Giuliani tips to get look, Barr says

Can’t take Ukrainian details at face value, senator told

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr acknowledged Monday that the Justice Department would evaluate material that President Donald Trump’s personal attorney had gathered from Ukrainian sources who claimed to have damaging information about former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.

However, Barr and other officials suggested Rudy Giuliani was being treated no differently than any tipster.

At a news conference on an unrelated case, Barr confirmed an assertion made Sunday by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that the Justice Department had “created a process that Rudy could give information and they would see if it’s verified.”

Barr said he had established an “intake process in the field” so that the Justice Department and intelligence agencies could scrutinize information they were given.

“That is true for all information that comes to the department relating to the Ukraine, including anything Mr. Giuliani might provide,” Barr said. He did not provide any other specifics.

A Justice Department official said Giuliani had “recently” shared information with federal law enforcement officials through the process described by Barr. Two people familiar with the matter said the information is being routed to the U.S. attorney’s office in Pittsburgh.

Biden is among the Democrats seeking to challenge Trump for the presidency. Some legal analysts warned that if Giuliani had a direct pipeline to the Justice Department for providing information on a political rival of Trump, it could effectively conscript federal law enforcement into doing campaign work for the president.

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The matter is complicated, too, because Giuliani is under a Justice Department investigation. That case already has produced campaign finance charges against two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who helped in Giuliani’s Ukraine-related pursuits.

Giuliani did not return a message seeking comment Monday.

Barr said Monday that the Justice Department had an “obligation to have an open door to anybody who wishes to provide us information that they think is relevant,” though he said he told Graham: “We have to be very careful with respect to any information coming from the Ukraine. There are a lot of agendas in the Ukraine. There are a lot of crosscurrents, and we can’t take anything we receive from the Ukraine at face value.”

Barr said the intake process was established “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.”

FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said: “We’re taking information as we would in any case. We will evaluate it appropriately.”

Justice Department and FBI officials regularly receive tips about alleged crimes. But even after receiving such information, it is up to agents and prosecutors to decide whether what they have been told merits opening an investigation.

The Justice Department in the Trump administration has previously turned to U.S. attorneys outside of Washington to look into Republican concerns. Barr tapped U.S. Attorney John Durham, for example, to examine the origins of the FBI’s 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign. Durham’s investigation is ongoing.

Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, assigned John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, to look into concerns that the FBI had not fully pursued cases of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation, a charity started by former President Bill Clinton.

During Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state, the U.S. government decided not to block the sale of Uranium One to a Russian state-owned nuclear power company. The Clintons have since been accused of orchestrating the sale in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation.

However, Huber’s review of the case has effectively ended with no tangible results, according to people familiar with the matter.

It is not clear whether Scott Brady, the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, will play a similar role in regards to information from Ukraine, or why his office was chosen. A spokeswoman for Brady’s office declined to comment.

Trump and Giuliani have pressed the Ukrainians to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who worked on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while his father oversaw the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. In a phone call in July, Trump personally appealed to his presidential counterpart in Ukraine to work with Barr on the matter.

The call and the related pressure campaign ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment in the Democratic-controlled House on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He was acquitted in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for Barr, has said previously in a statement that Trump had not spoken with Barr “about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former Vice President Biden or his son.”

“The President has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine — on this or any other matter,” Kupec said in the statement after the White House disclosed a memo with details of Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president. “The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine — on this or any other subject. Nor has the Attorney General discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.”

Information for this article was contributed by Rosalind S. Helderman of The Washington Post.

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