Report: Giuliani’s Firm Was in Talks to Receive Half a Million From Ukraine Prosecutor, Justice Ministry

A person familiar with the negotiations described contracts drafted earlier this year in which Giuliani would have worked for Lutsenko or, separately, the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice. For Lutsenko, the agreement would have provided a pipeline to Trump’s lawyer and, through him, potentially to other top U.S. officials. For Giuliani, the agreements would have been a way to accrue financial benefit from a person who was also providing him politically damaging information that could help another client, the president of the United States.

That same person also told the Post that a separate retainer agreement drafted in March would have had Giuliani Partners, the former mayor’s firm, receive $300,000 from the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice for work helping to recover the supposedly stolen assets. All of this, of course, was going on as Giuliani was allegedly working to extort Ukraine on the president’s behalf, despite protestations to the contrary this week.

An attorney for Giuliani declined to comment on the negotiations. Lutsenko, who served as Ukraine’s top prosecutor until August, could not be immediately reached for comment. But in an interview with the publication Ukrainian Truth earlier this month, Lutsenko described how he was eager for Giuliani to help him get a meeting with the U.S. attorney general to discuss evidence he had uncovered that Ukrainian assets had been routed through U.S. bank accounts.

Giuliani is currently being investigated on multiple fronts, and federal prosectors in New York have been probing his dealings with associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman for possible crimes that include wire fraud and failure to register as a foreign agent. (All three men have denied wrongdoing.) While the contracts with Lutsenko and the ministry never went into effect and no money was ever exchanged, the negotiations themselves just might be of interest to investigators, or perhaps the House Democrats.

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