House investigators are trying to find out who a mysterious '-1' number Giuliani frequently spoke with during Ukraine pressure campaign belongs to
- House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN that the panel is probing a mysterious unlisted number Rudy Giuliani called while engaged in the search for damaging information from Ukraine on Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate.
- "We can't confirm yet who that '-1' number belongs to, but certainly there was indications in the trial of Roger Stone that when he was communicating with the president, it would show up in phone records as a '-1' number," Schiff told CNN's Anderson Cooper Tuesday.
- Some Republicans have portrayed Giuliani as a rogue agent when he sought to pressure Ukraine to announce a Biden probe, but mounting evidence suggests that he was acting with the president's direct approval.
- The president's search for a Biden probe is currently the subject of the first impeachment inquiry in two decades.
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House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff said that the panel is investigating who a mysterious "-1" number Rudy Giuliani was calling during his Ukraine pressure campaign belonged to.
On Tuesday, the committee made public call logs belonging to several individuals key to the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Among them was a log of calls made by Giuliani, the president's personal attorney.
The documents reveal that as he was seeking from Ukraine damaging information on Trump's domestic rival, Joe Biden, and seeking the ouster of the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, Giuliani was in frequent contact with a person or persons at an unlisted "-1" number.
He was also in contact with the White House and other figures subject to the impeachment probe.
"We can't confirm yet who that '-1' number belongs to, but certainly there was indications in the trial of Roger Stone that when he was communicating with the president, it would show up in phone records as a '-1' number," Schiff told CNN's Anderson Cooper Tuesday.
He was referring to former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who was convicted in November of witness tampering and lying to Congress.
"Rudy Giuliani only had one client - and that was Donald Trump."
"Here you have Rudy Giuliani in communication with the Office of Management and Budget, in communication with the White House, and you also have presidential conduct in the form of tweets and other actions around the timing of different communications," Schiff added.
The call logs add to the woes of Republicans defending Trump against charges that he abused his power in seeking for Ukraine to announce a criminal investigation into Biden, and used withheld military aid totalling $400 million as leverage.
Some Republicans have suggested that Giuliani was acting as a rogue agent in Ukraine, acting alone and without the president's knowledge. Trump, they maintain, was simply attempting to address Ukraine's longstanding problems with corruption when he suggested that Ukraine might probe Biden, they say.
But that story is becoming increasingly difficult to defend - and it could become more so if it shown that Giuliani was in regular phone contact with the president while he was attempting to broker a deal for Biden dirt in Ukraine.
Several key impeachment witnesses have testified that Trump directed them to work with Giuliani are they pushed Ukraine for a Biden probe, and the president even requested his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, speak to Giuliani in the now notorious July 25 phone call that sparked the impeachment probe.