President Donald Trump’s attorney and former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, will speak to journalists outside the White House on July 1, 2020. Credit – Chip Somodevilla – Getty Images
“Let these investigations continue,” Rudy Giuliani told the presidential headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine, as his voice became impatient. “Get someone to investigate.” At the other end of the line, bending over a loudspeaker, two Ukrainian officials listened in disbelief as Giuliani demanded sins that could help his client, then-President Donald Trump, win another term.
The 40-minute call, the transcript of which was obtained by TIME, provides the clearest picture of Giuliani’s efforts to put pressure on the Ukrainians on behalf of Trump. The president’s personal lawyer has alternated between covert threats – ‘Be careful’, he repeatedly warned, promising to improve Ukraine’s relations with Trump. “My only motive – it’s not to get someone in trouble who does not deserve to be in trouble,” Giuliani said. ‘For the sake of our country and of your country, we [need to] get all these facts right, ”he added. “We fix it and put it behind us.”
The conversation on July 22, 2019 kicked off the campaign of intimidation that led to Trump’s first indictment. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his associates have been saying little about their interaction with Giuliani for a year and a half and did not want to offend a US presidential missionary. But now, as the Trump era ends with a historic second indictment, Ukrainians have begun talking about the circumstances that led to the first. They are also taking steps that could endanger Giuliani and his Ukrainian allies.
Igor Novikov, who served as a close adviser to Zelensky during Trump’s first indictment, says he is prepared to help an ongoing federal investigation into Giuliani, which is reportedly underway in New York, as well as a separate effort. to strip Giuliani of his license to practice. law. Zelensky’s government has taken legal action against Giuliani’s Ukrainian associates. And they opened up the media about the pressure campaign launched by Trump and his allies. On February 3, Novikov sent a transcript of the Giuliani call to TIME, the accuracy of which was independently confirmed by TIME.
Giuliani did not respond to a detailed list of questions about the transcript of his call with Ukrainian officials, Ukrainian support for his denial and the federal investigation.
In a series of interviews, Zelensky’s advisers say their motives are not to even come up with Giuliani or to clear up the historical record. Their goal is to rebuild relations with the US now that President Joe Biden has taken office. “The past is the past,” Zelensky told TIME in a statement on February 4. “I deeply care about the future of our relationship with the United States, so I want to focus on that.”
The Ukrainian movements highlight the series of new threats for Trump and his associates now that he has left office. Under the Constitution, accusation by the House and a conviction by the Senate are the remedies for misconduct by the president. Trump is now likely to escape conviction for the second time. Yet his critics do not have to rely on Congress to punish Trump and his allies. They find ways to do it themselves: through libel cases, criminal investigations, pressure to ban his social media accounts and other means.
The cost is rising for Giuliani and his associates, especially Russian agents and Ukrainian politicians who helped his crusade to get Trump re-elected in 2020. In the last days of Trump’s term, the US government approved seven of these men – all Ukrainian citizens. —To be part of a ‘Russia-linked foreign influence network’ that promoted Giuliani’s false claims against the Bidens.
Zelensky’s government has launched its own counter-offensive against Giuliani and its enablers in Ukraine. It tried to block several Ukrainian media outlets that aired unfounded allegations of corruption against the Biden family, which Giuliani had been trying to prove and publicize for more than a year. One of the Ukrainian lawmakers who helped him, Oleksandr Dubinsky, was kicked out of Zelensky’s political party on February 1.
Potentially more worrying for Giuliani is the Ukrainian support for the investigations he is allegedly facing in New York. Novikov tells TIME that he is assisting in a legal campaign to revoke Giuliani’s law license. Novikov is also open to the investigation that the former New York mayor allegedly helped in the southern district of New York, the same office where Giuliani made a name for himself as a prosecutor in the 1980s.
“If I get an official request from SDNY or any other non-partisan attempt, such as the possible disillusionment of Rudy Giuliani, I would be willing to help them,” said Novikov, who left the government in August but is still close. Zelensky’s government remains. “This is because I believe that the actions of Mayor Giuliani in Ukraine have threatened our national security,” he added. “It is our responsibility to make sure that any attempt to drag our country into the domestic politics of our allies does not go unpunished.”
The SDNY investigation, which began in 2019, reportedly focused on Giuliani’s alleged lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian politicians, as well as business transactions conducted by his associates in the country’s energy sector. A Southern District spokesman declined to comment on the status of the investigation, although a report by NBC News indicated that it had been running since December. At least two Ukrainian officials told TIME that they had already discussed Giuliani with SDNY investigators. “It was strange,” says one, describing a 2019 visit to their Manhattan offices, which Giuliani led before becoming mayor of New York City. ‘There I am to testify against Giuliani, and [hanging on the wall] they have these pictures of him shaking people. ‘
Giuliani has long insisted that there are no grounds for SDNY to investigate him. After NBC News reported in December that prosecutors were seeking access to his communications, Giuliani tweeted, ‘They want to use my email. Give a reason[.] No wrongdoing. On his video blog and other outlets, the former mayor also defended his ethical standards. “I’m not stupid,” he said in his January 14 radio program. “I do not want to get into trouble. And I have a high sense of ethics, personally. I hate it when people attack my integrity. ”
In the telephone conversation with Zelensky’s associates in 2019, Giuliani was careful not to explicitly ask for a favor, according to the transcript. ‘I’m not interested in someone not speaking or exaggerating the truth. It is not about political favor, “Giuliani said in the call. He also seemed very aware of the dilemma he created for the Ukrainians, and how it might make them feel. “You must not feel terrible,” he said. All we need from the president is to say, ‘I’m appointing an honest prosecutor. [on these investigations], and he will dig up the evidence that currently exists. ‘”
But from Ukraine’s perspective, the call put the Zelensky government in a dangerous position. “That first phone call left me in a state of shock,” said Novikov, who joined Andriy Yermak, then a top adviser to Zelensky and currently its chief of staff, on the call. “After we hung up the phone, I knew without a doubt that we were in serious danger.”
Three days after that conversation, Trump held a call with Zelensky that would become Exhibit A in his first indictment. He used the call to address the same requests from the Ukrainians as his lawyer made earlier this week. Trump famously asked Zelensky to ‘do us a favor’ by investigating Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
At the beginning of Biden’s government, Zelensky and his top assistants undertook a mini-media tour to discuss some of these events. During an interview with Axios that aired on January 31, Zelensky was asked if he felt a little angry with Trump. The Ukrainian leader laughed and replied, “A little?” The day before the interview aired, details appeared about Giuliani’s first phone call with Zelensky’s associates in Washington Post, which quoted Novikov’s notes from the conversation.
In the summer of 2019, Trump froze about $ 400 million in aid to Ukraine. After learning of the move, Zelensky and his assistants were prepared to announce the investigations Trump and Giuliani wanted. But before they got through it, Giuliani’s pressure campaign uncovered a complaint from a whistleblower in the White House, and Trump agreed to release aid to Ukraine.
Looking back on these events, Zelensky’s advisers still wonder what the consequences would have been if the Biden family’s investigations had been opened. “The consequences could have been catastrophic,” said Yermak, the chief of staff of Ukraine’s president. “I think we avoided domestic American politics,” he tells TIME. “At least that was our mission.”