President Donald Trump’s attorney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks to journalists outside the White House on July 1, 2020. Credit – Chip Somodevilla – Getty Images
“May these investigations continue,” said Rudy Giuliani at the presidential headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine, his voice growing impatient. “Ask someone to investigate this.” On the other end of the line, bent over a speakerphone, two Ukrainian officers listened in disbelief while Giuliani demanded surveys that could help his client, then President Donald Trump, win another term.
The 40-minute call, a transcript of which was obtained by TIME, provides the clearest picture of Giuliani’s attempts to pressure Ukrainians on Trump’s behalf. The president’s personal lawyer alternated between veiled threats – “Be careful,” he repeatedly warned – and promises to help improve Ukraine’s relations with Trump. “My only reason – it’s not to put anyone in trouble who doesn’t deserve to be in trouble,” said Giuliani. “For the sake of our country and your country, we [need to] clarify all these facts, ”he added. “We fixed them and left them behind.”
The July 22, 2019 conversation kicked off the intimidation campaign that resulted in Trump’s first impeachment. For a year and a half, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his aides spoke little about their interactions with Giuliani, not wanting to irritate an emissary from the president of the United States. But now, when the Trump era ends with a second historic impeachment trial, Ukrainians have started talking about the circumstances that led to the first. They are also taking steps that could endanger Giuliani and his Ukrainian allies.
Igor Novikov, who served as a close adviser to Zelensky during Trump’s first impeachment, says he is willing to assist an ongoing federal investigation of Giuliani that is allegedly underway in New York, as well as a separate effort to remove Giuliani from his leave. to practice law. The Zelensky government has brought legal action against Giuliani’s Ukrainian associates. And they opened up to the media about the pressure campaign mounted by Trump and his allies. On February 3, Novikov sent TIME a transcript of Giuliani’s call, whose TIME accuracy was independently verified.
Giuliani did not answer a detailed list of questions about the transcript of his connection with the Ukrainian authorities, Ukrainian support for his dismissal and the federal investigation.
In a series of interviews, Zelensky’s advisers say his motives are not to get back at Giuliani or simply to clarify the historical record. His goal is to rebuild relations with the United States now that President Joe Biden has taken office. “The past is the past,” Zelensky told TIME in a February 4 statement. “I am deeply concerned about the future of our relationship with the United States, so I want to focus on that.”
Ukrainian movements highlight the series of new threats to Trump and his associates now that he has stepped down. According to the Constitution, impeachment by the House and a condemnation by the Senate are the remedies for presidential misconduct. Trump is now likely to escape conviction a second time. However, his critics need not rely on Congress to punish Trump and his allies. They are finding ways to do this on their own: through defamation lawsuits, criminal investigations, pressure to ban their social media accounts and other means.
Costs are rising for Giuliani and his associates, especially the Russian agents and Ukrainian politicians who helped in his crusade to re-elect Trump in 2020. In the last days of Trump’s term, the United States government sanctioned seven of these men – all Ukrainian citizens – For being part of a “network of foreign influence linked to Russia” that promoted Giuliani’s spurious claims against the Bidens.
Zelensky’s government launched its own counter-offensive against Giuliani and his facilitators in Ukraine. He decided to shut down several Ukrainian media outlets that broadcast unsubstantiated allegations of corruption against the Biden family, which Giuliani spent more than a year trying to prove and publicize. One of the Ukrainian lawmakers who helped him, Oleksandr Dubinsky, was expelled from Zelensky’s political party on February 1.
Potentially more worrisome for Giuliani is Ukrainian support for the investigations he is allegedly facing in New York. Novikov told TIME that he is assisting a legal campaign to revoke Giuliani’s legal license. Novikov is also open to assist in the investigation the former New York City mayor is facing in the Southern District of New York, the same office where Giuliani made his name as a prosecutor in the 1980s.
“If I receive an official request from SDNY or any other non-partisan effort, such as the possible dismissal of Rudy Giuliani, I will be open to help them,” says Novikov, who left the government in August, but remains close to the Zelensky government. “This is because I believe that Mayor Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine have threatened our national security,” he adds. “It is our responsibility to ensure that any effort to drag our country into the domestic policy of our allies is not left unpunished.”
Started in 2019, the SDNY investigation allegedly focused on Giuliani’s alleged lobby on behalf of Ukrainian politicians, as well as on deals that his associates conducted in the country’s energy sector. A spokesman for the Southern District declined to comment on the status of the investigation, although an NBC News report indicated it was underway in December. At least two Ukrainian officials told TIME that they have already discussed Giuliani with SDNY investigators. “It was weird,” said one, describing a 2019 visit to Manhattan offices, which Giuliani led before becoming New York City mayor. “I am there to testify against Giuliani, and [hanging on the wall] they have these pictures of him shaking hands with people. “
Giuliani has long insisted that there is no reason for SDNY to investigate him. After NBC News reported in December that prosecutors are seeking access to their communications, Giuliani tweeted, “They want to confiscate my emails. With no reason[.] No irregularities. ”In his videoblog and other vehicles, the former mayor also defended his ethical standards. “I’m not stupid,” he said on his radio show on January 14. “I don’t want to get in trouble. And I have a high sense of ethics, personally. I hate it when people attack my integrity. “
In the call with Zelensky’s advisers in 2019, Giuliani was careful to avoid explicitly asking for a favor, according to the transcript. “I have no interest in anyone telling the truth or not overdoing it. This is not about political favoring, ”said Giuliani on the conference call. He also seemed quite aware of the dilemma he was creating for Ukrainians and how it would make them feel. “You shouldn’t feel awful,” he said. “All we need from the president is to say, ‘I’m going to put an honest prosecutor [on these investigations], and he will dig up the evidence that currently exists. ‘”
But from the Ukrainian perspective, the appeal has put the Zelensky government in a dangerous position. “That first phone call shocked me,” said Novikov, who joined the call with Andriy Yermak, then Zelensky’s chief adviser and currently his chief of staff. “After we hung up the phone, I knew without a doubt that we were in great danger.”
Three days after that conversation, Trump made a phone call to Zelensky who would become Proof A in his first impeachment inquiry. He used the call to make some of the same requests to Ukrainians that his lawyer had earlier that week. Trump asked Zelensky to “do us a favor” by opening investigations related to Biden and his son Hunter, who had served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
At the dawn of the Biden government, Zelensky and his top advisers embarked on a mini media tour to discuss some of these events. During an interview with Axios broadcast on January 31, Zelensky was asked if he felt “a little angry” with Trump. The Ukrainian leader laughed and replied, “A little?” The day before this interview aired, details of Giuliani’s first phone call with Zelensky’s aides appeared in Washington Post, who cited Novikov’s notes from the conversation.
Trump ordered the freezing of about $ 400 million in aid to Ukraine in the summer of 2019. After learning of the change, Zelensky and his advisers prepared to announce the investigations that Trump and Giuliani wanted. But before continuing with this, a complaint from a whistleblower inside the White House exposed Giuliani’s pressure campaign, and Trump agreed to release aid to Ukraine.
Looking back on these events, Zelensky’s advisers still wonder what the consequences would have been if the Biden family’s investigations had been opened. “The consequences could have been catastrophic,” said Yermak, chief of staff to the president of Ukraine. “I think we avoided American domestic politics,” he told TIME. “At least that was our mission all along.”