As Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy sought contact with President Donald Trump, the president directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry and two State Department officials to first meet with Rudy Giuliani, according to a CNN report.
"If they can satisfy Rudy, they can satisfy the president," a source told CNN about the president's instruction to first speak with the president's personal attorney.
The discovery purportedly shows Giuliani was brokering access to the U.S. president.
The whistleblower complaint claimed Giuliani, acting as a private citizen, was presenting U.S. foreign policy ahead of officials from State Department or U.S. diplomats, CNN noted.
Secretary Perry, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and U.S. envoy to the Ukraine Kurt Volker reported back to President Trump they had a favorable impression of President Zelenskiy, who was elected this year to root out corruption in his country, three sources familiar with the May 23 meeting, which included conversations of the $400 million in military aid, told CNN.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not attend the May meeting, and Perry led the delegation to President Zelenskiy's inauguration in Ukraine this spring.
The president was very skeptical," Volker told House committees, according to CNN. "In the course of that conversation, he referenced conversations with Mayor Giuliani.
"He was clearly receiving other information from other sources, including Mayor Giuliani, that was more negative, causing him to retain this negative view," of a corrupt Ukraine, Volker added, according the report.
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