House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said cellphone records obtained by impeachment investigators show “considerable coordination” among White House officials who Democrats believe tried to bribe Ukraine government officials into investigating Joe Biden and Democrats.
A 300-page impeachment report issued Tuesday afternoon includes records of calls between President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and White House officials.
Schiff said the calls mirrored the impeachment inquiry’s determination that the Trump administration coordinated to bribe Ukraine into investigating Trump’s political opponents by dangling $391 million in security aid.
The records in the report include several calls between Giuliani and the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes of California.
“I find it deeply concerning, at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence of members of Congress complicit in that activity,” Schiff said.
AT&T provided the call records, likely under subpoena.
They show calls between Nunes and Giuliani on April 10, which is around the time Trump recalled U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, three months before the end of her term.
Schiff said Yovanovitch’s departure “cleared the way” for two administration officials, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland, as well as Giuliani, to implement what Schiff described as “a scheme” to get Ukraine to investigate Biden and Democrats.
The three described themselves as the “three amigos” and in public testimony, Sondland defended their work and said the goal was simply to improve U.S.-Ukraine relations and to clear the way for the security aid.
Schiff said he’s planning on handing over the impeachment report to the Judiciary Committee today but will keep investigating Trump.
“There is more investigative work to be done,” Schiff said. “One of the issues we are looking into is, did this scheme begin far earlier than we understood. That is something we continue to investigate, and that is something these phone records also shed light on.”
The records produced in the report show late April 2019 calls between Giuliani and the White House as well as between Giuliani and the Office of Management and Budget. The records also show calls at that time between Giuliani associate Lev Parnas and reporter John Solomon, as well as between Parnas and Giuliani and Parnas and Nunes.
Solomon wrote stories for The Hill about Ukraine and Hunter Biden, who was awarded a lucrative job on the board of Ukraine gas company Burisma Holdings. Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s role in the firing of a Ukraine prosecutor who was targeting Burisma.
[Read more: ‘A deranged human being’: Trump bashes Adam Schiff]
