Former Ukraine president says he talked to Giuliani about investments

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Wednesday that he talked about investments with President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani in 2017, but that he never discussed Ukrainian companies with U.S. officials. 

“We definitely do not want to be involved in the political process inside the United States,” Poroshenko, who is now a lawmaker, told reporters, according to The Associated Press.{mosads}

He said he discussed “political support and investment,” but nothing else with Giuliani during a 2017 meeting, the AP noted, adding that he did not elaborate on what they talked about. 

Poroshenko reportedly said he “never ever spoke about commercial companies” with Trump, former President Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden or “any U.S. officials.”

Poroshenko, who led Ukraine between 2014 and 2019, is now attempting to distance himself from the impeachment inquiry into Trump, according to the AP. A political analyst told the news service that ties to the U.S. scandal are “weakening” the standing of current President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine. 

Trump has been accused of urging Zelensky to look into Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and his son during a July 25 phone call, but the president has denied wrongdoing. 

“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me,” Trump said on the call, according to a memo released by The White House. 

The memo quotes Zelensky as responding: “The next prosecutor general will be 100 percent my person, my candidate, who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.”