New trouble for Kurt Volker in Trump-Ukraine criminal scandal, and it could get particularly ugly for Rudy Giuliani
When a recording surfaced days ago of Rudy Giuliani illegally pressuring the government of Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, it was bad news for Giuliani, for obvious reasons. SDNY is already known to be criminally targeting him, to the point that it’s raided his home and seized his electronic communications. Now the recording is a smoking gun that can be used to convict him at trial. But there’s also another angle here.
Mother Jones has figured out that the Giuliani recording reveals that former U.S. diplomat Kurt Volker gave, ahem, inaccurate testimony under oath during Trump’s impeachment. This means that Congress can make a criminal referral to the DOJ against Volker. In such case, if Volker wants to avoid potential prison time, he’ll need to become a cooperating witness and testify to the full extent of what he witnessed Giuliani doing.
The Feds seemingly already have Rudy Giuliani nailed for financial crimes such as taking dirty foreign money. Those charges are rather easy to convict on, because the proof is on paper. But if the Feds are also looking to charge Giuliani for election fraud and related crimes in the Trump-Ukraine scandal, Volker could end up becoming the kind of inside witness who would make it easier to get a conviction on those charges as well.
Lev Parnas, who was working for Rudy Giuliani during the Trump-Ukraine scandal but has since publicly come clean and offered to work with prosecutors, responded to the Mother Jones article by tweeting “I was with Rudy Giuliani when we met with Kurt Volker to discuss getting a call set up with Zelenskyy and Trump.” So it sounds like the Feds have multiple cooperating witnesses available.
