CNN is reporting now that Trump ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry and both the State Department diplomats at the heart of the mess, former Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker and EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland, to all meet with Rudy Giuliani in May, well before the July 25th call with Ukraine's president, in order to coordinate a plan of attack against Biden.
President Donald Trump directed Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and two top State Department officials to deal with his private attorney Rudy Giuliani when the Ukrainian President sought to meet Trump, in a clear circumvention of official channels, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.
Trump believed Ukraine was still rampantly corrupt and said that if President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to meet with him, Giuliani would have to be convinced first, one source said.
"If they can satisfy Rudy, they can satisfy the President," a person familiar with the meeting said.
Trump's push to have Giuliani as gatekeeper is more direct than what was previously disclosed by one of the meeting's participants in his statement to the House last week. It also further demonstrates how significant Giuliani was in brokering access to the President regarding Ukraine policy and in passing messages to other administration officials.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
A key accusation in the whistleblower's complaint that has prompted the impeachment probe into the President's dealings with Ukraine is that Giuliani, a private citizen, had been presenting to Ukraine a US policy different than that from US diplomats.
At the May 23 meeting, Perry, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, then the State Department's special representative to Ukraine, were reporting back to Trump after they returned from Zelensky's inauguration.
Their goal was to tell Trump that they had a favorable impression of Zelensky and his government, and that he was a reformer who Trump should trust and engage with, according to three sources familiar with the meeting.
They were hoping to set up a meeting between Trump and Zelensky, the sources said. They believed Ukraine under Zelensky was a more trusted ally than previous Ukrainian regimes, and that a visit between Trump and Zelensky could demonstrate to the Russian government that the US embraced a free Ukraine, according to two of the sources.
Notably, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Washington on May 23 but he did not attend the meeting with Trump.
Perry had led the delegation who attended Zelensky's inauguration, and was a central figure in the May meeting with Trump.
It became clear to the Trump administration officials, the sources said, that they would have to deal with Giuliani.
Volker hinted last week in speaking to the House how central Giuliani was in the President's foreign policy approach to Ukraine.
So this backs up the AP reporting from a few days ago that Rick Perry was instrumental, and that the carrot was Zelensky's meeting with Trump in DC if Zelensky could deliver something on Biden. And we know that Ambassador Sondland spoke with Donald Trump directly after his now infamous "no quid pro quo" text.
In other words, these bozos have been caught red handed, Rick Perry and Mike Pompeo need to resign at the bare minimum, and Sondland's testimony was pulled at the last minute because it would have been fatal to Trump.
Again, it's up to the Dems to figure out where they want to go on inherent contempt, court fights, and impeachment.
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