Energy Secretary Rick Perry revealed that President Trump directed him to coordinate with Rudy Giuliani to push a Ukraine scheme to get dirt on political rival Joe Biden, according to an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Perry told the Journal that he reached out to Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, to ask for help in arranging a meeting between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Perry said that in his conversation with Giuliani, the attorney cited baseless claims, which have frequently been mentioned by Trump, including that Ukraine was in possession of Hillary Clinton’s email server, had fabricated evidence against Trump’s ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and was responsible for a former British spy’s dossier alleging that Russia had compromising information on Trump.
The Trump administration has asserted that financial aid was withheld from Ukraine over concerns about corruption and not, as alleged in a whistleblower complaint, as a way of pressuring the nation to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
However, in a May letter, Pentagon officials said that they had certified the nation had taken major steps against corruption months before the administration blocked the military aid.
The whistleblower complaint about a July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky is at the center of a House impeachment inquiry launched last month.
Perry’s revelation come as House Democrats escalate their impeachment inquiry into the scandal.
