President Donald Trump said on Saturday that his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, wants to tell Congress and the Justice Department about his recent trip to Europe, where he spoke with former officials in an effort to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
He has “a lot of good information,” Trump told reporters gathered on the White House lawn.
The former New York City mayor traveled to Ukraine and Hungary with a crew from One America News Network, a conservative cable channel and website that occasionally peddles right-wing conspiracy theories, to film a documentary meant to challenge the House impeachment inquiry.
“He’s going to make a report, I think, to the attorney general and to Congress,” Trump said. “I hear he has found plenty.”
Giuliani reportedly spoke to former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko along with other former Ukrainian officials ― all of whom have faced accusations of corruption.
The Bidens have been accused, without evidence, of using their influence to improperly meddle in Ukrainian affairs because Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company around the same time his father was tasked with addressing corruption in Ukraine.
Trump is thought to consider Joe Biden to be his chief rival in the 2020 presidential election.
However, his Biden preoccupation has landed him in hot water: Members of Congress launched impeachment proceedings after becoming aware of requests the president made of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky. If Zelensky announced that his government was investigating the Bidens, his country would receive pledged military aid that was being withheld and he would meet with Trump at the White House.
The president also asked Zelensky to look into a conspiracy theory positing that it was Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 election, not Russia, and that the country did it on behalf of Hillary Clinton, not Trump.
American intelligence officials have consistently said the theory has no basis in fact.