Rudy Giuliani consulted the imprisoned Paul Manafort through a lawyer for his investigation into allegations that Ukraine aided Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
The repeated outreach centered on the “black ledger,” which purportedly showed millions of dollars in secretive payments from ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to Manafort, and whether it was used to convince U.S. authorities to reopen a case against Manafort.
“I said, ‘Was there really a black book? If there wasn’t, I really need to know. Please tell him I’ve got to know,’” Giuliani told the Washington Post regarding what he asked of Manafort’s lawyer. “He came back and said there wasn’t a black book.”
Giuliani, who became President Trump’s personal attorney last year during the Russia investigation, began his own Ukraine investigation this year, which he said was at the behest of the State Department. He said he has not spoken to Manafort directly in two years and is not advocating for the president to pardon Manafort, who is serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for illegal lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian interests and financial fraud.
“It was that I believed there was a lot of evidence that the [Democratic National Committee] and the Clinton campaign had a close connection to Ukrainian officials,” Giuliani said. “It was all about Trump. I don’t think I could exonerate Manafort.”
Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, did not comment for the report, but Adrienne Watson, press secretary for the DNC, said in a statement, “The White House has been pushing this narrative to distract from Donald Trump’s gross abuse of power in pressuring a foreign country to interfere in our elections.”
The emergence of the ledger prompted bad press for Manafort and the Trump campaign, leading to Manafort’s resignation from the role of Trump’s campaign manager.
Giuliani has insisted some Ukrainians interfered in 2016 on behalf of Clinton, a theory that was previously promoted by Manafort’s team in disputing the authenticity of the ledger. He has urged Ukraine to investigate the matter along with allegations of corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden to protect his son Hunter from an investigation into an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.
There has been strong pushback against the Manafort theory. Ukrainian activist Serhiy Leshchenko, who revealed the ledger in August 2016, denies he was trying to help Clinton. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said last weekend “all these speculations that Ukraine helped the Democrats, that we wanted President Clinton instead of President Trump, this is a result of misinformation and evil intentions of certain people.”
In their effort to pry redactions from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, lawyers for House Democrats, who are now in the middle of an impeachment inquiry, said grand jury material could help them understand the full scope of the illicit activities undertaken by Manafort in Ukraine and elsewhere, specifically citing the black ledger.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate are reigniting an investigation into whether Ukrainians coordinated with the Democratic National Committee to provide damaging information on Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham called on the Justice Department to investigate “the Biden-Ukraine connection.”
“We looked at all things Russia and Trump, his family, everything about his family, every transaction between the Trump campaign and Russia. Now is time to see whether or not the Ukrainians released information regarding Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager,” the South Carolina Republican said last month. “What relationships, if any, did the Biden world have with the Ukraine? What role, if any, did the Ukraine play in the 2016 election?”
