The US Secret Service warned the White House last year that Russian officials were using President Donald Trump’s private lawyer, Trump Trump, to pass on false information and propaganda to the president. This was after Giuliani traveled to Ukraine in December last year, where he was trying to find out about the alleged corruption of Joe Biden, former vice president, and current presidential candidate, and his son Hunter Biden.
During that trip, Giuliani had, among other things, contacts with Andrei Derkatsj, a Ukrainian MP who the US intelligence service claims to be a spy. He must also have been in contact with other parties believed to be connected to Russia’s intelligence services.
Four Washington Post sources Giuliani said he was not himself under surveillance, but instead was in contact with under surveillance, so the US Secret Service intercepted his dealings with some of those.
“This is Rudy”
Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser, responded to the warning by attending the president’s meeting, warning him to pay close attention to the information that Giuliani would bring from Ukraine.
At the time, Trump himself was under pressure because of his attempts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selensky to investigate Biden’s alleged corruption. He was later charged with misconduct by the parliament because of that pressure.
A Washington Post source says Trump did not heed O’Brien’s warnings, shrugged, and said, “This is Rudy.”
Not for the first time
This was not the first time that US intelligence had warned the White House that Giuliani was in contact with people believed to be linked to Russia’s intelligence.
Rudy was on the lookout for information such as the one that was covered in the controversial New York Post the other day. The paper reports that it is based on data from a laptop that should have been owned by Hunter Biden, but it was Giuliani and Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser, who provided the NYP data.
It quotes an e-mail from 2015 that is supposed to be from Hunter Biden, the presidential candidate’s son, and the paper says it shows that he introduced the Ukrainian manager of an energy company to his father when he was vice president of the United States.
The paper claims that it refutes Biden’s claims that he never spoke to his son about his activities in Ukraine at the time when the vice president pursued the US administration’s policy towards Eastern Europe.
Biden’s candidacy says no such meeting has taken place.
Employees of Facebook and Twitter reduced the distribution of the news on the companies’ social media and referred to the fact that material obtained from computer hacking was being distributed.
No evidence of Biden’s corruption
It is worth noting that no evidence has come to light that Joe Biden did anything wrong or illegal in connection with his work in Ukraine.
These conspiracy theories revolve around Biden’s pressure on the Ukrainian government to remove prosecutor Viktor Shokin. If this were not done, the Obama administration would no longer support Ukraine, which was then and still is in conflict with Russia and the separatists it supports.
Joe Biden discussed this at a meeting last year and boasted that the Ukrainian authorities had fired Shokin. Russia Today, a Russian-owned media outlet, circulated a video of Biden’s comments, claiming that this was evidence of Biden’s corruption because Shokin was investigating the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
Hunter Biden was then on the board of that company.
The truth is, however, that Biden put pressure on the Ukrainians to fire Shokin because the prosecutor did not seem to be working hard enough against corruption in Ukraine. Representatives of the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and other Ukrainian backers at the time also demanded that Shokin, who was not really investigating corruption in Burism, be fired.
Moreover, it was not Biden’s decision to put pressure on the Ukrainians. He was the agent of Barack Obama, the then President of the United States, and was pursuing his foreign policy.
This has been repeatedly pointed out and both the authorities of Ukraine and Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Senate have investigated the allegations against Joe Biden. In both cases, no evidence of corruption was found, although the Senate Homeland Security Committee criticized Hunter Biden for using his name and father to reach lucrative business deals.
Giuliani invited Derkatsch to the United States
In a text message to a Washington Post reporter, Giuliani said he did not know Derkatsch was involved in Russia’s intelligence service. He also said that the MP had not given him much information.
Despite this, Giuliani invited Derkatsch to the United States earlier this year and interviewed him on his broadcast. There, Derkatsj Biden accused the parents of corruption and Giuliani said he had been very helpful.
US Treasury Department Derkatsj imposed sanctions in September, for his campaign against Joe Biden, and the ministry described the MP as “Russia’s intelligence agent for more than a decade”.
In August, the Secretariat of the United States said Derkatsch was part of a Russian government propaganda campaign against Joe Biden and that would be part of Russia’s intervention in this year’s presidential election.
