The mystery of Rudy Giuliani and the stalled Ukraine aid

It's one of the lingering mysteries in Democrats' impeachment inquiry: What exactly did Rudy Giuliani know about the abrupt hold President Donald Trump placed on military aid to Ukraine?

In what appears to be his only comment on the aid before it was widely known to be frozen, Giuliani denied to POLITICO that he had any awareness of it.

"No don't know about it," Giuliani said in a previously unreported text message on Aug. 28.

His note came less than two hours before POLITICO broke the story about the aid freeze and upended delicate negotiations led by Trump's handpicked backchannel to Ukraine to try to get an investigation announced into Joe Biden.

At the time, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney was deeply enmeshed in the roots of the Ukraine saga — calling and arranging meetings with top Ukrainian officials to press them to investigate the former vice president and his son Hunter.

But despite reams of testimony from high-level officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon, House impeachment investigators have yet to establish whether Giuliani knew that Trump had ordered the military aid to Ukraine be withheld.

The question matters, particularly because Democrats are eager to tie Trump closer into the Ukraine scheme, which they view as a simple tale of extortion. The movements of Giuliani are central to their case.

And if Giuliani did know the aid was frozen, it would have provided him with a crucial point of leverage over the country's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky as Giuliani sought to secure investigations favored by Trump.

Many senior State Department and White House officials inside the Trump administration were aware of the hold on military assistance well before the POLITICO report. That includes two officials who had routine conversations with Giuliani, according to their testimony and text messages released to lawmakers.

U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and former Ambassador Kurt Volker learned of the aid freeze on July 18, the same day White House budget officials announced it on an interagency video call. The top U.S. envoy to Ukraine, William Taylor, texted Sondland and Volker about the unexpected hold later that day.

"[Budget officials] just now said that all security assistance to Ukraine is frozen, per a conversation with [White House chief of staff Mick] Mulvaney and POTUS," Taylor said in a text. "Over to you."

Sondland replied, "All over it."

Volker, who had been in touch with Giuliani for weeks, was texting the former New York City mayor the next day.

"Mr. Mayor -- really enjoyed breakfast this morning," Volker texted Giuliani on July 19, in a message that CCed one of Zelesnky's top aides. "As discussed, connecting you here with Andrey Yermak, who is very close to President Zelensky. I suggested we schedule a call together on Monday."

Less than two weeks later, Volker and Giuliani were texting about Giuliani's planned trip to Madrid to meet Yermak in person, and Volker copied Sondland on the chain.

"Seeing Yermak in Madrid tomorrow," Giuliani wrote. "Would like to meet with Gordon also."

"Rudy great ... I will be in DC on the 12. Will you be there or in NY?" Sondland asked.

Despite many hours of testimony in which they expressed urgent concerns about the hold on military assistance, neither Sondland nor Volker have indicated whether they — or Trump, Mulvaney or anyone else in the president's inner circle — ever informed Giuliani about it even as they facilitated his meetings with senior Ukrainian officials.

Giuliani has declined further attempts to clarify the matter and has not responded to six requests for comment this month.

Volker and Sondland also declined to comment. But both men described how they reacted with alarm after learning that Trump ordered a hold on the $400 million package of aid sometime in July, even though the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council had unanimously agreed it should be issued immediately to support Ukraine as it fends off a Russian military incursion in its Donbas region.

Several witnesses said they believed Ukraine had no knowledge of the aid freeze until POLITICO's Aug. 28 report revealed it to the world. The report triggered a flurry of concerned texts and meetings between top Ukrainians and their U.S. counterparts.

At least two other witnesses, however, said it was likely Ukraine had an inkling, given how many people were aware that aid had been frozen.

One witness, State Department official Catherine Croft, said she heard from two Ukrainian embassy officials before Aug. 28 indicating their concerns about the hold on aid. Croft said that Ukraine may have known about the aid earlier but had no interest in it becoming public because it would be seen as "an expression of declining U.S. support for Ukraine."

"As long as they thought that in the end the hold would be lifted, they had no reason for this to want to come out," Croft said.

So far, no witness has mentioned whether the aid freeze came up in conversations with Giuliani prior to Aug. 28, though it could come up when Volker testifies in public on Tuesday or when Sondland makes his much-anticipated appearance on Wednesday.

Giuliani, meanwhile, has refused to comply with a subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee to cooperate with their probe. And having obtained counsel amid reports of an investigation into his relationship with two associates who were involved in the Ukraine saga, he’s also unlikely to say much more.