pinchuk pynchuk
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Tamir Sapir
Mueller is also said to be investigating connections between Russian oligarchs and Trump’s businesses in the years before he became president. One such partner in Trump’s failed Soho tower was the late Israeli-Georgian tycoon Tamir Sapir. In 2007, Trump hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter, Zina, with Rotem Rosen, then the director of the North American branch of Leviev’s Africa-Israel. The same year, Netanyahu listed Sapir as one of the potential donors to his Likud primary campaign in a handwritten note uncovered by the Yedioth Aharonoth daily.
Another partner in the Soho project, and possibly the architect of Trump’s ties to Russia, was Felix Sater, who worked closely with Cohen. Sater is also an Israeli citizen, having passed through the country on his way to the United States with his father Mikhail, whom the FBI has named as a lieutenant for Russia mafia kingpin Sergei Mogilevich. Mogilevich came to Israel in 1990 and lived there for a few years. According to press reports, Mogilevich participated in a 1995 meeting of Ukrainian master criminals convened in Tel Aviv by another Russian oligarch with a shady reputation, Boris Birshtein. After several years in Israel, Birshtein left the country for Canada, after learning that he had turned into a target of the Israeli police. Subsequently, he partnered with Trump in a building project in Toronto.
Mueller is also said to be investigating a $150,000 contribution to Trump’s inaugural committee, in which Broidy played an active role, made by another Ukrainian billionaire, Victor Pinchuk. Cohen, it is alleged, was the middleman. Pinchuk is a significant contributor to religious institutions, but is also well connected to its politicians. In 2008 he served as co-chairman of the Israeli Presidential Conference convened in Jerusalem by the late Shimon Peres.
Viktor Vekselberg,
* Another purported target of Mueller’s investigation is Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, an Israeli citizen with investments in Israel, for payments allegedly made to Michael Cohen. Vekselberg partnered with Israeli-Russian billionaires Len Blavatnik, who is invested in Israeli media, connected to Netanyahu and is also under Mueller’s spotlight, as well as Russian-Israeli billionaire Mikhail Fridman. One of their joint holdings was Alfa Bank, which, according to the Steele Dossier, owned a mysterious internet server found in Trump Tower. Fridman is also the main contributor to the Genesis Prize, in which Netanyahu regularly plays a prominent role, and which featured recently in the brouhaha surrounding Natalie Portman’s decision to decline the prize after she had earlier accepted it.
MOJO
More than two years after she withdrew from consideration for a White House national security position amid plagiarism accusations, Fox News commentator Monica Crowley is reportedly set to take a job as chief spokeswoman for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. But Crowley’s work in the interim has hardly made her less controversial. In 2017, she registered as a lobbyist for Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire whose large payments (for speeches) to prominent Americans, including Donald Trump, and apparent promotion of pro-Russian interests drew scrutiny from special counsel Robert MuelleRr. Crowley’s lobbying for Pinchuk could complicate her role as the top flack for an agency that is responsible for imposing and policing US sanctions on Russia and on a prominent Ukrainian leader tied to Pinchuk.
In January 2017, Trump picked Crowley, a onetime research assistant for former President Richard Nixon who gained prominence as a conservative pundit, to head strategic communications for the National Security Council. Crowley announced she would not take the job following reports that she had plagiarized large sections of her 2012 book and her 2000 Ph.D. dissertation.
“After much reflection I have decided to remain in New York to pursue other opportunities,” she said in a January 16, 2017, statement. Within a few weeks, according to filings with the Justice Department, Crowley had begun working with Douglas Schoen, a Democratic lobbyist with clients in Ukraine, to “provide outreach services” for Pinchuk, a steel magnate whose empire also includes media and banking holdings. A filing submitted by Schoen noted that Crowley had contacted a slew of prominent Republicans, including the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Defense Secretary James Mattis on Pinchuk’s behalf. She also reported meeting with Pinchuk on February 2, 2017, in London to discuss “peace efforts involving Ukraine” and other topics.
Those “peace efforts” sound like a reference to a plan that Pinchuk was promoting for settling the conflict resulting from Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Pinchuk presents himself as pro-Western, but his plan, which he detailed in a December 2016 Wall Street Journal op-ed, included a series of Ukrainian concessions aimed at appeasing Russia’s desire that Ukraine remain a buffer against the West. Pinchuk wrote that Ukraine should set aside efforts to enter the European Union, give up on joining NATO in favor of “neutrality,” and defer discussion of regaining Crimea, which Russian troops had seized, as part of a settlement.
