New York Times
Prosecution investigating whether Ukrainians interfered with the 2020 elections
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are investigating whether Ukrainian officials were involved in a broader plan to intervene in the 2020 presidential election. This includes using Rudolph Giuliani to spread misleading allegations about President Joe Biden and tilt the election in favor of Donald Trump. Someone who is familiar with the situation. Beginning in the last few months of the Trump administration, previously unreported criminal investigations underscore the federal government’s increasingly aggressive approach to eradicating foreign interference with US election politics. Much of that effort has focused on Russian intelligence agencies that are suspected of being linked to at least one of the Ukrainians currently under investigation. The investigation is separate from the long-running federal investigation into Giuliani in Manhattan. Giuliani was not the subject of Brooklyn’s investigation, although the characters in the two investigations are similar and overlap in some respects, officials said. Instead, Brooklyn prosecutors, along with the FBI, focus on current and former Ukrainian officials suspected of influencing elections by spreading unfounded corruption claims about Biden through numerous channels. I’m guessing. , Including Giuliani, Trump’s private lawyer at the time. It is unclear whether Brooklyn prosecutors will eventually prosecute Ukrainians. At one point in the investigation, authorities conducted an investigation when Giuliani visited Europe in December 2019 and met several Ukrainians, according to people familiar with the matter. At least one of the current and former officials he met was a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andrey Delkach, who is currently the focus of Brooklyn’s investigation. The trip was the culmination of Giuliani’s year-long efforts with the help of Trump in an attempt to undermine Biden’s presidential campaign. This effort was carried out primarily in two parallel lines. It collects Biden’s diplomatic efforts as Vice President from Ukraine and pressures Ukraine to publish an investigation of Biden and other Trump critics. Eventually backfired, leading to Trump’s first bullet. During the bullet each procedure, U.S. intelligence officials warned Trump that Delcach was using Giuliani to disinformation. Giuliani, who said he had not received similar warnings at the time, continued to guarantee the authenticity of the information he received, even after the Trump administration’s Treasury imposed sanctions on Mr. Delcach for election interference. He is a Russian agent. ” Giuliani said in an interview last year that there was nothing to discourage his visit to Delkacher, who was not sanctioned at the time. “There is no reason to believe he is a Russian agent,” Giuliani said. On Thursday, Giuliani’s lawyer defended the search for information about Biden, arguing that Biden was based on misleading information. “When investigating allegations of corruption, we talk to people of all kinds. Some are credible and some are unreliable,” said lawyer Robert J. Costello. He added that “someday the truth will be revealed” about Biden’s deal in Ukraine. Both Manhattan and Brooklyn investigations pose a challenge to the Biden Department of Justice. Despite taking over many delicate investigations related to, he promises to move away from political conflict. For example, the president’s son, Hunter Biden, is part of the work he did in Ukraine. Faced with a federal criminal tax investigation that appears to be relevant, a special adviser to the Department of Justice is investigating the origins of Robert Moller’s investigation into Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. An investigation into Manhattan’s Giuliani, which has entered a new phase aggressively after FBI investigators executed search orders at home and in the office, dismisses the Ukrainian ambassador to Kiev on behalf of Ukrainian authorities who wanted her. I went to focus on whether I worked on the Trump administration. Lobbying the US government on behalf of foreign authorities without registering with the Justice Department is a violation of federal law, and Giuliani has never registered. Giuliani, who has not been accused of cheating, has denied working for the Ukrainians. He called for interaction with them as part of an effort to support Mr. Trump, accusing the FBI investigation of being a “corrupted dual standard” by the Department of Justice, by Mr. Biden and other Democrats. He said he ignored “explicit crimes.” It’s unclear why Manhattan’s prosecutors aren’t working on Ukrainian investigations, but Mr. Trump’s Justice Department regularly clashes with Ukrainian authorities, involving Ukraine. He brought several cases to the Brooklyn office. