(Bloomberg) -- Attorney General William Barr acknowledged for the first time Monday that President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been giving the Justice Department information he collected in Ukraine, essentially bringing what was a stealth campaign into official government channels.
Barr said, however, that information coming from Ukraine must be carefully vetted to ensure it is accurate and authentic.
“The DOJ has the obligation to have an open door to anybody who wishes to provide us information that they think is relevant,” Barr told reporters during a news conference in Washington. “We have to be very careful with respect to any information coming from Ukraine. There are a lot of agendas in the Ukraine, there are a lot of cross-currents and we can’t take anything we receive from the Ukraine at face .”
But House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler quickly objected to the Justice Department’s arrangement with Giuliani, saying that it “raises serious questions about conflicts of interest -- both for the department, generally, and for you, specifically.”
“Given your creation of a new ‘intake process’ for Mr. Giuliani, it is all the more important that you provide a complete explanation for your decision to sidestep standard department practice,” Nadler wrote in a letter to Barr. Nadler, a New York Democrat, goes on to demand information, including “the dates of any communications between the Department and Mr. Giuliani regarding information relating to Ukraine or investigations of the Bidens.”
Barr didn’t specify what kind of information Giuliani, a former mayor of New York, has been providing. Giuiliani has previously said he had been collecting information about the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine.
Giuliani’s efforts became a central factor in Trump’s impeachment for pressuring the Ukrainian government to announce investigations into the Bidens to help his re-election.
The president was acquitted by the Senate last week.
On Sunday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he had spoken that morning to Barr and “he told me that they’ve created a process, that Rudy could give information and they would see if it’s verified.”
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