Donald Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani (File)

House committees have subpoenaed Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, over the 10-month campaign by him and Trump for an Ukraine investigation into the US Democratic Party and former Vice President and 2020 Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

“Our inquiry includes an investigation of credible allegations that you acted as an agent of the President in a scheme to advance his personal political interests by abusing the power of the office of the President,” wrote the three committee chairmen, Rep. Adam Schiff of Intelligence, Rep. Eliot Engel of Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Elijah Cummings of Oversight.

They also requested documents and testimony from three of Giuliani’s associates involved in the meetings with former and current Ukrainian officials since November 2018.

Giuliani said in a Sunday TV interview that he will not appear before the Intelligence Committee unless its chair, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, steps aside. The Trump attorney, echoing the Twitter tirades of Donald Trump, insisted that Schiff is biased and has already decided on Trump’s impeachment.

Setting a new standard for his rhetoric, Trump is calling for Schiff to be arrested for treason. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, shifting after months to favor an impeachment process because of the Trump-Ukraine affair, has designated Schiff as the lead of the inquiry.

On Monday, Giuliani added the objection that Democrats were overly broad in their request, alleging, “We’re getting really close to, if we haven’t met, the standard of the McCarthy hearings where nobody seems to care about things like attorney-client privilege.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, already facing a subpoenas for document and testimony, was drawn further into the affair on Monday. Sources revealed that Pompeo listened to the July phone call in which Trump called on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and to check out a conspiracy theory — spread to cover up Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — that Ukraine was the site of the server which stole Democratic National Committee e-mails.

The Giuliani Mission

House investigators asked Giuliani for communications and documents from the start of the Trump Administration in January 2017. They include any material linked to Trump’s personal order, days before the call with Zelenskiy, to suspend $391 million in US security aid to Ukraine.

The committees’ letter requested documents and depositions from Giuliani’s associates Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, and Semyon Kislin. In addition to the Biden and Democratic National Committee matters, it cites an attempt to prosecute Ukrainians who provided evidence against Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort, now serving a 7 1/2-year sentence on tax and fraud charges.

Read the letter

Giuliani’s sustained effort, which included meetings in five different countries with former and current Ukriainian officials, began in November 2018 when he was approached by Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, under pressure to resign because of failure to deal with corruption. A source told the Guardian that Lutsenko invented a “don’t prosecute” list which he claimed was given to him by US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

Giuliani subsequently claimed, with no evidence, that the “don’t prosecute” list was part of a liberal anti-Trump conspiracy including Yovanovitch and bankrolled by the philanthropist George Soros.

See also TrumpWatch, Day 982: The Ukraine Prosecutor Who Drew Trump-Giuliani Into Biden “Investigation”
TrumpWatch, Day 980: Whistleblower — White House Covered Up Months of Trump-Giuliani Pressure on Ukraine Over Biden
EA on talkRADIO: Explaining Trump, Ukraine, and Impeachment

Giuliani used two Florida businessmen — Parnas, a long-time friend, and Fruman — to make contact in Ukraine about Joe Biden; his son Hunter, a board member of Ukraine’s largest gas company Burisma; and Manafort.

Parnas and Fruman are executives of an energy company that donated $325,000 to a pro-Trump “Super PAC” in 2018, leading to a complaint to the Federal Election Commission that they violated campaign finance laws.

Parnas also advised Giuliani on energy deals in the region. In the early spring, he proposed a deal to the chief executive officer of the Ukraine State-owned gas company Naftogaz, and advised Giuliani on a methane project in Uzbekistan for which the Trump attorney and his associates were to be paid at least $100,000.
Trump officials removed US Ambassador Yovanovitch from her post in May, as the Zelenskiy Government took office and Giuliani sought leverage and further meetings. The discussions continued, including with Zelenskiy senior aide Andriy Yermak in early August after the Trump-Zelenskiy.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that there is no basis for the conspiracy theories that Joe Biden arranged the dismissal of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin to protect Hunter Biden; that the server which hacked the Democratic National Committee was in Ukraine rather than Russia; and that the Democrats framed Trump’s campaign manager Manafort.