The crime

Giuliani told Chris Cuomo that Trump didn't ask him to talk to the Ukrainian leader, Anton Zelensky.  That was, of course, technically true.

Giuliani’s contact with Zelensky adviser and attorney Andrei Yermak this summer was encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. State Department.

Giuliani didn’t initiate it. A senior U.S. diplomat contacted him in July and asked for permission to connect Yermak with him.

Then, Giuliani met in early August with Yermak on neutral ground — in Spain — before reporting back to State everything that occurred at the meeting.

That debriefing occurred Aug. 11 by phone with two senior U.S. diplomats, one with responsibility for Ukraine and the other with responsibility for the European Union, according to electronic communications records I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

  John Solomon @ The Hill

By early August, Trump had talked to Zelensky, pressing him 8 times to talk with Giuliani.

When asked on Friday, Giuliani confirmed to me that the State Department asked him to take the Yermak meeting and that he did, in fact, apprise U.S. officials every step of the way.

“I didn’t even know who he (Yermak) really was, but they vouched for him. They actually urged me to talk to him because they said he seemed like an honest broker,” Giuliani told me. “I reported back to them (the two State officials) what my conversations with Yermak were about. All of this was done at the request of the State Department.”

[...]

Why would Ukraine want to talk to Giuliani, and why would the State Department be involved in facilitating it?

I think we have our answer. But let's hear the Ukrainians' (or this reporter's) side of the story.

According to interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Ukraine’s government under recently departed President Petro Poroshenko and, now, Zelensky has been trying since summer 2018 to hand over evidence about the conduct of Americans they believe might be involved in violations of U.S. law during the Obama years.

[...]

Eventually, Giuliani in November 2018 got wind of the Ukrainian allegations and started to investigate.

Why in Hell would Rudy Giuliani be the one to investigate? He doesn't have any position at all in the US government or Trump's administration. He's Trump's personal lawyer.

As President Trump’s highest-profile defense attorney, the former New York City mayor, often known simply as “Rudy,” believed the Ukrainian’s evidence could assist in his defense against the Russia collusion investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.

Sure. Whatever. That still doesn't answer why an actual US government agency wouldn't be tasked with investigating such Ukrainian claims. This is pure bullshit.

So Giuliani began to check things out in late 2018 and early 2019, but he never set foot in Ukraine. And when Ukrainian officials leaked word that he was considering visiting Ukraine to meet with senior officials to discuss the allegations — and it got politicized in America — Giuliani abruptly called off his trip. He stopped talking to the Ukrainian officials.

Isn't that interesting?

The belief was that if Zelensky’s top lawyer could talk to Trump’s top lawyer, everything could be patched up, officials explained to me.

Sure.

So the media stories of Giuliani’s alleged political opposition research in Ukraine, it turns out, are a bit different than first reported. It’s exactly the sort of nuanced, complex news development that my mentor nearly 30 years ago warned about.

And it’s too bad a shallow media effort has failed to capture the whole story and tell it to the American public in its entirety.

Sure.

It’s almost as though the lessons of the now debunked Russia-Trump collusion narrative never really sunk in for some reporters.

Sure.

The continuing folly was evidenced when much attention was given Friday to Hillary Clinton’s tweet suggesting Trump’s contact with Zelensky amounted to an effort to solicit a foreign power to interfere in the next election.

That tweet may be provocative but it’s unfair. The contacts were about resolving what happened in the last election — and the last administration.

Sure.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 9/22:



That's my point.  (In case you don't know, Neal Katyal is a "Supreme Court lawyer; law professor; extremist centrist. Former Acting Solicitor General of United Sts."

The only thing I'd say is this DOJ, with its head being a Trump butt boy, would approve.