The former U.S. envoy to Ukraine testified this week in depositions given to the House of Representatives that information given to President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani from public figures in Ukraine is not trustworthy.
Speaking in a 10-hour deposition to House investigators, former envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker elaborated further on the matter, saying he told Giuliani directly that the information obtained from Ukrainian figures should not be taken as reliable, The Independent reported.
The information Giuliani was receiving from figures in Ukraine was regarding a debunked theory that Joe Biden inserted himself into that nation’s political matters in order to help his son Hunter’s business interests.
Volker also provided House investigators with texts demonstrating alarm among State Department officials that Trump would not agree to meet face-to-face with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky until a formal inquiry into the Bidens was opened in that nation.
The text messages Volker provided did not mention Biden by name, the Washington Post reported, but it’s clear from their content, especially in conjunction with a whistleblower report and a memo released by the White House last week, that they concern the former vice president and his son.
BREAKING: The House committees investigating Trump and Ukraine have released text messages between ex-Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker, Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland and top diplomat to Ukraine Bill Taylor.
Read them here. https://t.co/qgfngOWVRV
— Axios (@axios) October 4, 2019
Volker resigned last week after his name appeared in a whistleblower complaint, alleging possible wrongdoing by Trump. The House is investigating Trump, in its impeachment inquiry, for possibly abusing his powers as president in order to place pressure on Zelensky to investigate Biden, who is a potential political rival for Trump in the 2020 presidential elections.
“heard from White House — assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington,” read one of the texts from Volker to a Zelensky aide just hours before a controversial phone conversation between the two leaders took place on July 25 of this year.
Some of the information Giuliani has received does indeed appear to be dubious. The lawyer for Trump, for example, received info from former prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, who appears to have initially claimed to Giuliani that Biden did act inappropriately, but who later recanted on that claim, The Guardian reported.
Ukraine itself has launched an investigation into Lutsenko’s own ethics while serving as a prosecutor, looking into his possibly abusing his office to facillitate illegal gambling.