Pinchuk also called for Ukraine to accept “an incremental rollback of sanctions” that the United States and European states imposed on Russia for the 2014 invasion. His proposal drew attacks from some Ukrainians as overly conciliatory. “Pinchuk wants to show that business stands for the reboot of relations between the U.S and Russia, even if Ukrainian national interests are the price for that,” Hanna Hopko, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said at the time. Another Ukrainian lawmaker, Mustafa Nayyem, said the proposal would “doom millions of people to legalized slavery.”
Pinchuk’s peace plan was one of a handful of proposals pushed by prominent Ukrainians in early 2017, as they sought American backing. These included a proposal by a pro-Russian lawmaker, Andriy Artemenko, that Trump’s then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen reportedly shared in February 2017 with Michael Flynn, Trump’s soon-to-be ousted national security adviser. Pinchuk’s plan was similar to one that former Trump campaign head Paul Manafort secretly discussed with Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime Manafort employee in Ukraine who has ties to Russian intelligence, according to the FBI.
The plan Kilimnik brought to Manafort envisioned the creation of an autonomous region in Ukraine, which Pinchuk’s proposal also hinted at. Manafort told prosecutors the plan he discussed with Kilimnik was in reality a “backdoor” way for Russia to gain control of eastern Ukraine, according to Mueller’s report, released in redacted form last week. Kilimnik was promoting the proposal on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the former pro-Russian president of Ukraine and Manafort’s longtime patron, whose 2014 ouster through a popular uprising precipitated Russia’s invasion. Yanukoyvch hoped to regain power as head of the autonomous region, Mueller’s report says.
Pinchuk appears to have long-standing ties to Yanukovych. According to emails released by the State Department, Pinchuk, a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, met in 2011 with an aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to convey a message that Yanukovych, whose growing Kremlin ties worried US officials, remained committed to Ukraine’s integration with Europe.
In 2012, Pinchuk allegedly secretly bankrolled a report by Skadden, Arps, a prominent law firm, that defended the legal basis of Yanukoych’s imprisonment of his predecessor, Yulia Tymoshenko. Skadden revealed Pinchuk’s role in January when the firm agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle a Justice Department case that grew out of Mueller’s investigation into Manafort, who helped arrange for the firm’s report. Pinchuk has denied funding the report.
In recent years, Pinchuk has worked to cultivate Trump and senior Republicans. In 2015, Pinchuk paid $150,000 to the Trump Foundation for Trump to deliver brief remarks, via Skype, to a Kiev conference funded by Pinchuk’s charitable foundation, which bankrolls various cultural causes in Ukraine. Mueller reportedly investigated the circumstances of that payment, though it is not mentioned in the portions of his report made public. Before joining the White House, Trump national security adviser John Bolton received $115,000 to participate in two panel discussions sponsored by Pinchuk.
And Crowley arranged for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to speak at a June 2017 Pinchuk Foundation conference in Kiev. Giuliani, who reportedly receives at least $100,000 per speech, told Mother Jones his payment “was in line with” his standard fee but declined to specify the amount.
From February 2017 to January 2018, Crowley received at least $15,000 per month from a Pinchuk firm, EastOne Group, according to the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act filings. It’s not clear if she has officially ceased working for Pinchuk.
In 2014, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on Yanukovych and three allies for their role in “actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.” The Department has also sanctioned numerous Russian officials and entities over the 2014 invasion and other Russian policies. Would this create a conflict for Crowley, given Pinchuk’s ties to the former Ukrainian president? Crowley and a Treasury Department spokesman did not respond to questions. Schoen and Pinchuk, through his foundation, also did not reply to inquiries.
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[### Trump's pick for national security role now lobbying ...
_Politico_
https://www.politico.com › story › 2017/03 › monica-c...](https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/monica-crowley-ukraine-lobbying-victor-pinchuk-236037)
[
Mar 14, 2017 — Crowley registered on Friday to provide “outreach services” on behalf of Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian steel magnate who has given millions to the Clinton ...
[### Treasury Wants to Hire Monica Crowley. Her Last Boss ...
Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com › politics › 2019/04 › tre...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/treasury-wants-to-hire-monica-crowley-her-last-boss-was-an-oligarch-probed-by-mueller/)
[
Apr 29, 2019 — In 2017, she registered as a lobbyist for Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire whose large payments (for speeches) to prominent Americans, ...
[### Former Trump pick now lobbying for Ukrainian Oligarch
CNN
https://www.cnn.com › 2017/03/15 › politics › monica-...](https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/15/politics/monica-crowley-lobbying-ukraine-oligarch)
Mar 15, 2017 — Monica Crowley would have been the deputy national security adviser. Crowley is now lobbying for Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch.
