Rudy & the spy
Feds slap his Ukraine pal in Biden smears
Rudy Giuliani has apparently been in cahoots with a fullblown Russian spy.
A KGB-trained Russian agent was slapped with U.S. sanctions on Thursday for orchestrating a baseless smear campaign against Joe Biden — an effort that Giuliani was intimately involved in coordinating and amplifying for President Trump’s benefit.
In a statement, the Treasury Department said Andrii Derkach, a pro-Kremlin member of Ukraine’s parliament, has since last year pushed “false and unsubstantiated” corruption accusations against Biden and his son, Hunter, in furtherance and as part of Russia’s illegal effort to help Trump win reelection in November.
Described as “an active Russian agent” with deep ties to the Kremlin, Derkach disseminated “edited audio tapes and other unsupported information” about Biden while relying on “pro-Russian lobbyists” in the U.S. to get American officials and news outlets to circulate the propaganda, according to the Treasury Department.
“Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who was handpicked to his post by Trump. “The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaigns.”
While Biden’s name is not mentioned in the Treasury Department statement, analogous U.S. intelligence assessments make clear that the Democratic presidential nominee was Derkach’s target.
Derkach, who studied at the KBG school in Moscow in the early 1990s, has met several times with Giuliani as part of the anti-Biden effort that he’s now facing sanctions for.
Giuliani, who currently serves as Trump’s personal attorney, first sat down with Derkach in Kiev last year while they were both actively digging for dirt on the Bidens.
In February, Giuliani interviewed Derkach on his namesake radio show, again giving the Russian agent a platform to keep spreading his baseless claim that Biden used the vice presidency to help his son evade prosecution on corruption charges in Ukraine.
Since the interview, Giuliani has kept trumpeting the Biden accusations over social media and in interviews.
Trump has also promoted many of Derkach’s claims, including retweeting posts of the manipulated audio recordings of Biden referenced by the Treasury Department.
In addition to Derkach, the Treasury Department sanctioned three other Russian government operatives on Thursday for being part of the Internet Research Agency, an infamous Kremlin troll farm that boosted Trump during the 2016 race.
One of those operatives, Artem Mikhaylovich Lifshits, was separately criminally charged by the Justice Department for stealing U.S. identities for the purpose of using them in the IRA’s interference efforts.
Giuliani, who appears to have at least unwittingly played part in Russia’s interference campaign, did not return a request for comment on Thursday.
Last month, the ex-New
York mayor forcefully pushed back after the U.S. intelligence community released a unanimous assessment concluding that Derkach’s Biden smear was part of Russia’s pro-Trump attack on the 2020 election.
“Bulls—t, same as last time,” Giuliani told the Daily News at the time.
Giuliani’s obsession with the Bidens has, of course, been thoroughly embraced by Trump.
The House i mpeached Trump in December for pressuring Ukraine’s president to launch an investigation into Biden while holding up $391 million in U.S. military aid as leverage.
The Senate eventually acquitted Trump after only one Republican, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, voted to remove the president from office over the Ukraine scheme.
A couple of GOP-controlled Senate committees have since picked up the torch by launching investigations into the very Biden accusations that prompted Trump’s impeachment — even though U.S. intelligence officials have warned that Russia is likely responsible for the dubious claims.