New Delhi:
US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani returned to Ukraine Wednesday, shrugging off the scandal over seeking dirt from Kiev on rival Democrats. In a tweet, Giuliani wrote that he was “working on an important project with @OANN,” aimed at exposing what he said was information covered up by hearings conducted by Democratic Party impeachment chief Adam Schiff.
According to the New York Times, Giuliani, who is the former mayor of New York, was meeting with former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, a central figure in the impeachment case Democrats are building against Trump.
He was also planning to meet with two other ex-prosecutors, Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn Kulyk.
Giuliani has approached all three over the past year to aid Trump’s effort to find dirt on Democrats, especially former vice president Joe Biden, who could face the president in next year’s election.
Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president is at the centre of the House impeachment probe, which is looking into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate political rivals as he held back nearly USD 400 million.
On Wednesday, a key Congressional committee from the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has alleged Donald Trump abused his power of office, in a report based on its impeachment hearings against the president. "The evidence is clear that President Trump used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations into his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and a debunked conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election," said chairs of the three House Committees after the release of a report.
The White House dismissed the report and slammed the House Democrats.
“At the end of a one-sided sham process, Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said.
“This report reflects nothing more than their frustrations. Chairman Schiff’s report reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing,” Grisham said.
The three lawmakers alleged that evidence is clear that after his scheme to secure foreign help in his reelection was uncovered, Trump engaged in categorical and unprecedented obstruction in order to cover-up his misconduct.
