Debunked Conspiracy Theory at Heart of Giuliani’s Actions
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani says the U.S. State Department helped him pressure a foreign country, Ukraine, to investigate Trump’s political opponents.
“Giuliani pressed for investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and the release of damaging information on Paul Manafort,” NBC News reports, adding that the Democratic National Committee was among Trump’s opponents Giuliani targeted.
The former New York City mayor who has been assisting Trump in his public attacks against the Mueller investigation and the Dept. of Justice says the State Dept. put an attorney whom is a close ally of recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky “in contact with me.”
“Not [the] other way around, and I told him they should not be cowered [out of] fully investigating serious possible crimes like bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and illegal interference in 2016 election,” Giuliani said.
All this stems from right wing conspiracy theories that sought to make it appear as if the former Vice President and his son, Hunter Biden, had taken “improper” action.
A Ukrainian prosecutor general told Bloomberg News that “he found no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden and his son. PolitiFact, meanwhile, reported that it found no evidence to ‘support the idea that Joe Biden advocated with his son’s interests in mind,'” NBC News adds.
But is the president using the Dept. of State to dig up dirt on his political opponents a crime?
One former Justice Dept. prosecutor weighs in on the news:
And a Biden campaign official responds: