Giuliani in Ukraine as Congress moves closer to impeachment

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in Ukraine on Thursday, reviving the efforts that landed him and Trump in the impeachment inquiry now roiling Washington.

The inquiry was triggered by a July 25 phone call in which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son and also a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. Trump denies wrongdoing.

Giuliani was at the center of those efforts, conducting shadow diplomacy throughout the spring and summer.

On Thursday, he met in Kyiv with Andrii Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament who has promoted unsubstantiated claims against the Bidens.

Derkach posted photos on Facebook with Giuliani and said the two had had a meeting to form a new group, Friends of Ukraine Stop Corruption.

Giuliani’s visit to Kyiv came as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in Washington on Thursday that the House is pressing forward to draft articles of impeachment against Trump, saying the president left Democrats with no choice because the country’s democracy is at stake. The vote to charge the president with crimes could come before Christmas.

Before arriving in Kyiv, Giuliani stopped in the Hungarian capital.

Larisa Sargan, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s former Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko, confirmed that Lutsenko met with Giuliani in Budapest on Wednesday. She said they were filmed for a documentary for the One America News Network produced by Giuliani.