A Mysterious ‘-1’ and Other Call Records Show How Giuliani Pressured Ukraine – The New York Times, The New York Times

The report gave no indication of what conversations took place or how investigators obtained the telephone records, which were apparently produced in response to subpoenas to AT&T and Verizon. Nonetheless, the timing and volume of the calls buttressed testimony by witnesses who portrayed Giuliani at the center of a shadow foreign policy that dismayed and baffled many in the administration.

The call records showed “considerable coordination among the parties, including the White House” tofalsely portray Ms. Yovanovitch as disloyalto the president and to manipulate administration policy for his personal benefit, Mr. Schiff told reporters.

The report detailed a game of phone tag between the -1 phone number and Mr. Giuliani on Aug. 8. That same week, Mr. Giuliani was vigorously pressing State Department officials to persuade President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into the Biden family and whether Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.

Mr. Giuliani missed calls from -1 on Aug. 8 to two of his cellphones. Mr. Giuliani then called the White House switchboard and the White House Situation Room, before connecting with -1.

Circumstantial evidence shows that some of the -1 calls involved Mr. Trump, Mr. Schiff said, adding that his committee was working “to find out definitively.”

House investigators suspect that the number may belong to Mr. Trump in part because of phone records used as evidence in the criminal case against Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime friend and former campaign adviserwho was convicted last monthof seven felonies, including lying to Congress. Mr. Stone, who talked directly to Mr. Trump, received a call from a number listed only as -1, therecords from his trial show.

Mr. Schiff declined to say how the committee obtained the phone records, which also detail at least half a dozen calls between Mr. Giuliani and a number associated with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. At the president’s request, beginning in early July – if not sooner – that office froze $ (million in military assistance, congressional witnesses testified.)

Giuliani insisted on Tuesday that he had nothing to do with withholding funding for Ukraine, and any conversations he had with the budget office involved other matters. “I never discussed military assistance,” he said. “I am expert on so many things it could have been some very esoteric subject.”

Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine are under intense scrutiny by federal prosecutors as well as congressional investigators. Prosecutors in New York are looking intowhether he violated foreign lobbying lawsin trying to oust the American ambassador and also scrutinizing any financial dealings he might have pursued with Ukrainian officials. Two of his associates – including one whose records were also in the House report, Lev Parnas –have been indictedon charges of violating campaign finance laws and other infractions.

State Department phone records cited in the House report show Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Pompeo spoke at least twice in late March. In an interview in late November, Mr. Giuliani said he spoke to Mr. Pompeo to give him the results of his Ukraine research, including the role he believes that Ukrainians played trying to disrupt Mr. Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

At the time, Mr . Pompeo was under pressure from both Mr. Giuliani and the White House to remove Ms. Giuliani and the White House Yovanovitch from her post. A month later, she was recalled to Washington, even though multiple high-ranking State Department officials testified that she had done nothing wrong.

The records of Mr. Giuliani’s calls also suggest that Mr. Nunes may have played a bigger role than was previously known in Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to manipulate the administration’s policy toward Ukraine. Mr. Nunes was in contact with both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Parnas, the associate of Mr. Jessica Giuliani who helped the former New York mayor come up with negative information to further his strategy on Ukraine.

In a Fox News interview on Tuesday night, Mr. Nunes said that while he did not recall talking with Mr. Parnas, he might well have. “I remember that name now because he has been indicted, he said, adding,“ It seems very unlikely that I would be taking calls from random people. ”

On April 10, the records show, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Nunes traded short calls before Mr. Giuliani reached Mr. Nunes and the two spoke for about three minutes.

While the subject of their conversation is not known, they were most likely speaking about Ukraine, the report suggested. In the days beforehand, Mr. Giuliani said on Fox News that Ukraine had improperly interfered in the 2016 election and posted on Twitter citing criticism of Ms. Yovanovitch and accusing Ukrainian officials of interfering in American politics.

During the impeachment hearings, Mr. Nunes LEDthe defense of Mr. Trump, repeatedly raising questions about Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election and urging an investigation into Hunter Biden, the younger son of former Vice President President Joseph R. Biden, who was hired onto the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Schiff raised questions about Nunes’s role. “It is, I think, deeply concerning that at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence that there were members of Congress complicit in that activity, ”Mr.