Barr: Justice has ‘open door’ to receiving information on Ukraine from Giuliani

Attorney General William Barr said Monday that the Justice Department has an “open door” to any individuals, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who have information on issues involving Ukraine, and noted that the agency would “scrutinize” this information.

“There are a lot of agendas in the Ukraine, a lot of crosscurrents, and we can’t take anything we receive from the Ukraine at face value,” Barr said during a press conference. 

He added that “for that reason, we had established an intake process in the field so that any information coming in about Ukraine could be carefully scrutinized by the Department and its intelligence community partners so that we could assess its provenance and its credibility, and that is true for all information that comes to the Department from the Ukraine, including anything that Mr. Giuliani might provide.”

Barr then left the press conference, which covered the rollout of indictments around the Equifax breach, and FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich noted when asked the same question about information on Ukraine from Giuliani that “we are taking information, as we would in any case, we will evaluate it appropriately.”

Barr’s comments were made in response to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) saying during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” this past weekend that the Justice Department had created a process to vet information collected by Giuliani — who also serves as President Trump’s personal lawyer — on Ukraine.

Graham, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Barr told him that the Justice Department “has created a process that Rudy would give information and they would see if it’s verified.”

Graham also referenced potential work done in Ukraine by former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden while on the board of Ukrainian company Burisma, with Graham saying that “if Rudy Giuliani has any information coming out of the Ukraine, he needs to turn it over to the Department of Justice, because it could be Russian propaganda.”

Giuliani traveled to Ukraine in December in the midst of the House impeachment inquiry into Trump. During this trip, Giuliani met with multiple Ukrainian officials in an effort to find out information on the Bidens that would support Trump’s side of the impeachment case.