2/9/21
“Let these investigations go forward,” Rudy Giuliani told the presidential headquarters in Kyiv, Ukraine, his voice turning impatient. “Get someone to investigate this.” On the other end of the line, hunched over a speakerphone, two Ukrainian officials listened in disbelief as Giuliani demanded probes that could help his client, then-President Donald Trump, win another term in office. The President’s personal lawyer toggled between veiled threats—“Be careful,” he warned repeatedly—and promises to help improve Ukraine’s relations with Trump. The conversation on July 22, 2019, kicked off the campaign of intimidation that resulted in Trump’s first impeachment. For a year and half, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his aides said little about their interactions with Giuliani, not wanting to anger an emissary of the U.S. President. But now, as the Trump era ends with a historic second impeachment trial, the Ukrainians have begun to speak up about the circumstances that led to the first. They are also taking steps that could imperil Giuliani and his Ukrainian allies. Igor Novikov, who served as a close adviser to Zelensky during Trump’s first impeachment, says he is willing to assist an ongoing federal investigation of Giuliani that is reportedly underway in New York, as well as a separate effort to strip Giuliani of his license to practice law.
Zelensky’s government has taken legal action against Giuliani’s Ukrainian associates. And they have opened up to the media about the pressure campaign mounted by Trump and his allies. On Feb. 3, Novikov sent TIME a transcript of the Giuliani call, whose accuracy TIME has independently verified. Giuliani did not respond to a detailed list of questions about the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian officials, the Ukrainian support for his disbarment and the federal investigation. The costs are mounting for Giuliani and his associates, especially the Russian agents and Ukrainian politicians who aided his crusade to get Trump re-elected in 2020. In the final days of Trump’s term, the U.S. government sanctioned seven of these men—all Ukrainian citizens—for being part of a “Russia-linked foreign influence network” that promoted Giuliani’s spurious claims against the Bidens. from Ukraine’s perspective, the call put the Zelensky government in a perilous position. “That first phone call left me in a state of shock,” says Novikov, who participated in the call along with Andriy Yermak, then a top adviser to Zelensky and currently his chief of staff. “After we hung up the phone, without a shadow of a doubt I knew that we were in grave danger.” Three days after that conversation, Trump held a phone call with Zelensky that would become Exhibit A in his first impeachment inquiry.
