Rudy Giuliani will urge Ukraine's president-elect to pursue investigations into the origin of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential conflicts of interest between Joe Biden's family and the Ukrainian government, The New York Times reports.
Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, claims government officials in Ukraine worked with Democrats to spread misinformation about Trump. While searching for proof, Giuliani says he has also discovered a damaging story about Biden – that, as vice president, he abused his power to engineer the ouster of Viktor Shokin, Lutsenko's predecessor, to kill an investigation into Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that was paying Biden's son Hunter Biden up to $50,000 a month to sit on the board.
"We're not meddling in an election, we're meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do," Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, said in an interview Thursday with the news outlet.
"There's nothing illegal about it," he added, referring to the Times' assessment a lawyer for the president of the United States was "pressing a foreign government to pursue investigations that Mr. Trump's allies hope could help him in his re-election campaign."
"Somebody could say it's improper. And this isn't foreign policy — I'm asking them to do an investigation that they're doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I'm going to give them reasons why they shouldn't stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government."