Most of us probably remember Rudy's announcement that he was going to go to Ukraine to get dirt on Biden earlier this year. Although he backed down once people called him out, he later met in Spain with representatives of the new Ukrainian government. From that earlier thread, I quote Senator Murphy's prescient statement:
"I know we've become numb to the corruption of this Administration, but this story should be the total focus of the political class today. The President is openly asking a foreign government to investigate his political rival. This is next level."
WaPo has put together a larger timeline of events that puts it all into ugly perspective. When you put Trump and Rudy together, you get an incompetent New York mafia family. You can't trust the State Department or the experts, because they all follow laws and the Constitution. The way to get things done is to sideline the officials, and have trusted non-officials like Rudy do your work off the books.
Giuliani pursued shadow Ukraine agenda as key foreign policy officials were sidelined
I had not realized before this story that the US has no ambassador to Ukraine. Why? Let's get to the story.
Giuliani turned his attention to Ukraine, officials said, and soon began pushing for personnel changes at the embassy while seeking meetings with Zelensky subordinates. He also had his own emissaries in Ukraine who were meeting with officials, setting up meetings for him and sending back information that he could circulate in the United States.
The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, became a primary Giuliani target.
Though she was widely respected in the national security community for her efforts to prod Ukraine to take on corruption, Giuliani targeted Yovanovitch with wild accusations including that she played a secret role in exposing Manafort and was part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the liberal financier George Soros.
Giuliani also said the entire State Department was a problem, and officials familiar with his actions say he regularly briefed Trump on his Ukrainian endeavors. “The State Department is a bureaucracy that needs to change,” he told The Post.
Within days of [the ambassador's] ouster on May 9, Giuliani seemed determined to seize an unsanctioned diplomatic role for himself, announcing plans to travel to Ukraine to push for investigations that would “be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”
Giuliani canceled the trip amid an ensuing backlash over his purpose but later met with one of Zelensky’s senior aides in Madrid and pressed the issue of Ukraine’s helping against Biden.
In Washington, officials outside Trump’s inner circle who were dismayed by Yovanovitch’s ouster reacted with growing alarm and confusion over Giuliani’s subsequent activities.
“We had the same visibility as anybody else — watching Giuliani on television,” a former senior official said. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev were similarly deprived of information, even as they faced questions from Ukrainians about whether Giuliani was a designated representative.
The perception of a parallel, hidden agenda intensified in the summer as officials at the NSC, Pentagon and State Department began reacting to rumors that hundreds of millions of dollars of military and intelligence aid to Ukraine was being mysteriously impeded.
“There were never any orders given, any formal guidance from the White House to any of the agencies,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter. “And the NSC was scratching their heads: How is this possible?”
“Rudy — he did all of this,” one U.S. official said. “This ----show that we’re in — it’s him injecting himself into the process.”
He went outside official channels to obtain benefits for his client, sowing confusion with both our government and Ukraine's about his status. We know his activities were targeted at Trump's political rival, and this appears to be coordinated with official actions on withholding money from Ukraine as leverage to these discussions. Trump is not acting to promote the interests of the American people, or the integrity of our foreign policy.
