US Politics

The coronavirus pandemic cast a strange pall on the yearly political traditionAs Biden took the podium, he brushed past a sparse, masked crowd. He fist-bumped and elbow-tapped lawmakers and members of his cabinet – greeting a crowd that was physically distanced, and ideologically divided.Because fewer people were in attendance, due to coronavirus safety protocols, applause and cheers were muted – as seemed appropriate for a somber moment in history. Although Biden’s speech signaled hope – there was no denying that the country was still grappling with enormous loss and grief.After a long, dark year, the vaccine offered a light, Biden said. “Grandparents hugging their children and grandchildren instead of pressing their hands against a window to say goodbye,” he said.But, he added: “There’s still more work to do to beat this virus. We can’t let our guard down now.”It was a historic evening for women in governmentAs soon as he took to the podium, Biden acknowledged Kamala Harris, stood behind him, as “Madam vice-president,” and then reflected: “No president has ever said these words from behind this podium. And it’s about time.”For the first time in US history, two women were seated behind the president addressing a joint session of Congress. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker and the third person in the chain of command, after Biden and Harris, also flanked Biden.In 2007, Pelosi was the first woman to sit behind a president during a joint address to Congress after she became the first woman to hold the position of House speaker. Harris is the first woman, and Black and South Asian American person to be elected vice-president. Asked about the significance of the occasion, Harris told reporters it was just “normal”.‘Jobs, jobs, jobs’Biden’s populist, direct appeal to working-class Americans could be summed up by one four-letter word: jobs. At each step, Biden is explaining that his proposals – to improve water infrastructure, to increase internet access, to build highways, to increase childcare options for working families – will boost jobs.He used the word 43 times throughout his speech.“When I think about climate change, I think jobs,” he said. “There’s no reason the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing.”Biden ushered in a new era of big government, and big government spending“Our government still works – and can deliver for the people,” Biden said.The president introduced his sweeping $1.8tn plan, which would invest billions in a national childcare program, universal preschool, tuition-free community college, health insurance subsidies and tax cuts for low- and middle-income workers.The vision would be funded by rolling back Trump-era tax cuts, raising the capital gains rate for millionaires and billionaires, and closing tax loopholes for the wealthy.“Trickle-down economics has never worked. It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out,” Biden said. “We’re going reform corporate taxes so they pay their fair share – and help pay for the public investments their businesses will benefit from.”The messaging was a clear example of how much Biden has embraced and adopted progressive ideas and policies – even if many of the administration’s proposals are more modest, or watered-down versions of what leading progressive lawmakers have championed.The president pitched reforms that have bipartisan support – among voters, if not lawmakersBiden proposed major reforms to gun control and policing, and made a major pitch to protect voting rights. Republican lawmakers have fought the administration and their Democratic colleagues on all three issues. But polls indicate that though the country remains deeply divided on many issues, there’s actually broad, bipartisan support among voters for the president’s proposals.About two-thirds of Americans support tougher gun laws, a USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll found after the mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder this year. “The country supports reform, and the Congress should act,” Biden said.A March Morning Consult poll found that about 7 out of 10 voters, including majorities of Republicans, support the House’s sweeping elections reform measure. And while Republicans have many reservations about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the reform bill introduced by Democrats in Congress, polls indicate they largely support many provisions.Republicans, who have routinely denigrated and voted against Biden’s proposals, including his widely popular coronavirus relief plan and proposed infrastructure plan, have found themselves in an odd position of having to convince voters that they don’t actually want what they want. More

Joe Biden argued that ‘America is on the move again’ in his first address to Congress, on the eve of his 100th day in office. The president, flanked by two women – Vice-President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – for the first time in US history, addressed the coronavirus pandemic, the 6 January assault on the Capitol, plans to raise the minimum wage, police reform, climate change and historic levels of investment in the country. Due to social distancing measures, only 200 people, mainly politicians, attended rather than the usual 1,600 guests

‘Crisis into opportunity’: Biden lays out vision for sweeping change in speech to Congress
Biden flanked by two women as he addresses Congress in historic first More

