President Trump’s private attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani described his controversial involvement in U.S. foreign affairs Friday as part of a mission to “disrupt the world.”
Mr. Giuliani, the former two-term Republican mayor of New York City, made the remark on Fox News in response to being asked about his attempts to have the Ukrainian government investigate Mr. Trump’s political rival, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joseph R. Biden.
“A lot of people look at this situation and they say ’What exactly are you doing in this situation?’ We have a State Department, we have ambassadorial level that’s involved in all of this. Why are you, the president’s personal attorney, what is your personal — what’s your mission?” Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked Mr. Giuliani.
“To disrupt the world,” Mr. Giuliani replied. “My mission is to defend my client in the best traditions of the legal profession.”
Democrats controlling the House of Representatives launched an impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump last week after his administration tried to block Congress from seeing a whistleblower complaint filed by a member of the U.S. intelligence community. The White House subsequently released a rough transcript of a July phone call that triggered the complaint, and it showed that Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter, over the latter’s ties to a Ukrainian gas company.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky during the call that Mr. Giuliani would be in touch, and Mr. Giuliani, who has repeatedly discussed his outreach to Ukrainian officials recently, was subpoenaed this week as part of the impeachment probe.
“Our inquiry includes an investigation of credible allegations that you acted as an agent of the president in a scheme to advance his personal political interests by abusing the power of the office of the president,” three Democratic House chairmen wrote in a letter to Mr. Giuliani this week.
Appearing on Fox News, Mr. Giuliani denied he reached out to Ukrainians exclusively for the sake of attacking Mr. Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
“It’s in the best interest of my client to unravel the corruption in the Ukraine, which involved mostly collusion in the election into which Joe Biden inserted himself,” said Mr. Giuliani.
Mr. Giuliani has claimed for months during media appearances that the former vice president pressured Ukraine while in office to fire a prosecutor who had been investigating a company that counted his son among its board members. The Democratic candidate has denied wrongdoing, and several past and current Ukrainian government officials have said there is no evidence to indicate the Bidens broke any laws.
Mr. Biden’s campaign asked cable news network earlier this week to stop granting airtime to Mr. Giuliani, citing his “increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies.” He has appeared repeatedly since on Fox News.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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