Verge of being impeached.

Giuliani digs in deeper on Ukraine as Trump is on the verge of being impeached

The president's personal attorney is vigorously defending his push to oust the ambassador to Ukraine.

By QUINT FORGEY and KYLE CHENEY

Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday asserted that Marie Yovanovitch “needed to be removed” from her post as the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine — the latest in a string of incendiary public statements that the president himself has amplified despite facing imminent impeachment over the matter.

“Yovanovitch needed to be removed for many reasons most critical she was denying visas to Ukrainians who wanted to come to US and explain Dem corruption in Ukraine,” Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney, wrote on Twitter. “She was OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE and that’s not the only thing she was doing. She at minimum enabled Ukrainian collusion.”

In a related post, Giuliani claimed that he possessed new “documentary evidence” proving that Yovanovitch perjured herself during congressional testimony before House impeachment investigators.

Giuliani's claims, for which he has provided no evidence, cut against the sworn testimony of a string of Trump-appointed State Department officials and diplomats, who described Yovanovitch as an anti-corruption champion and consummate professional before Trump summarily removed her after Giuliani's urging.

The former New York City mayor's comments also suggest he was much more influential in Trump's decision to pull Yovanovitch than the president and his allies have publicly admitted — and that he was motivated to seek her ouster because she stood in the way of Trump's favored political investigations. Giuliani's remarks poured gasoline on a charge for which the House is preparing to impeach Trump this week.

Trump invited Giuliani to the White House last week, just days after Giuliani returned from a trip to Kyiv and began reviving allegations against Yovanovitch and Trump's political adversaries. Trump has confirmed he's spoken to Giuliani and welcomed any information his attorney might provide to the Justice Department and Congress. Trump has also retweeted some of Giuliani's incendiary comments about Yovanovitch.

No impeachment investigators of either party have questioned Yovanovitch's integrity, despite the continuing attacks by Giuliani. Yovanovitch testified last month that at least two of the prosecutors Giuliani met with were enablers of corruption and that they would have viewed her as an obstacle because of her efforts to root it out.

Separately, accusations of perjury in congressional investigations are extremely difficult to prove because they require showing not only that witnesses made false statements, but that they did so intentionally and in a way that materially impacted the investigation.

In his string of attacks, Giuliani also claimed that the embassy under Yovanovitch "stopped a Ukrainian audit of over $5 billion in aid funding put in question in 2017 by Ukrainian auditors,” and warned there was “plenty more” information to come, further detailing unfounded allegations of corruption against Yovanovitch.

Trump recalled Yovanovitch from Kiev in April following a smear campaign by Giuliani and his associates baselessly accusing the longtime foreign service officer of disloyalty to the White House and of attempting to interfere in Ukraine’s justice system.

Yovanovitch described the circumstances surrounding her abrupt departure during a public hearing of the House Intelligence Committee last month, telling lawmakers that she did “not understand Mr. Giuliani’s motives for attacking me.”