As the House prepares to consider whether to impeach President Trump over an unprecedented plot to turn Ukraine into an opposition research factory, his personal attorney and associate Rudy Giuliani has decided to keep busy: he is scheduled to attend a pro-Russian conference in Armenia next month with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Washington Post first reported Giuliani’s planned Oct. 1 appearance, which he confirmed in an interview with the newspaper.
After the Post published its report, Giuliani told reporters that he was “not going” and that he “didn’t know till now that Putin was going.”
The conference’s website still shows America’s mayor as scheduled to attend.
The two are not slated to appear together.
Rather, an agenda for the event shows, Giuliani is scheduled to speak on a panel about “Digital financial technologies” in the “Eurasian continent.” Kremlin official Sergei Glazyev, who is sanctioned and who penned an anti-semitic screed earlier this year, will moderate.
Putin, by contrast, will close out the conference later that day. He is scheduled to appear at a ceremony with heads of state from the Eurasian Economic Union — an economic trading unit led by Moscow. The closing ceremony is slated to address the “Transit potential of the Eurasian continent.”
That event will include Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani and Belarusian premier Aleksandr Lukashenko.
TPM reported on Giuliani’s attendance of the same conference last year. A local multimillionaire who also leads the Union of Armenians of Russia reportedly invited him to that event.
Giuliani will make the trip as House Democrats start to hold hearings on impeachment, and as he alternately confirms and denies allegations that he helped President Trump pressure Ukraine into fabricating damaging information about Joe Biden and the origins of the Mueller investigation.
