I believe Mayor Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine threatened our national security. It is our responsibility to make sure that any effort to drag our country into our allies’ domestic politics does not go unpunished.”
Rudy faces growing probe:
Giuliani has been under investigation by federal prosecutors since 2019.
Prosecutors arrested multiple business associates of the former New York City mayor, including two who assisted with his pressure campaign in Ukraine.
The probe is reportedly focused on Giuliani’s lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian politicians and business deals his associates pursued in the country.
Giuliani has denied any wrongdoing.
