Rudy Giuliani says former vice president Joe Biden should be prosecuted for bribery.
Giuliani cited Biden’s boast at a Council on Foreign Relations event that he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid from Ukraine unless the government fired a prosecutor.
“Here is what Joe Biden says he did. He offered him a $1 billion loan guarantee, he threatened him with a $1 billion loan guarantee, and in return for that, so that’s part one of bribery,” Giuliani said on Fox News on Saturday. “Part two is, he got the president of the Ukraine to fire the prosecutor.”
Biden’s son, Hunter, allegedly made hundreds of thousands of dollars through his employment with Burisma, the largest private gas company in Ukraine — despite having no known qualifications for the job. And when word spread that a prosecutor was looking into the matter, then-vice president Biden reportedly demanded that the prosecutor be fired.
Biden is on tape discussing his push for the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, bragging he had threatened to withhold $1 billion until Shokin was canned. “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” he says he told Ukrainian leaders. “Well son of a bitch, he got fired,” Biden says with a smile in the video clip.
In his Fox interview, Giuliani said Joe Biden, who claims he knew nothing about his son’s work in Ukraine, should be prosecuted for the crime of bribery.
“If he wants you to believe he didn’t know about his son’s business in the Ukraine — that can be disproven 10 ways,” Giuliani said. “That’s called a false exculpatory statement. If Joe Biden is not prosecuted for these crimes, then nobody in America should ever be prosecuted for bribery.”
“It’s an outrage — an outrage the kind of protection he gets,” the mayor added. “And the part I really find disturbing is because the media puts on these vicious attacks on you if you go after one of their protected people, people in law enforcement are afraid to go after him.”
Trump has been accused of doing something similar to what Biden’s boasts he did. Weeks before Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump put on hold $391 million in aid. He says he did so to pressure other nations to contribute more money and to take time to examine programs, but Democrats say it was a clear quid pro quo: Dig up some dirt on Biden and his son or no money.
In his wide-ranging interview, Giuliani also warned that if the Mafia couldn’t kill him, the media wouldn’t succeed, either.
“I expected, the moment I heard Biden’s name, I told my colleagues, ‘they’re going to try to kill me,’” he said. “Because they’re going to kill the messenger. But damn it, the mafia couldn’t kill me, your colleagues are not going to kill me.”
On Twitter, Giuliani also said he had “files in my safe about the Biden Family’s 4 decade monetizing” the former vice president and senator’s office. “If I disappear, it will immediately appear.”