WASHINGTON • Phone call records disclosed in the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment inquiry report released on Tuesday show extensive contact between United States President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Mr Rudy Giuliani, and the White House during key moments of the Ukraine saga.
The call records provide powerful circumstantial evidence that Mr Giuliani was coordinating with the White House on his Ukraine gambit, something Mr Giuliani has previously acknowledged.
The records also show contact between a Giuliani associate, Mr Lev Parnas, and one of Mr Trump's key defenders in Congress, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Devin Nunes.
During a news conference on Tuesday, Mr Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said "the phone records show there was considerable coordination among the parties, including the White House".
The report sources the phone records to "document production" from AT&T and Verizon, suggesting that they were subpoenaed. The report does not say whose records were subpoenaed, but the text suggests that the committee obtained extensive records of calls by Mr Giuliani and Mr Parnas.
Mr Giuliani's phone records include a series of calls with a number designated only as "-1", sometimes close in time to calls between Mr Giuliani and the White House switchboard. The suggestion is that "-1" might be a phone belonging to Mr Trump, though the report does not state that clearly.
Mr Schiff said he suspects that the number could be Mr Trump's, noting a similar "-1" number surfaced in long-time Trump ally Roger Stone's trial for a "number that did indicate the President".
Among other things, the records show that Mr Giuliani made several calls to the White House on April 24, the same day US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was summoned to Washington and told she had lost Mr Trump's confidence.
Mr Giuliani called the White House at least seven times that day. He also received a call from a White House number and spent more than eight minutes on the line with "-1".
The records show several calls and text messages in early August between Mr Giuliani and numbers associated with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. At that time, US diplomats were trying to set up an Oval Office meeting between Mr Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The report uses the records to build evidence that Mr Giuliani, his associates and "one or more individuals from the White House" coordinated a smear campaign against former vice-president Joe Biden.
WASHINGTON POST
