OCTOBER 17,2020
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Briefing Room of the White House on September 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. Joshua Roberts/Getty Images
- Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, said in an interview with The Daily Beast there was about a “50/50” chance that his associate, the Ukrainian government official Andrii Derkach, was a “Russian spy.”
- Giuliani also confirmed that he had previously shared details of the stolen emails and data supposedly sent by Hunter Biden with the president and other top Republicans.
- As Business Insider previously reported, there are multiple red flags concerning the supposed leaked emails and The New York Post reports, including whether the leaked emails are legitimate, how they were obtained, and who obtained them.
Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and one of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers, said in an interview with The Daily Beast that there was a “50/50” chance one of his associates was a spy for Russia.
“The chance that Derkach is a Russian spy is no better than 50/50,” Giuliani said, referring to his associate, the Ukrainian government official Andrii Derkach whom the US Treasury Department in September designated for sanctions over his “attempting to influence the US electoral process.”
The former mayor told The Daily Beast he believed the sanctions against Derkach were the result of “an intelligence ploy to try to create problems for Trump.” As The Daily Beast noted, a number of Giuliani associates have been arrested by US law enforcement or otherwise barred from entering the US.
When asked if he was worried that the information he had provided to The New York Post as part of its recent series of reports about stolen data from a hard drive that supposedly belonged to Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was the result of the 2019 hacking of Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings, where the younger Biden served on the board beginning in 2014, Giuliani told the outlet it “wouldn’t matter,” and asked “what’s the difference?”
As Business Insider previously reported, the New York Post’s reporting is filled with holes and red flags that raise questions about its authenticity, including whether the leaked emails are legitimate, how they were obtained, and who obtained them.
In its report, The New York Post said it had first been alerted to the documents by former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and received them from Guiliani, as Business Insider previously reported. Giuliani in the interview told The Daily Beast he decided against revealing the specifics about how he obtained the information because he believed the media would report on that rather than the contents of the stolen documents themselves.
At the center of the emails is a supposed email sent by Biden’s son, Hunter, now 50, which purported to show him communicating with a Ukrainian official about meeting with his father, Joe Biden, the then vice president. The elder Biden told reporters on Friday he believed the story to be a “smear campaign.”
Also in the interview, Giuliani told The Daily Beast he believed claims or concerns that the recent leaks were part of a disinformation campaign orchestrated by a foreign government “were a bunch of bulls–t.” Giuliani, 76, also confirmed that he had previously informed President Trump about the contents of the leaked files.
“Sure, sure. The president knows all about this,” he told The Daily Beast, adding that other top Republicans, like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, had previously been informed about the content of hacked information, according to the report.
Courtesy/Source: Business Insider
