America’s mayor has become Twitter’s punching bag.
Rudy Giuliani, now President Trump’s personal attorney, got into a heated back-and-forth with CNN host Chris Cuomo on Thursday night, where he first denied asking the Ukraine to look into former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden, then admitted to it seconds later — before denying it again.
Here’s the transcript:
Cuomo: “Did you ask the Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?”
Giuliani: “No, actually I didn’t. I asked the Ukraine to investigate the allegations that there was interference in the election of 2016 by the Ukrainians for the benefit of Hillary Clinton, for which there is already a court finding.”
Cuomo: “You never asked anything about Hunter Biden? You never asked anything about Joe Biden and his role with the prosecutor?”
Giuliani: “The only thing I asked about Joe Biden is to get to the bottom of how it was that Lutsenko, who was appointed, dismissed the case.”
Cuomo: “So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?”
Giuliani: “Of course I did.”
Cuomo: “You just said you didn’t!”
Giuliani: “I didn’t ask them to look into Joe Biden. I asked them to look into the allegations that related to my client, which tangentially involved Joe Biden.”
The argument stems from Joe Biden threatening, as per an Obama administration policy, to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine in 2016 unless its leaders dismissed the country’s top prosecutor, who was embroiled in a corruption scandal. He was later voted out by the Ukrainian parliament.
But there was a conflict of interest, the New York Times reported. Hunter Biden, the then-vice president’s youngest son, was a board member of Burisma Holdings, an energy company that the ousted prosecutor had been looking into. The new prosecutor then dismissed the Burisma investigation, although he announced this year that he is reopening it — just as the senior Biden began his 2020 presidential campaign.
Last month, Giuliani said that he had spoken to a Ukrainian official about Joe Biden that focused on his role in removing the former prosecutor. And this week, the Washington Post revealed a whistleblower complaint that Trump allegedly made a “promise” to a foreign leader, which supposedly “centers on Ukraine.” People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal in a story published on Friday that in this July call the president repeatedly pressed the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden’s son.
Related: Trump repeatedly pressed Ukrainian president to investigate Biden’s son
So that brings us up to speed on what spurred the heated exchange on CNN. Here’s what viewers have to say about the #RudyGiulianiMeltdown, which trended on Twitter through most of Friday afternoon.
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