South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the Justice Department has “created a process” to review Ukraine-related information collected by President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Such a channel, as described by the close Republican ally to Trump on Sunday, would represent the most direct known involvement by Attorney General William Barr in dealings that led to the impeachment investigation that ended in acquittal last week.
Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was asked by Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan if the Justice Department was ordered to investigate Joe Biden for possible corruption related to his son Hunter Biden’s employment on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma when he was vice president. An effort by Trump to pressure Kyiv into investigating his political rivals, including the Bidens, was at the heart of impeachment case brought on by House Democrats.
The senator responded in the negative but noted the Justice Department is “receiving information coming out of Ukraine” from Giuliani. Graham said he heard it from Barr himself.
“He told me that they had created a process that Rudy could give information, and they would see if it’s verified. Rudy Giuliani is a well-known man. He’s a crime fighter. He’s loyal to the president. He’s a good lawyer,” Graham said on CBS.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately return a request for confirmation on said arrangement, but last year the agency distanced itself from accusations that Trump improperly pushed Ukraine to announce investigations into the Bidens and other Democrats while he withheld nearly $400 in military aid and a White House meeting.
The bitter impeachment fight began with the emergence of a whistleblower complaint about a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A transcript of this conversation, released by the White House, showed Trump urged his Ukrainian counterpart to talk to Giuliani and Barr, after which the Justice Department said the president never told Barr to communicate with Ukraine about any investigation involving Joe Biden, then and now a candidate for president.
“The president has not spoken with the attorney general about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former Vice President Biden or his son,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in September. “The president has not asked the attorney general to contact Ukraine — on this or any other matter. The attorney general has not communicated with Ukraine — on this or any other subject. Nor has the attorney general discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.”
Giuliani has not been shy about boasting of his Ukraine investigations and is said to be “ramping up” the work that, during impeachment, was described as a “smear campaign” against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and others, perhaps to protect his business interests in that country. During an appearance Sunday morning on Fox News, the former New York City mayor said he has a “smoking gun” to prove corruption by the Bidens.
“Look, the government has been so lax in investigating, it’s pathetic,” Giuliani said on Sunday Morning Futures.
“I mean, when I was a U.S. attorney, the day Joe Biden made that boastful announcement, the investigation would have begun the next day for bribery,” he added, referring to Biden’s public acknowledgment that he pressured Ukraine to fire a controversial top prosecutor, whose office had investigated Burisma owner and Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees.
Last week, Barr issued a memo to the FBI ordering the organization to clear any investigations into 2020 candidates with him.
Graham said he didn’t know if Giuliani might be getting played by Russian disinformation but waved off the suggestion that a Barr-Giuliani channel would be a “taxpayer-funded research operation against Joe Biden.”
Graham argued the situation is nothing like the controversy with the unverified anti-Trump dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, whose work during the 2016 campaign was funded by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee and used in the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into whether there was criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Instead, the senator played up the series of investigations being undertaken by the GOP-led Senate, aimed at rooting out possible misconduct in the Russia investigation and the Ukraine-related impeachment effort, which are being conducted alongside Barr’s review of the Russia investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Graham, as head of the judiciary panel, is spearheading the investigation into issues with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process.
“Here’s what I want to tell the president: I’m not going to be the Republican Christopher Steele,” Graham said. “Rudy Giuliani last night said he’s got the goods on Hunter Biden … I called the attorney general this morning and [Sen.] Richard Burr, the chairman of the Intel Committee, and they told me, ‘Take very cautiously anything coming out of the Ukraine against anybody.'”