[### One-Time Trump National Security Pick Registers As ...
Foreign Policy
https://foreignpolicy.com › 2017/03/14 › trump-nation...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/14/trump-national-security-aide-registers-as-foreign-agent-for-ukrainian-oligarch-monica-crowley-plagiarism-scandal-victor-pinchuk-ukraine-billionaire/)
But now she has a new one: lobbying for Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. Her move comes right on the heels of a scandal involving former ...
[### Monica Crowley Is Now Reportedly Working for a Pro ...
Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com › Politics](https://www.businessinsider.com/monica-crowley-working-for-ukrainian-oligarch-victor-pinchuk-2017-3)
Mar 14, 2017 — The document lists Crowley as rendering services to Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman who has advocated for making compromises with ...
[### Monica Crowley lobbying for Trump-tied Ukrainian oligarch LegiStorm
https://www.legistorm.com › pro_news › monica-crowle...](https://www.legistorm.com/pro_news/1902/monica-crowley-lobbying-for-trump-tied-ukrainian-oligarch.html)
Mar 14, 2017 — Crowley, who gained recent notoriety for her alleged plagiarism, is providing Pinchuk with "outreach services," according to the filing.
[### Crowley registers as foreign agent for Ukrainian billionaire
The Hill
https://thehill.com › business-a-lobbying › 323964-cro...](https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/323964-crowley-registers-as-foreign-agent-for-ukranian-billionaire/)
Mar 14, 2017 — Monica Crowley — who bowed out of a Trump administration post after a plagiarism scandal — is now working as a foreign agent for Ukrainian ...
[### Monica Crowley Files To Lobby On Behalf Of Ukrainian ...
Talking Points Memo
https://talkingpointsmemo.com › ... › Category: DC](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/monica-crowley-registers-foreign-agent-lobbying-for-victor-pinchuk)
[
Mar 14, 2017 — Former Fox News analyst Monica Crowley has taken up a new pursuit: lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch who's advocated for better relations with Russia.
[### Monica Crowley
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Monica_Crowley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Crowley)
... Ukrainian industrialist and political figure Victor Pinchuk. Crowley registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.
[### Monica Crowley Lost White House Job, Now She's Got ...
The Daily Beast
https://www.thedailybeast.com › monica-crowley-lost-wh...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/monica-crowley-lost-white-house-job-now-shes-got-one-with-pro-russian-oligarch/)
Mar 14, 2017 — A would-be Trump White House appointee who withdrew in the face of plagiarism allegations is now lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch.
Missing: PINCHUK | Show results with: PINCHUK
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WashingtonCNN —
President Donald Trump’s original pick for deputy national security adviser is now lobbying for a Ukrainian businessman who once advocated that Kiev acquiesce to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.
Conservative commentator Monica Crowley, who would have served as the administration’s national security spokeswoman, withdrew from the transition team in January after a series of CNN’s KFILE reports revealed that she had plagiarized parts of Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia University.
According to a Friday filing with Justice Department, Crowley is now lobbying for Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch and former Ukrainian politician.
Crowley “will be providing outreach services on behalf of Mr. Victor Pinchuk,” according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act filing, which requires people working on behalf of a foreign entity in a “political or quasi-political” capacity to file records.
Such services include “inviting government officials and other policymakers to attend conferences and meetings, such as the annual Munich Security Conference, to engage in learning and dialogue regarding issues of concern to Mr. Pinchuk.”
Pinchuk, whose total net worth has been valued by Forbes Magazine at just around $1.4 billion, has donated substantial sums to both the Clinton and Trump foundations.
In December Pinchuk penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling on Kiev to be willing to “make painful sacrifices,” including forestalling its NATO and EU aspirations and abandoning its claim to Crimea in return for Russia ending its support for separatists in Ukraine’s east.
During the campaign, Trump similarly expressed openness to recognizing the Russian annexation of Crimea. Since then, his administration has taken a tougher line, pledging to maintain sanctions on Moscow over the issue.
The news of Crowley’s lobbying on behalf of a foreign client comes a week after Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department, acknowledging that the work he did during the transition may have benefited the Turkish government.
Justice Department, acknowledging that the work may have benefited the Turkish government.
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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/rudy-giuliani-has-a-long-shady-history-with-ukraine/
mojo
In March 2018, Rudy Giuliani met in Manhattan with a delegation of lawmakers from Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million in eastern Ukraine. Giuliani, who joined President Donald Trump’s legal team a few weeks later, was at this gathering because, Giuliani says, his security firm agreed in 2017 to help the city improve its emergency services and seek foreign investment.
