Giuliani, Trump’s Fixer

With his recklessness, the person who used to be the most popular mayor in the U.S. has propelled the president toward impeachment.

The president’s personal lawyer represented the United States abroad for more than a year without any kind of control or supervision. Traveling from one country to another, he held meetings, relayed messages and asked for favors, always on behalf of Donald Trump. His power was such that, following his return from one of his trips to Europe, he ordered—and immediately achieved—the removal of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch for refusing to help him with his assigned mission of having the new government of Ukraine open an investigation into Democrat Joe Biden.

That lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, is now the focus of the Democrats’ investigations; they have initiated the lengthy process of removing a president for the fourth time in history. Giuliani, well aware of what is at stake, has hired a legal team led by attorney Jon Sale, a Watergate prosecutor, Watergate being the case over which Richard Nixon resigned.

Giuliani was mayor of New York City from 1994 until December of 2001. His composure and integrity after the 9/11 terrorist attacks catapulted him into the pantheon of patriotic heroes, from which he has now plunged into the septic tank of impeachment. In April 2018, he answered Trump’s call to join his legal team, in case Special Counsel Robert Mueller brought any charges against him in the investigation into Trump’s ties with the Kremlin. The president ended up being exonerated in the Russian scheme, but Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine have brought about a much greater crisis for him.

On July 25, Trump had a conversation with the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which, according to a White House transcript, he openly asked for “a favor”: to investigate Biden. Giuliani’s name came up five times in that conversation. According to the president, “Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you.” Zelenskiy responded that he would be delighted to talk to Giuliani.

For the Democrats, the message was clear: Trump was not making a request on behalf of his government or his country, but as a personal favor. Biden would have been fatally wounded if Ukraine had launched a corruption investigation against him one year before an election where he could stand as a formidable opponent to Trump. If Zelenskiy did not condemn Biden, Trump would withhold $400 million in aid to Ukraine and would postpone Zelenskiy’s first official visit to Washington indefinitely.

Eight days later, Giuliani was in Madrid to meet with a presidential aide from Ukraine, a lawyer named Andrey Yermak. It is not yet clear why they chose Spain, but in 2016, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort also picked Madrid to meet with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian who was close to the Kremlin, who provided polling data from the Republican campaign. According to Special Counsel Mueller, Russia had set up two digital interference campaigns in order to help Trump win the 2016 election.

A series of text messages between several American diplomats and Giuliani proves that, during his trip to Spain and subsequent communications, Trump’s personal lawyer pressured Ukraine’s president to openly criticize Biden for his son Hunter’s suspicious business dealings in that country through a national gas company called Burisma. These conversations are one of the main pieces of evidence that Capitol Hill Democrats have. According to those text messages, Trump wanted Zelenskiy to openly say that he would initiate “and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections.”

Giuliani’s reckless behavior set off alarm bells at the heart of the American intelligence community. A CIA agent filed an anonymous complaint with superior officers, following Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy on July 25: “The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort.” The complaint reached the Hill, enabling Democrats to open the impeachment process.

Giuliani has already been called to testify on Capitol Hill, but for the time being, his only answer is that he must first check with Trump, who is his client. Both of them claim to be protected by attorney-client privilege. What remains to be seen is whether that is a legitimate basis for refusing to respond when Giuliani was following the president’s orders in missions abroad.