It is Donald Trump, not Democrats, who deserves credit for wresting the coronavirus pandemic under control, Tim Scott argued on Wednesday night as the Republican senator gave his party’s official response to Joe Biden’s first address to Congress.Scott, a South Carolinian seen as a rising star in the Republican party, was handpicked by GOP leaders to deliver a rebuttal to Biden’s optimistic message, and duly did so, opening with a solidly Republican criticism of “socialist dreams” before taking aim at the president over some public schools having failed to reopen – a decision which is taken at state-level, frequently by local districts, rather than by the federal government.As the only Black Republican in the US Senate, Scott had been expected to address the issue of racial inequality and the repeated police shootings of Black men, but those hoping for strident criticism of the racial crisis in the US were disappointed, with Scott instead saying, “Hear me clearly, America is not a racist country.”Scott, a conservative, Christian southerner, has walked the fine line between the establishment and Donald Trump wings of the Republican party with more aplomb than most. His status as a potential GOP star is one of the few things that Trump and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, still agree on, and Scott won a coveted endorsement for his 2022 re-election bid from Trump in March.The extent to which Trump still looms over the Republican party was clear in Scott’s speech, with the senator praising the Trump administration and on occasion using talking points that could have been lifted straight from a Trump stump speech.“This administration inherited a tide that had already turned. The coronavirus is on the run,” Scott said, seemingly ignoring the fact that in December, Trump’s last full month in office, the US set a record for the highest daily number of new Covid cases, deaths and hospitalizations.“Thanks to Operation Warp Speed and the Trump administration, our country is flooded with safe and effective vaccines. Thanks to our bipartisan work last year, job openings are rebounding,” Scott said.He then harked back to before the Covid pandemic, which so far has killed more than 573,000 Americans. Trump has been widely blamed for allowing the virus to spiral out of control, and failing to take action once it did.“Just before Covid, we had the most inclusive economy in my lifetime. The lowest unemployment ever recorded for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. And a 70 year low, nearly, for women,” Scott said.Trump, ensconced in his holiday resort in south Florida, will have been pleased – these are claims he repeatedly made during his presidency, even if they are not totally supported by evidence.In 2019, the Washington Post’s factchecker called Trump’s claim that the black unemployment rate was the lowest in history “skewed and outdated”, and gave it three Pinnochios. Both Trump – and Scott – failed to note that the unemployment rate among Black and Hispanic people began to decline, steeply, under the Obama administration.Scott is leading the Republican party’s efforts to craft legislation with Democrats on police reform in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, but in his speech, he accused Democrats of voting against a police reform bill he introduced in 2020. At the time, Democrats said the bill did not go far enough to tackle police violence.Scott has also previously joined Democrats Cory Booker and Kamala Harris to work on a bipartisan bill that would make lynching a federal crime, and led the way in creating Opportunity Zones – aimed growth and jobs in low income communities – in Trump’s 2017 tax reform package.Once hesitant to focus on race in his political career, Scott has increasingly talked about his experience as an African American. On Wednesday, Scott said he had “experienced the pain of discrimination”.“I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason. To be followed around a store while I’m shopping,” Scott said, but then pivoted to criticism of Democrats.“I’ve also experienced a different kind of intolerance,” Scott said. “I get called Uncle Tom and the n-word by progressives and liberals.”Scott then addressed a familiar Republican talking point, and a favorite of Trump: that schools and colleges are now exhibiting bias against white children.“A hundred years ago kids in classrooms were being taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic, that if they looked a certain way they were inferior,” Scott said.“Today students are being taught that the color of their skin defines them again and if they look a certain way they are an oppressor.”In July 2020, Trump was fiercely criticized after he offered a dystopian vision of America, along the same lines as Scott’s classroom remarks if more emotional in tone.“Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that they were villains,” the then-president said, adding that there was a campaign to “indoctrinate our children”.Scott, who accused Democrats of a “Washington powergrab” over their opposition to a Georgia law that would make it more difficult for people to vote, later claimed that Biden would increase taxes, despite the president having said minutes earlier he would not raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 a year.Having warned darkly of a tax-heavy Democratic future, pitched the Republican message, and paid his dues to Trump, Scott ended his speech with a hopeful, and vague, vision for how the US might succeed – and with a shout out to law enforcement.“Our best future will not come from Washington schemes and socialist dreams,” he said.“It will come from you, the American people. Black, Hispanic, white and Asian. Republican and Democrat. Brave police officers and black neighborhoods.“We are not adversaries. We are family, and we are all in this together, and we get to live in the greatest country on earth.” More

