NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani says Barack Obama had to be “asleep at the switch” to keep his vice president, Joe Biden, in charge of Ukraine policy while Biden’s son Hunter worked for “the crookedest guy in Ukraine.”
Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer and former mayor of New York City, spoke to the Washington Examiner across the street from the United Nations, where he gave a speech at a rally of thousands of Iranian Americans in support of uprisings in Iran for regime change.
Trump’s July 25 call to congratulate new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on his party’s landslide victory in the country’s parliamentary elections has been the talk of the news cycle since the existence of a whistleblower complaint about it came to light last week. Trump encouraged Zelensky to look at Hunter Biden’s $50,000-a-month consulting gig with Ukraine’s largest private gas company, Burisma, which he snagged while his father, the 2020 Democratic front-runner to challenge Trump, was vice president and point man on Ukraine policy.
Biden proudly claimed to have gotten the country to fire a prosecutor accused of corruption by threatening to withhold $1 billion in aid on a trip to Kyiv in March 2016. The prosecutor had allegedly been investigating Burisma before his ouster.
One of Zelensky’s advisers says he approached Giuliani to discuss the issue after the president’s lawyer began bringing it up in the media.
“I’ve gotten to know Zelensky through one of his chief aides, Andriy Yermak,” Giuliani told the Washington Examiner. “And so I’m telling you my impression, and it is true, he is surrounded by slightly different elements. He’s got some people around him that I’d be very nervous about, and he’s got some people now that are real patriots. I think it’s a work in progress.”
Giuliani said he was optimistic Zelensky could crack down on corruption in the former Soviet satellite state where his predecessors have failed.
“He seems to be saying the right things. He hasn’t had to do too much yet. My biggest issue would not be being pro-Russian. I do not believe he’s pro-Russian. I think even the oligarch that has arguably influence on him is not pro-Russian,” Giuliani said, referring to Ihor Kolomoisky. “That doesn’t mean that they’re not dishonest. You’ve got the pro-Russian crooks, and you’ve got the pro-Ukrainian crooks in Ukraine. The only thing better about the pro-Ukrainian crooks is they don’t support Russia, but they can sometimes be as worse.”
“So, I’d say the issue is going to be how did they deal with corruption in Ukraine, which is exactly why the president’s conversation with him is not only appropriate but necessary. Only a president as unaware of and seemingly uninvolved in foreign policy like Obama would have failed to say something,” Giuliani said.
The former mayor promised there was plenty more dirt to be revealed about the Bidens and what some see as their trading in influence.
“And somebody should ask the question as they hear all that’s going to come out on Biden, all of the alleged corruption, because it doesn’t end with Ukraine. We’re going to go to China after that. He made a lot more money in China.”
Giuliani points to a 2013 trip the two Bidens took on Air Force Two to China. Days later, a company in which Hunter Biden had a large stake made a private equity deal with a subsidiary of the government-owned Bank of China that ended up being worth $1.5 billion.
“I hope they at least paid for the trip,” Giuliani commented. “Why wasn’t Obama saying, ‘This is unacceptable?’”
John Kerry was Obama’s secretary of state when Biden traveled both to China and Ukraine.
“You want to know why the secretary of state wasn’t particularly upset about it? Because his son was getting money too. Isn’t it a coincidence that China sends $1.5 billion to a private equity fund? There were only three owners: Biden’s son, Kerry’s son, and Whitey Bulger’s nephew.” James Bulger and Chris Heinz, Kerry’s stepson, were Biden’s partners in the deal.
Giuliani has been under fire for his role in encouraging Ukrainian officials to investigate the Bidens’ Ukrainian connections, and many Democrats have declared that Trump encouraging Zelensky to look into them is an impeachable offense. Giuliani said he believed the story will turn out to mark a very different defining moment.
“You can’t make up the fact that the American media won’t react to it. I believe in the history of turning the media around, this could be the turning point where the American people say: ‘What’s wrong with them? Whitey Bulger’s nephew? The vice president’s son?’ Wasn’t the president at least asleep at the switch? He was alerted to the fact that he puts a guy in charge of Ukraine, and the guy’s son goes to work for the crookedest guy in Ukraine.”
Asked why he didn’t bring the issue up in 2016, Giuliani responded: “I’ve been trying to do it for six months, and the Washington swamp rats wouldn’t cover it. I have talked about this on television. I have talked about it on radio. I’ve written about it … What did the Washington media do, who’s supposed to be protecting us? They ignored it, they buried it, they covered it up.”
