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Rudy Giuliani is not a State Department employee. He has not been appointed by the president for some sort of special diplomatic role. He is ostensibly serving as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. 

And yet, he has — with Trump’s blessing — become a central figure in US foreign policy in Ukraine, promoting the “need” for an investigation into nonexistent Ukrainian election meddling; taking trips to advance an investigation into the Biden family; and, by his own admission, exerting control over US diplomatic staffing in that country to serve the interests of his client, even if they are at odds with those of the US government.

On Monday’s edition of Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle, Giuliani admitted he played a leading role in last spring’s ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch’s removal set the stage for the Trump administration’s efforts over the summer to leverage Ukrainian diplomacy into investigations of Joe and Hunter Biden that stood to benefit the president.

“I forced her out because she’s corrupt,” Giuliani said, before alluding to sketchily sourced information he dredged up during his just-completed trip to Ukraine and adding, “I came back with a document that will show unequivocally that she committed perjury when she said that she turned down the visa for [Viktor] Shokin because of corruption .... there’s no question that she was acting corruptly in that position, and had to be removed. She should have been fired, if the State Department weren’t part of the deep state.”
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“Rudy Giuliani is going on television and admitting one of the central allegations of the abuse of power article of impeachment against the President,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) wrote on Twitter, in response to Giuliani’s latest TV hit. “Republicans cannot explain or defend this. The President’s actions were a corrupt abuse of power for personal gain.”

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