this ukrainian prosecutor, yuriy lutsenko about conducting biden-related investigations, investigations of interest to president trump. rudy was kind of trying to negotiate his own business deal with this prosecutor. the various drafts of a proposed deal would have this prosecutor pay rudy giuliani several $100,000 to help this prosecutor with kind of an asset recovery mission he wanted to conduct. he believed that ukrainian assets had been stolen. and he wanted rudy giuliani s help with the u.s. justice department. getting the u.s. justice department to help him out. so they negotiated back and forth. while talking about the biden investigations. ultimately, they never actually execute a contract and rudy isn t paid. but this kind of deepens questions for him, you know. would he have been working for a foreign government at the same time he s working for the president of the united states? that would be a weird conflict. definitely, unethical for a government employee and it
us to do so. mr. giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the united states. and we knew these investigations were important to the president. and the president s suggestion that giuliani may have been working for other clients is contradicted by giuliani himself, who said this in a new york times report earlier this year about ukraine. my only client only client is the president of the united states. he s the one i have an obligation to report to. let s kick things off with nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. pete, this ig report has found that, i guess, the fbi did not spy on the trump campaign. what what can you tell us? basically, that. that people have seen the draft report say it discounts this claim that the fbi was spying on the campaign. the fbi has long said the only thing they were interested in is whether the russians were trying to influence the campaign. and of course, as mueller s investigators were looking
negotiate his own business deal with this prosecutor. the various drafts of a proposed deal would have this prosecutor pay rudy giuliani several $100,000 to help this prosecutor with kind of an asset recovery mission he wanted to conduct. he believed that ukrainian assets had been stolen. and he wanted rudy giuliani s help with the u.s. justice department. getting the u.s. justice department to help him out. so they negotiated back and forth. while talking about the biden investigations. ultimately, they never actually execute a contract and rudy isn t paid. but this kind of deepens questions for him, you know. would he have been working for a foreign government at the same time he s working for the president of the united states? that would be a weird conflict. definitely, unethical for a government employee and it raises some questions about rudy kind of doing this shadow diplomacy and what the ethics of that are. who would who is trying to influence who in this scenario?
the trip. but, you know, rudy has other clients other than me. i m one person. the president s claims you just heard are, frankly, ludicrous. he suggests he did not know what was happening with giuliani in ukraine. even though he told ukrainian president zelensky in that infamous july call that rudy very much knows what s happening. if you could speak with him, that would be great. i will have mr. giuliani give you a call. i will tell rudy and attorney general barr to call. the president s claim that he didn t know what giuliani was doing in ukraine is contradicted by the sworn testimony of his own envoys to ukraine. as a presidential appointee, i followed the directions of the president. we worked with mr. giuliani because the president directed us to do so. mr. giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the united states. and we knew these investigations
you may remember that this all started with a spectacular tweet by the president on one saturday. when he said that his phone had been tapped. that obama had authorized a tap of his phone in trump tower. none of that has ever come true. and according to people familiar with this report that we ve talked to, it s generally supportive of what the fbi did. it says there was no political motivation at the top of the fbi or the justice department in conducting these investigations. and then this latest bit of the puzzle, which says they re concluded that the fbi didn t spy on the trump campaign. do we know how attorney general william barr will respond to this? no. we ll hear from the attorney general after the report comes out. as this is happening, there s also another investigation being done by john durham. how are these two investigations going to going to line up? or what if durham s investigation undercuts what horowitz has found?