WASHINGTON — Three powerful U.S. Congressional committees have launched investigations into whether President Donald J. Trump and his lawyer, former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, are trying to hold relations between America and Ukraine hostage to demands that Kyiv needs to provide propaganda ammunition for Trump’s s 2020 re-election campaign.
The Democratic chairmen of the House of Representatives Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees on Sept. 9 wrote joint letters to the White House and the Secretary of State asking for a slew of documents related to “a wide-ranging investigation” concerning Ukraine.
They are looking into whether Trump and others were trying to pressure Ukraine into opening an investigation they hoped might damage the reputation of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who served two terms under ex-President Barack Obama, and who has emerged as a leading contender to challenge Trump in next year’s election.
The investigations provide more signals that Ukraine could be dragged into what promises to be a particularly bruising and dirty American presidential race next year.
Anything that could be painted as even remotely resembling Ukrainian government support for Trump or his eventual Democratic Party challenger could undermine the overwhelmingly bipartisan support that Ukraine enjoys in the U.S. Congress and which has been vital for Ukraine’s ability to withstand invasion and war inflicted by Moscow.
Biden leads the field of Democratic Party members hoping to become their party’s presidential candidate in next year’s race. Trump apparently views Biden as his most dangerous rival out of the Democratic contenders. Many opinion polls reflect the view that Biden could shatter Trump’s bid for a second term in office.
Biden’s son, Hunter, served on the board of Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. Giuliani, who is also a former federal prosecutor, has met with Ukrainian officials to apparently urge them to begin an inquiry into whether Biden used his influence to quash an investigation by the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin into financial misdoings by Burisma.
Giuliani and others in the Trump camp have also alleged that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, in the race to the White House.
That allegation revolves around revelations about the unsavory connections between Trump’s election campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Ukraine’s former Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych. A Ukrainian journalist also publicized millions of dollars that Manafort received from Yanukovych in secret payments that he failed to declare to U.S. tax authorities. Trump was forced to ditch Manafort in the summer of 2016 after the revelations.
Mueller’s investigation still haunts Trump
The following year Manafort became a major focus of an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow by U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller. His report concluded there had been massive Kremlin interference in the form of widespread manipulation and use of black propaganda on social media and by the release of thousands of stolen emails intended to damage candidate Clinton and help Trump win the presidency.
Manafort is currently serving a seven and a half year prison sentence as a result of Mueller’s investigations.
While the report cited instances of contacts between Kremlin figures and Trump circles it did not allege collusion between them. Mueller infuriated the American president by glaringly not exonerating him of improper behavior, including of trying to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation.
The Trump camp has sought to take the sting out of the Mueller report by trying to denigrate those that gathered or provided the evidence it contains and by attempting to portray an equivalence between the Ukrainian revelations concerning Manafort and the Kremlin’s assault on America’s 2016 elections.
The joint investigation was launched on Monday by a trio of Democratic Representatives: Eliot Engel (chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee), Adam Schiff (chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) and Elijah Cummings (chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform).
The letter to the White House was sent to Pat Cipollone, counsel to the president, and another was addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
It stated: “A growing public record indicates that, for nearly two years, the president and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, appear to have acted outside legitimate law enforcement and diplomatic channels to coerce the Ukrainian government into pursuing two politically-motivated investigations under the guise of anti-corruption activity. The first is a prosecution of Ukrainians who provided key evidence against Mr. Trump’s convicted campaign manager Paul Manafort. That investigation aims to undercut the Mueller Report’s overwhelming evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to support Trump’s campaign. The other case targets the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, who is challenging Mr. Trump for the presidency in 2020. As the 2020 election draws closer, President Trump and his personal attorney appear to have increased pressure on the Ukrainian government and its justice system in service of President Trump’s re-election campaign, and the White House and the State Department may be abetting this scheme.”
Giuliani drags Ukraine into U.S. domestic wrangles
The letter says that in a July 25, 2019, phone call Trump told Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky an investigation by Kyiv authorities was necessary to remove obstacles “which inhibited the interaction between Ukraine and the USA.”
It describes a meeting between Giuliani, who has no official administration or diplomatic position but has sought to embroil Ukraine in U.S. domestic politics. He met former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Serhiy Lutsenko earlier this year and urged him to open an inquiry, and met senior Zelensky aide Andriy Yermak in Spain where the letter says he apparently mooted a “possible heads of state meeting” between Trump and Zelensky. The letter notes that Yermak said “it was not clear to him whether Mr. Giuliani was representing Mr. Trump in their talks.”
Giuliani apparently believes Ukrainian revelations about Manafort helped spark the Mueller inquiry, which has scarred Trump’s presidency. He admitted to American media he “strongly urged” Yermak to look into claims that Biden acted to protect help his son’s business interests.
The letter also suggests that Trump’s delaying the release of a $250 million military aid package, appropriated by Congress and supported by the Pentagon, could also be aimed at prodding Kyiv to open an investigation.
The three prominent Democrats write: “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are under assault from Russia and its proxies in illegally-occupied Ukrainian territory. If the President is trying to pressure Ukraine into choosing between defending itself from Russian aggression without U.S. assistance or leveraging its judicial system to serve the ends of the Trump campaign, this would represent a staggering abuse of power, a boon to Moscow, and a betrayal of the public trust.”
The letter suggests the State Department has “acted as a broker” between Giuliani and Ukrainian officials and that it is “complicit in a corrupt scheme that undercuts U.S. foreign policy and national security interests in favor of the President’s personal agenda.”
The committees have demanded that the White House, State Department and other officials hand over all relevant documents and records by Sept. 16. The Congressmen warn against any attempts to destroy the materials which include a record of the phone call between Trump and Zelensky.
Trump’s supporters have suggested Hunter Biden’s post with Burisma represented a conflict of interest for his father.
They have pointed out that, as vice president, Biden boasted that he threatened in March 2016 to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine unless it removed Shokin as the prosecutor general. However, Biden explained he had long pressed for the removal of Shokin because he was frustrated, along with many Ukrainians and foreign officials, by delays in removing the top justice official widely accused of corruption.
An investigation that Shokin’s team had launched into Burisma was, in any case, reportedly inactive before he lost his job.
U.S. lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties wrote last week to the White House urging Trump to release the military aid for Ukraine that he has held up by calling for checks to ensure it was in America’s interests.
The fiscal year for Congress runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. If the aid money, which the Ukrainian military says is vital for their country’s defense, is not approved by the end of this month it could be lost for the year.
