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Rudy Giuliani Mounts His Own Version of Trump Impeachment Defense

Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and the former mayor of New York, outlined his arguments this week in a series of interviews.

Rudy Giuliani Mounts His Own Version of Trump Impeachment Defense
Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, listens during a Bloomberg Television interview in New York, U.S. (Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Rudy Giuliani is mounting his own version of an impeachment defense for President Donald Trump ahead of Wednesday’s vote in the House.

Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and the former mayor of New York, outlined his arguments this week in a series of interviews with news organizations and on Twitter.

Rudy Giuliani Mounts His Own Version of Trump Impeachment Defense

“He is being impeached for doing the right thing as president of the United States,” Giuliani said Monday on Fox News’s “Ingraham Angle.”

His public comments come as House Democrats have scheduled votes on Wednesday to make Trump only the third president in history to be impeached. Democrats allege that the president withheld aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine in exchange for politically motivated investigations that could help Trump’s re-election campaign.

Giuliani focused on justifying Trump’s removal of the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, one of the president’s actions that’s been part of the House impeachment proceedings. He said he provided facts to the president to justify recalling Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch to Washington, and told CNN she was interfering with his work to dig up dirt on Democrats on behalf of Trump.

“There’s a lot of reasons to move her,” Giuliani said in an interview with the New York Times. He told the newspaper that briefings he gave Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo probably played a role in their eventual decision to recall the ambassador. “They relied on it,” he said.

He said in a Tweet on Tuesday that Yovanovitch “needed to be removed for many reasons most critical she was denying visas to Ukrainians who wanted to come to US and explain Dem corruption in Ukraine.”

Giuliani has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims about interactions between the Obama White House and Ukrainian officials. Multiple administration officials testified during House impeachment proceedings that they were worried Giuliani was pursuing politically motivated conspiracy theories and conducting a shadow foreign policy on behalf of Trump and at the expense of U.S. interests.

Giuliani told CNN that Trump has been “very supportive” of his efforts to find information in Ukraine that advance investigations that he and Trump have wanted, including into former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.

Giuliani suggested he has information that he and the president will use if they need to justify Trump’s actions. “Just in case you think we’re on defense, we’re not,” Giuliani told CNN.

Giuliani recently traveled to Ukraine with the conservative One America News Network in what he described as an effort “to bring before the American people” information he said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff “covered up.”

Giuliani is continuing his efforts on Ukraine even as federal prosecutors investigate whether there’s enough evidence to charge him with crimes, including campaign finance violations and a failure to register as a foreign agent.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum, Bill Faries

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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