- President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is caught in the middle of an explosive whistleblower complaint from an intelligence official claiming Trump improperly pressured Ukraine to investigate the former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
- The complaint has spurred an official impeachment inquiry into Trump and could potentially also lead to legal consequences for Giuliani, a former US Attorney and mayor of New York City.
- But Giuliani told Politico that he believes he's the "real whistleblower" and said, "If I get killed now ... you won't get the rest of the story."
- While Giuliani to Politico that he deserves whistleblower protection, his attempts to defend himself have only further incriminated him in the whole saga.
- Unlike Trump, Giuliani is a private citizen and could be vulnerable to prosecution, especially given that he's confirmed much of the substance of the whistleblower complaint.
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President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is caught in the middle of an explosive whistleblower complaint from an intelligence official claiming Trump, with Giuliani's help, is "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election."
The complaint has spurred an official impeachment inquiry into Trump and could potentially also lead to legal consequences for Giuliani, a former US Attorney and mayor of New York City.
But Giuliani told Politico that he believes he's the "real whistleblower" and said, "If I get killed now ... you won't get the rest of the story."
According to the whistleblower complaint and Giuliani's own public admissions, Trump himself and State Department officials enlisted Giuliani to work with the Ukrainian government to investigate alleged corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of the oil and gas company Burisma Holdings.
Read more: There's a glaring loophole in Trump and Giuliani's allegations of corruption against Joe Biden
Giuliani and Trump have claimed that as vice president, Biden tried to help his son by calling for a prosecutor investigating Burisma, Viktor Shokin, to be fired.
But as the Wall Street Journal and other outlets have reported, Shokin was accused of being soft of corruption and actually hampering investigations, including the probe into Burisma. In essence, Biden - and much of the international community - urged Shokin's ouster because he was so ineffective.
While Giuliani told Politico that he deserves whistleblower protection based on the unsubstantiated corruption allegations he's levied against the Biden, his attempts to defend himself have only further incriminated him in the whole saga.
In the past week, Giuliani has:
- Admitted to CNN host Chris Cuomo that "of course" he asked Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden's business dealings.
- Telling a fellow panelist on Fox News: "shut up, moron. Shut up. Shut up, you don't know what you're talking about," when the panelist, Christopher Hahn, questioned the credibility of Giuliani and Trump's claims about Hunter Biden.
- Tweeted out his text messages with Kurt Volker, the US Special Representative to Ukraine, proving that he, possibly illegally, served as a conduit between the State Department and Ukraine's government.
- In response to Sen. Mitt Romney's criticism of Trump's communications with Ukraine, Giuliani trashed Romney as "the GOP's Al Gore" and did an impression of a robot on "Ingraham Angle."
- Told The Atlantic in an angry phone call: "It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I'm not. And I will be the hero!"
Giuliani was referred to in the whistleblower complaint as a "central figure" in the administration's efforts to encourage Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, which included serving as an "envoy" meeting with an aide to Zelensky, Andry Yermak, who is referenced in the text message from Volker Giuliani tweeted out.
Trump's position as President of the United States makes him immune from prosecution while in office, according to current Department of Justice policy.
But as former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah pointed out in a recent NBC op-ed, Giuliani is a private citizen and could be vulnerable to prosecution, especially given that he's confirmed much of the substance of the whistleblower complaint.
Rocah and other former prosecutors interviewed by Insider argue that Giuliani's collaboration with the Trump administration in pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens could violate the Logan Act, the Hobbs Act, federal campaign finance laws, and could even rise to the level of a bribery scheme if prosecutors prove that Trump leveraged military aid in exchange for investigations.