Giuliani says the whistleblower complaint is 'crap' and that people are 'torturing' him for doing his job as Trump's private attorney

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Former Mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani during the Conference In Support Of Freedom and Democracy In Iran on June 30, 2018 in Paris, France. The speakers declared their support for the Iranian peoples uprising and the democratic alternative, the National Council of Resistance of Iran and called on the international community to adopt a firm policy against the mullahs regime and stand by the arisen people of Iran.

• President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is mentioned dozens of times in a whistleblower complaint that alleges the president attempted to use his office to push a foreign country in interfere in the 2020 election.
• The complaint describes Giuliani a a "central figure in this effort."
• Giuliani refuted the complaint's charges in an interview with CNN on Thursday, hours after the document was made public.
• "I should be as sympathetic as a whistleblower. I did my job and now all these people are torturing me," Giuliani said, and that he has no "knowledge of any of that crap" when it comes to the complaint.
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Rudy Giuliani, personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, is heavily implicated in a damning whistleblower complaint accusing the president of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 election.

The complaint describes Giuliani - who is not a member of the US government - as a "central figure in this effort," and said he's been involved in reaching out to and meeting with Ukrainian officials as part of an effort to pressure Ukraine's government into investigating Democratic frontrunner former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

Responding to the complaint, which was released publicly on Thursday morning and mentions the former New York City mayor dozens of times, Giuliani told CNN he has "no knowledge of any of that crap" and said he'd spoken to State Department officials "at least 10 times."

"I should be as sympathetic as a whistleblower. I did my job and now all these people are torturing me," Giuliani said.

The complaint focuses heavily on a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which the president repeatedly pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden. Giuliani met with an aide to Zelensky in Madrid in early August, in what the complaint described as a "direct follow-up" to the phone call.

The August meeting was described in the complaint as a "direct follow-up" to Trump's July 25 phone call, and part of what it characterized as a broad effort from the president's personal attorney to dig up political dirt on the Bidens.

The complaint cites a New York Times interview where Giuliani said, "And this isn't foreign policy - I'm asking them to do an investigation that they're doing already, and that other people are telling them to stop," adding that this information was "very, very helpful to my client."

Read more: Read the full declassified whistleblower complaint linked to a phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine

The whistleblower said, "Starting in mid-May, I heard from multiple US officials that they were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani's circumvention of national security decision-making processes to engage with Ukrainian officials and relay messages back and forth between Kyiv and the President."

The complaint said State Department officials at one point spoke to Giuliani about his efforts in an attempt to "contain the damage" to US national security.

Read more: Whistleblower says White House officials were 'deeply disturbed' by Trump's call with Ukraine's president, and worried they 'had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain'

Giuliani on Thursday told CNN he has text messages that show the State Department actually encouraged his work.

"I'm going to use them to protect myself if and when I need them," Giuliani said, as he denied the complaint's charges.

"At no time did either one of them say they wanted to contain damage," Giuliani said. "At no time did the State Department in communication with me ever relay any of that information you're talking about."

"I spoke to the State Department during the course of this situation, I told you, at least 10 times, and I met with them," Giuliani added.