Trump accuses impeachment witness of lying, defends use of Giuliani

[November 23, 2019]  By Lisa Lambert, Steve Holland and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Friday accused a witness in the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry of lying and offered an explanation for his controversial use of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine policy, saying Giuliani's crime-fighting abilities were needed to deal with a corrupt country.

Trump made his remarks the day after the fifth and final scheduled day of public hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives inquiry, which threatens his presidency even as he seeks re-election in November 2020.

The Republican president took issue with testimony on Thursday by David Holmes, a U.S. embassy official in Ukraine. Holmes said under oath that at a Kiev restaurant he overheard a July 26 cellphone conversation in which Trump loudly pressed Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, for details on whether Ukraine would carry out politically motivated investigations the president was seeking.

"I guarantee you that never took place," Trump told Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" program.

"That was a total phony deal," he added.

Trump appointed Sondland to the envoy post after the wealthy Oregon hotelier donated $1 million to his inaugural committee. While Sondland in testimony described an easygoing relationship between the two, Trump said on Friday he had spoken with him "a few times," adding, "I hardly know him, OK?"

In another development, Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton said that Twitter Inc had returned control to him of his personal account. He accused the White House of blocking his access to it after he left his post in September.

In a post on the account, Bolton asked whether the White House had done so "out of fear of what I may say?" A person close to Bolton told Reuters there were numerous requests made to the White House on Bolton's behalf to stop blocking his access before going to the company to regain control.

Bolton so far has declined to cooperate in the impeachment inquiry.

Later on Friday, Bolton told reporters at the Union Station in Washington: "We have regained control of the Twitter account. Twitter detached the White House."

Asked if he was prepared to testify at the impeachment hearings, Bolton said: "I have no comment."

Trump, a prolific Twitter user, denied in the Fox interview that Bolton's access had been blocked by the White House.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Testimony at the hearings put a spotlight on Trump's decision to give Giuliani, a private citizen with no formal job in his administration, an outsized role to shape American policy toward Ukraine rather than using the U.S. government's usual diplomatic and national security channels.

Bolton is among the various U.S. officials described as being alarmed at Giuliani's actions, including pushing Ukraine to conduct two investigations that could harm Trump's political adversaries. Former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill recalled how Bolton called Giuliani "a hand grenade who's going to blow everybody up."

During the hearings, current and former White House officials and diplomats voiced alarm at Giuliani's activities.

Trump said Giuliani was the right person for the job.

"He's like an iconic figure in this country for two reasons. He was the greatest mayor in the history of New York and he was the greatest crime fighter probably in the last 50 years," Trump said of Giuliani, who previously served as the mayor of the largest U.S. city and as a federal prosecutor.

President Donald Trump participates in a listening session on youth vaping and the electronic cigarette epidemic inside the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 22, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

"He's also a friend of mine. He's a great person," Trump added. " ... When you're dealing with a corrupt country - if Rudy Giuliani - he's got credentials because of his reputation... When Rudy Giuliani goes there and you hear it's a corrupt country, I mean, it means a lot."

Trump did not address what he actually told Giuliani to do.

TRUMP CALL

A focus of the inquiry is a July 25 telephone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open two investigations.

One involved Joe Biden, a top contender for the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the 2020 presidential election, and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Trump has accused Biden of corruption, but has not provided evidence. Biden has denied wrongdoing.

The other investigation involved a debunked conspiracy theory promoted by Trump and his allies that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to hurt his candidacy and boost Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Trump touted that theory again on Friday.

U.S. intelligence agencies and former Special Counsel Robert Mueller determined that Russia used a campaign of propaganda and hacking to interfere in the election to try to help Trump win.

Testimony in the impeachment inquiry has shown that Trump in May instructed top U.S. officials to work with Giuliani on Ukraine policy. This came after the president removed Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at Giuliani's urging even as the former mayor was pressing officials in Kiev to conduct the two investigations.

Democrats also are looking into whether Trump abused his power by withholding $391 million in security aid to Ukraine as leverage to pressure Kiev into digging up dirt on his political adversaries. The money - approved by the U.S. Congress to help Ukraine combat Russia-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country - was provided to Ukraine in September only after the controversy spilled into public view.

Trump said Ukraine is "known as being the third most corrupt country in the world."

"Are we going to be sending massive amounts of money to a country and they're corrupt and they steal the money and it goes into everybody's bank account?" Trump told Fox News.

Ukraine ranked 120 out of the 180 countries assessed in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index in 2018. Its score of 32 out of 100 on the index, which is widely used by companies when deciding where to do business, indicates Ukraine has serious corruption issues.

If the Democratic-led House approved articles of impeachment - formal charges - against Trump, the Senate would then hold a trial on whether to convict Trump and remove him from office. Trump's fellow Republicans control the Senate and have shown little support for removing him.

"I want a trial," Trump told Fox News.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, Jonathan Landay and Lisa Lambert; Additional reporting by Katie Paul in San Francisco; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Grant McCool and Rosalba O'Brien)

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