Ukraine’s former top prosecutor claimed he repeatedly dismissed demands by President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate Joe Biden and his son.
Yuri Lutsenko, Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, said he told Giuliani he would cooperate with the FBI in an investigation into the former vice president and Hunter Biden, who sat the board of a Ukrainian energy company, but said they had not broken any laws to his knowledge.
“I said, ‘Let’s put this through prosecutors, not through presidents,’” Lutsenko told the Los Angeles Times of his conversations with Giuliani. “I told him I could not start an investigation just for the interests of an American official.”
Lutsenko said he told Trump’s personal attorney that Biden’s position with Burisma Holdings while his father was the vice present could be a conflict of interest, but was not illegal.
Lutsenko, who was fired from his position in August, said he met twice with Giuliani and had several more conversations with him on the phone.
It’s unclear how credible Lutsenko’s account is, because he is believed to have previously promoted unsubstantiated allegations against the Bidens and has contradicted his own public statements on the matter.
Trump’s July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been under intense scrutiny after a whistleblower alleged the American president asked his Ukrainian counterpart to interfere in the 2020 elections by investigating his potential challenger.
A transcript of the call released last week showed Trump urging Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. Trump has claimed that Joe Biden demanded the firing of Lutsenko’s predecessor, Viktor Shokin, to stop an investigation into Hunter Biden. Biden urging Shokin’s ouster came at a time when U.S. and European officials demanded Shokin’s firing as part of a crackdown on corruption.
