Giuliani says the whistleblower complaint is 'crap' and that people are 'torturing' him for doing his job as Trump's private attorney
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President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is mentioned dozens of times in a whistleblower complaint alleging that the president attempted to use his office to push a foreign country to interfere in the 2020 election.
The complaint described Giuliani as "a central figure in this effort."
Giuliani pushed back on the complaint's charges in an interview with CNN on Thursday, hours after the document was made public.
"I should be as sympathetic as a whistleblower. I did my job, and now all these people are torturing me," Giuliani said, adding that he had "no knowledge of any of that crap" when it comes to the complaint.
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, is heavily implicated in a damning whistleblower complaint accusing the president of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election.
The complaint described Giuliani, who is not a member of the US government, as "a central figure in this effort." It said he'd been involved in reaching out to and meeting with Ukrainian officials as part of an effort to pressure Ukraine's government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the frontrunner in the Democratic primary, and his son Hunter Biden.
Responding to the complaint, which was released publicly on Thursday morning and mentions the former New York City mayor dozens of times, Giuliani told CNN he had "no knowledge of any of that crap."
"I should be as sympathetic as a whistleblower," Giuliani said. "I did my job, and now all these people are torturing me."
The complaint focuses heavily on Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump repeatedly pressured Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.
The document said Giuliani met with an aide to Zelensky in Madrid in early August, in what US officials described as a "direct follow-up" to the phone call and characterized as part of a broad effort by the president's personal attorney to dig up political dirt on the Bidens.
The complaint cited a New York Times interview in May where Giuliani said that "this isn't foreign policy — I'm asking them to do an investigation that they're doing already and that other people are telling them to stop," adding that this information would be "very, very helpful to my client."
The whistleblower wrote that "starting in mid-May, I heard from multiple U.S. officials that they were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani's circumvention of national security decisionmaking processes to engage with Ukrainian officials and relay messages back and forth between Kyiv and the President."
The complaint said two State Department officials spoke with Giuliani about his efforts in an attempt to "contain the damage" to US national security.
Giuliani on Thursday told CNN that he had text messages showing that the State Department actually encouraged his work and that he would "use them to protect myself if and when I need them."
He said that "at no time did either one of" the State Department officials "say they wanted to contain damage," adding, "At no time did the State Department in communication with me ever relay any of that information you're talking about."
"I spoke to the State Department during the course of this situation, I told you, at least 10 times, and I met with them," Giuliani said.
In a separate interview with The Atlantic, Giuliani maintained his innocence and said it was "impossible that the whistleblower is a hero and I'm not."
"And I will be the hero!" he said. "These morons — when this is over, I will be the hero."
He went on to say that he wasn't "acting as a lawyer" but as "someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government."
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