Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of President Donald Trump, butt-dialed a journalist earlier this month and was heard discussing allegations of international corruption against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, according to a Friday report.
The reporter, Rich Schapiro of NBC News, says he received a phone call from Giuliani on October 16th at 11:07 p.m., but the call went straight to voicemail. Schapiro reports that he awoke the next morning to a three-minute voicemail in which Giuliani is heard talking about the Biden family with an unnamed individual. Of Biden, now the frontrunner of 2020 Democrat presidential primary, Giuliani is heard contending that the former vice president meddled in Ukraine’s investigation into one of the country’s largest gas firms because his Hunter Biden was a member of their board. He also is heard asserting that Hunter leveraged his father’s position of power to secure a $1.5 billion investment from the Bank of China.
“There’s plenty more to come out,” Giuliani is heard saying. “He did the same thing in China. And he tried to do it in Kazakhstan and in Russia.”
“It’s a sad situation,” the Trump lawyer went on. “You know how they get? Biden has been trading in on his public office since he was a senator.”
“When he became vice president, the kid decided to go around the world and say, ‘Hire me because I’m Joe Biden’s son.’ And most people wouldn’t hire him because he had a drug problem,” he added.
Other details from the call include mentions of the Kingdom of Bahrain and a “need” for several “hundred thousand,” presumably dollars. The context of those comments are unclear.
NBC News’ report comes after two Florida-based political donors linked to Giuliani pleaded not guilty to charges they illegally donated foreign funds to a political action committee favoring President Trump’s re-election.
The hearing came nearly two weeks after Ukraine-born Lev Parnas and Belarus-born Igor Fruman, both U.S. citizens, were arrested at Washington Dulles International Airport.
Two other men, David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin, also were arrested in connection with the alleged campaign finance scheme. They each pleaded not guilty to charges Thursday.
The indictments were semi-connected to an impeachment investigation by House Democrats trying to determine whether President Trump threatened to withhold military aid to Ukraine in exchange for action against the Bidens. Both Trump and Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky have denied any pressure was applied to probe into the Bidens, and in a nod to transparency, the White House has released a transcript of their world leaders’ call to exhibit no wrongdoing occurred.
“There was no blackmail,” Zelensky told reporters earlier this month. “We are not servants. We are an independent country.”
The UPI contributed to this report.
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