But the deal had a murkier element. Giuliani later conceded that he wasn’t just working for Kharkiv and that for at least some of the work he was paid byPavel Fuks, a Kharkiv-born business executive who became a prominent real estate developer in Moscow in the 2000s and who has said that he negotiated directly with Trump between 2004 and 2010 about building a Trump-branded tower in Moscow. Fuks was one of several Ukrainians with Russian ties whose attendance at Trump’s presidential inauguration was investigated by former special counsel Robert Mueller. So at the start of Trump’s presidency, Giuliani was hobnobbing with at least one Ukrainian player who would be tainted by scandal.
Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine exploded into public view this month, with the revelation that Trump pressured the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to work with Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and information to discredit Mueller’s probe. A complaint filed by an intelligence community whistleblower that triggered this new Trump scandal depicted Giuliani as a Trump henchman prowling Ukraine for negative material Trump could use against Biden. But the former New York mayor’s involvement in Ukraine and other former Soviet bloc countries has been more extensive and even more sketchy than these disclosures indicate.
The New York meeting and an earlier trip Giuliani trip took to Kharkiv in November 2017 were arranged by TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, the firm says on its website. TriGlobal, which claims to have offices in New York, Moscow, and Kiev, sells itself as an international business consultancy that does public relations work for clients in Russia and Ukraine. The firm also brags that it has worked with Giuliani since 2004, arranging trips for him to former Soviet states. Last October, Giuliani took a break from his work representing Trump to speak about cybersecurity at a conference TriGlobal organized in Armenia to promote a Russia-led economic bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union. Giuliani appeared at the event alongside a Russian official, Sergey Glazyev, who was sanctioned in March 2014 for his role in the annexation of Crimea and who has been accused of advancing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Ukraine, an accusation he’s denied. Giuliani was reportedly invited to a conference by Russian Armenian multimillionaire Ara Abramyan, a member of TriGlobal’s board, who reportedly suggested at the time that he expected Giuliani to deliver a message for him to Trump.
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Giuliani planned to participate in a panel led by Glazyev at the same conference in Armenia this year. Giuliani canceled his plans to attend after the Post‘s report. He said he decided not to attend after learning that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to go. “If Putin’s going it’s easy,” he said in a text.
These gigs form part of Giuliani’s lucrative post-mayoral career as a roving international security consultant and high-priced lawyer. That career has continued, even after Trump brought Giuliani onto his personal legal team with a mandate to take a combative approach against Mueller’s investigation. Giuliani provides not only pro-bono legal assistance for Trump, but, he says, political advice, and reportedly he acts as somewhat of a personal emissary for the president. All the while, Giuliani has shrugged off questions of whether clients, including foreign interests, are paying him and his firm as he functions as Trump’s consigliere. And he has refused to comprehensively identify his clients. He claims that he does not need to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act—which would require him to disclose details of his work for overseas clients—because he does no lobbying in the United States for foreign entities and instead merely provides security advice to any client he has abroad.
But at least one former client disputes Giuliani’s claims about his work. “I would call him the lobbyist for Kharkiv and Ukraine—this is stated in the contract,” Fuks told the New York Times in March. “It is very important for me that such person as Giuliani tells people that we are a good country, that people can do business with us. That’s what we would like to bring to America’s leaders.” Neither Giuliani nor Fuks has made their contract public. Giuliani has declined to say what he and his firm were paid for the work.
Seven Senate Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), pressed the Justice Department this week to investigate whether Giuliani is violating foreign lobbying law. “Like any other American, Mr. Giuliani has legal obligations to report his work on behalf of foreign clients,” they wrote, “and the Department of Justice should not give him preferential treatment or exempt him from his obligation just because he is the President’s personal attorney.”
:{:{Giuliani conducted other business in Ukraine while working for Kharkiv and Fuks. In June 2017, Giuliani traveled to Kiev where he reportedly met with then-President PetroPoroshenko, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, and other government officials.}::{
:{ Giuliani also spoke on “democracy” and the “rule of law” at a conference organized by the foundation of Ukrainian metals magnate, Victor Pinchuk—an oligarch whose 2016 payment of $150,000 to Trump’s charitable foundation drewscrutinyfrom Mueller.:{}:
Giuliani, who in 2006 reported receiving up to $200,000 per speech, has declined to say how much he he was paid for that presentation. It’s unclear if these activities had any connection to Giuliani’s deal with Fuks and Kharkiv.}:}:}:
In a text message Thursday, Giuliani said his work in Ukraine in 2017 was unrelated to his recently revealed activity. “My business in Ukraine ended in Dec. 2017,” he wrote. But Giuliani’s involvement in the country continued after he became Trump’s lawyer in April 2018.
