Giuliani says he told Trump ‘a couple times’ that ambassador to Ukraine was blocking investigations

President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said he told the president “a couple times” that former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch had been blocking investigations Giuliani sought from Kyiv that could’ve helped Trump politically. 

Giuliani told The New York Times in an interview published late Monday that Yovanovitch blocked visas for Ukrainian prosecutors to come to the U.S. to present evidence to him and federal authorities that Giuliani said would be damaging to former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

Giuliani also told the newspaper that the ambassador sought to block investigations in Ukraine. 

“I think I had pointed out to the president a couple of times, I reported to the president, what I had learned about the visa denials,” Giuliani told the Times. 

“I may or may not have passed along the general gossip that the embassy was considered to be a kind of out-of-control politically partisan embassy, but that was, like, general gossip, I didn’t report that as fact,” he added. 

Yovanovitch testified in a public impeachment hearing that Giuliani helped lead a smear campaign against her. There is no evidence to support claims that she disparaged the president.

Giuliani told the Times that it was likely his “information” to Trump led to Yovanovitch being ousted. 

“There’s a lot of reasons to move her,” he said. 

“I think my information did,” he continued. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. But they relied on it.”

He told the newspaper he did not recommend Trump or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remove Yovanovitch. 

“I just gave them the facts,” he said. “I mean, did I think she should be recalled? I thought she should have been fired.”

Giuliani told The New Yorker in an interview published earlier Monday that he needed Yovanovitch “out of the way” because “she was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.” 

The investigations into the Bidens are at the heart of the Democrats’ articles of impeachment against Trump.

House Democrats allege that Trump abused his office by withholding aid to Ukraine in an attempt to pressure Kyiv into announcing an investigation into Biden and his son. Democrats are also charging Trump with obstruction over the administration’s effort to block evidence and witnesses from testifying as part of the impeachment inquiry. 

The House is preparing to take a full vote on the articles this week.