Rudy Giuliani claims Trump did not pay for his trips across the globe to push for probe into election rival Joe Biden
- The president’s personal lawyer is a central figure in a scandal that has now engulfed Trump and left him facing an impeachment inquiry
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, says he met Ukrainian officials in Madrid, Paris and Warsaw this year as he pushed an investigation into one of Trump’s main political rivals in the 2020 presidential election, former vice-president Joe Biden.
Giuliani has emerged as a central figure in a scandal that has now engulfed Trump and left him facing an impeachment inquiry into whether he misused his office for his own political gains.
One of the key questions is who financed Giuliani’s globe-trotting as he pursued unsubstantiated allegations that Biden had tried to fire Ukraine’s then chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop him investigating an energy company on which his son Hunter served as a director.
“Nobody pays my expenses,” Giuliani said in an interview with Reuters on Friday. “What does it matter if I’m getting paid for it. Isn’t the real story whether he (Biden) sold out the vice presidency of the United States, not whether I got paid for it?”
Reuters was not able to independently verify how Giuliani paid for his trips.