In May 2018, Ukrainian officials stopped investigating payments to Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort and dropped an offer to assist with Mueller’s prosecution of him. Ukrainian officials told the New York Times they feared helping Mueller would anger Trump, potentially complicating their purchase from the United States of antitank weapons aimed at deterring Russian aggression. This week Giuliani insisted in a text message to me that he did “not know anything about” that move.
At some point in 2018—the exact date is unclear—Giuliani began working on Ukraine-related matters with two Soviet-born American business executives, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.Giuliani has said they’re his clients, though his work for them appears indistinguishable from his efforts on Trump’s behalf. In a text message on Monday, Giuliani declined to comment on this work, citing attorney-client privilege. Parnas and Fruman did not respond to inquiries.
According to a joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, it was Parnas and Fruman who first encouraged Giuliani’s effort to dig up dirt on Biden. Both Parnas and Fruman, who live in South Florida, became big GOP donors in 2018, giving at least $576,500 in combined donations over several months. They used the resulting access to powerful Republican figures to promote a plan to sell American liquified gas to Ukraine. In May 2018, the duo dined with the president at the Trump International Hotel and had breakfast in Beverly Hills with Donald Trump Jr. and Tommy Hicks Jr., who later became co-chair of the Republican National Committee, according Facebook posts by Parnas, which he later deleted. It is unclear if Giuliani was helped connect them with Trump.
According to the OCCRP/BuzzFeed News report, Parnas and Fruman organized a late 2018 Skype call between Giuliani and Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor whose firing was pushed by Biden and many European diplomats in 2016. Shokin was ousted for blocking anti-corruption probes, but Giuliani and Trump have asserted that Biden sought Shokin’s dismissal to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, from investigation. There is no evidence to support that claim.
But Shokin, not surprisingly, was apparently eager to help smear Biden. Parnas claims that he and Fruman put Giuliani in touch with Shokin’s replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko, late last year. Giuliani and Lutsenko met in New York in January 2018 and in Poland in February, according to the OCCRP/BuzzFeed News report. Giuliani told the Washington Post that he has met with five current and former Ukrainian prosecutors overall, including Shokin and Lutsenko, since last year.
Shortly after their get-togethers, Lutsenko and Giuliani began pushing allegations in the US media about Biden and claiming Ukrainian officials interfered in the 2016 election to help the Hillary Clinton campaign.Many of these claims ended up in articles written by Hill opinion writer John Solomon, whose reports were amplified by Fox News and other conservative media and by Trump—but his reports have largely been debunked. Ukrainian anti-corruption activists claim Shokin and Lutsenko were promoting phony accusations, and Lutsenko later withdrew many of his claims. Daria Kaleniuk, the head of a Ukrainian anti-corruption group, contends that Lutsenko issued allegations to please Trump in a bid to keep his job.
“I was investigating, going back to last year, complaints that the Ukrainian people, several people in Ukraine, knew about a tremendous amount of collusion between Ukrainian officials, and Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee,” Giuliani claimed last week on CNN. Theseaccusations promoted by Giuliani have been embraced by Trump’s Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr.On Wednesday, the Justice Department said that a probe initiated by Barr and run by a US attorney, John Durham, is “exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.”(The nature of this probe is unclear. Ukraine was not involved in the initiation of the FBI’s investigation of the Russian attack on the 2016 election and the interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia.)
According to the Washington Post, since Zelensky took office in May, Giuliani has sidelined the State Department and helped force the firing of the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom he accused, seemingly without evidence, of “collusion” and of “working for” liberal financier George Soros. Trump’s request that Zelensky help Giuliani unearth negative information on Biden has received lots of attention. Zelensky agreeing to do so has received less notice. According to the whistleblower’s complaint, Giuliani met with a Zelenksy adviser on August 2 in Madrid to follow up on “cases” discussed in the July 25 phone call.
Giuliani’s role, particularly his work in Ukraine in 2017 and 2018, has not been fully explained. The whistleblower complaint alleges that Giuliani has been “a central figure” in Trump’s covert effort to use his power to press Ukraine to help tilt the 2020 election in his favor. An unnamed US official quoted by the Post made a similar claim: “Rudy—he did all of this,” the official said. “This shitshow that we’re in—it’s him injecting himself into the process.”
Asked about his work in Ukraine, Giuliani, in a series of texts, called the issue “bull distraction.” Not enough is publicly known yet to back up Giuliani’s this-is-a-distraction defense, or to assess whether Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine will ultimately help Trump or cause him more difficulty in a scandal that has led to an impeachment inquiry.
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