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Brooklyn, like a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Manhattan and the FBI, declined to comment. The Brooklyn investigation is not a typical criminal case. Investigations into influential foreign activities are typically conducted by FBI counterintelligence agents assigned to track foreign spies in the United States and thwart their intelligence activities. But in this case, agents and prosecutors are trying to determine if federal law has been violated. If a Brooklyn prosecutor finally decides to prosecute, Giuliani, known as the Foreign Agent Registration Act. You can rely on the same lobbying law used in the investigation. Government and media. Collusion to deceive the United States is also a federal crime, and prosecutors have used the law to prosecute Russians accused of interfering with previous elections. It may be difficult to arrest and hand over Ukrainians facing prosecution to the United States. Still, the prosecution probably prevents them from traveling to most parts of the world and they are due to handing over. You may be bound by. The Treasury has already imposed economic sanctions on election interference with some Ukrainians, essentially blocking Ukrainians from doing business in the United States or through US financial institutions. The first series of sanctions in September targeted Dzerzhin, who the Treasury said was “an active Russian agent for over a decade”. According to a Ukrainian biography, he was the KGB Dzerzhin in Moscow. Educated at Ski High School. Then in January, the ministry worked closely with Giuliani and Senate Republicans to provide harmful information about Biden and other critics of Trump, including former Ukrainian government official Andrie Terrigenco, among Delkach’s aides. Sanctions were imposed on seven Ukrainians who claimed to be part of it. Mr. Delkach’s representative did not respond to requests for comment, but in the past, the Ministry of Finance sanctions issued under Mr. Trump, I once called it a retaliation by Mr. Biden’s “internal government officials.” From late 2019 to mid-2020, Delcach worked for Giuliani as well as many Americans. He “used the US media, US-based social media platforms, and influential Americans to spread misleading and unfounded claims,” said the Treasury Department. Giulani said in 2018. In the second half, he began gathering information from Ukrainian authorities, and Mr. Trump interfered with Mr. Muller’s investigation and impered Mr. Byden about his son’s work at an energy company owned by Ukrainian Oligalhi, which is believed to be widely corrupt. Helped to imp imp imp. After being arrested on suspicion of unrelated campaign funding for two Soviet-born businessmen who helped Giulani keep in touch with Ukrainian authorities, Giulani increasingly with Terrigenco, He sought help from Andrey Artemenko, a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament, who now lives and works in the Washington area. As a lobbyist, according to people who are directly aware of Giuliani’s efforts. Federal agents interviewed Artemenko as part of Brooklyn’s investigation into Ukrainian authorities, people familiar with the matter said. He has not been sanctioned and appears not to be investigated, they added. Artemenko’s lawyer, Anthony Capozzolo, declined to comment. Artemenko told Politico last month that he had spoken to the FBI about Giuliani, but did not elaborate further. Terrigenco and Artemenko joined Giuliani in Washington in late November 2019, a conservative cable network. One America News Washington Studios recorded a series of attacks on “bullet each” hoaxes “and Mueller’s investigation, claiming that the network had exposed the corruption by the Bidens. Prior to their visit in December 2019. Artemenko signed a contract with Giuliani and helped find a witness to defend Trump, and Artemenko wasn’t paid for the job, according to three people who knew the contract signed by Giuliani. Artemenko’s company later signed a lobbying contract on behalf of Derkach in Washington. In December 2019, Giuliani and network crew traveled to Budapest and Kiev and filmed interviews with current and former Ukrainian officials claiming to have criminal information about Biden and other Democrats. .. Interviewed with Mr. Delkach and two other men, another parliamentarian and recently dismissed Ukrainian prosecutor, faced sanctions by the Treasury in January. The department, along with Terrigenco, described the two men as members of Delkach’s aides and accused them of promoting a “false story” to influence the 2020 presidential election. It is unclear if is the focus of Brooklyn’s criminal investigation. In an interview on Thursday, Terrigenco declined the accusation from the Treasury and said he had never met Delkach before Artemenko arranged a meeting against his dissenting opinion. “It was already poisonous in Ukraine,” he added, adding that “everyone knew he was a pro-Russian.” About two months after the trip, Delcach traveled to New York with Giuliani. We recorded the podcast of Ukraine, said Terrigenco. After Biden emerged as a Democratic presidential candidate in May 2020, Delkach made a series of private calls between Biden when he was Vice President and Petro Poroshenko, President of Ukraine. The first audio recording has been released. Derkach claimed, without evidence, that the recording showed that Biden and his son Hunter were engaged in corruption. The Treasury later accused Derkach of releasing “edited audio tapes and other unsupported information.” But in the months leading up to the election day, Trump and his allies touted some of the material released by Delkach. This article was originally published in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company