It has always been Washington’s version of the Oscars: a primetime TV audience, an overlong speech and fierce disagreement among critics.On Wednesday, Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress, on the eve of his first 100 days in office, followed the Academy Awards with a small, physically distanced gathering that, given the US president’s love of trains, might have switched to a railway station too.His 65-minute speech, the most important since his inauguration 99 days ago, could be summed up with three Bs: Big (in ambition), Boring (at times) and Bipartisan (or maybe not so much, judging by Republican grimaces).It will not go down as a rhetorical masterpiece, but nor will it be seen as the cringeworthy equivalent of a tearful Oscar acceptance speech. Instead, in the sparsely populated chamber of the House of Representatives, it laid out a transformative presidency and offered some more healing for post-Trump stress disorder.Indeed, even in the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic, with masked members sitting several seats apart on the floor and in the public gallery, this scene felt more ordinary than when Donald Trump delivered red meat to raucous cheers from Republicans and boos, heckles and sorrowful head shakes from Democrats.The Trump era culminated in a deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January with members cowering in the public gallery of this very chamber, with agents pulling guns to keep the mob at bay. On Wednesday night, as the first lady, Jill Biden, entered the gallery to cheers on Wednesday evening, all that felt like a lifetime ago.Instead, the new age was best summed up in a single image: behind “Uncle Joe”, the 78-year-old white man at the lectern, sat two women, Vice-President Kamala Harris and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi – both from deeply liberal California.“Madam Vice-President,” Biden said. “No President has ever said those words from this podium … and it’s about time.” Harris and Pelosi exchanged glances above their masks.The tableau was a vivid reminder that Biden’s discovery of progressive politics did not come to him as a sudden revelation. He has always been roughly in the middle of the Democratic party. As the party moved left, so he moved with it. An old dog can learn new tricks but it takes some prompting.That led him to Wednesday night’s once unthinkable menu of grand plans for coronavirus relief, building infrastructure and helping families, measured not in billions but trillions of dollars. In the choice between going big and going bipartisan, big is winning, remaking America with government at the centre.“My fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked,” he said, effectively sounding the death knell for Ronald Reagan’s low-tax logic that has been Republican religion for four decades and within which even Bill Clinton and Barack Obama operated. “It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out.”Senator Bernie Sanders, sitting on the House floor, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, up in the balcony, visibly lapped it up. Both were forced to endure four years of Trump blasphemies in this very room. Their time has come and Biden is the unlikely vessel.“The American Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build America,” Biden said. “And it recognises something I’ve always said. [There are] good guys and women on Wall Street, but Wall Street didn’t build this country. The middle class built this country. And unions build the middle class.”He talked about green energy and corporate tax reform and described healthcare as “a right, not a privilege”. Democrats were delighted by it all, rising to their feet and clapping with such enthusiasm that it almost compensated for their diminished numbers.Republicans joined in when Biden warned of the threat posed by China (“deadly earnest on becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world”) and struck some Trumpian notes about American products made in America. “There’s no reason the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing.”But they were silent, stony faced and riveted to their seats on many of the applause lines. Senator Lindsey Graham frowned, a hand to his chin. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, clapped limply if at all.Hours earlier, perhaps seeing Harris and Pelosi in his mind’s eye, McConnell had warned: “Behind President Biden’s familiar face, it’s like the most radical Washington Democrats have been handed the keys, and they’re trying to speed as far left as they can possibly go before American voters ask for their car back.”Biden did utter the word “bipartisan” several times but his pitch was framed about the costs of division and paralysis. “Doing nothing is not an option,” he warned. “We can’t be so busy competing with each other that we forget the competition is with the rest of the world to win the 21st century.”The members in attendance had, like children at Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, got golden tickets. Instead of the usual 1,600 people for a state of the union-style address, this time there were only 200 with no guests permitted (except virtually), because of coronavirus safety restrictions. Some tickets were decided on a first-come-first-served basis, others by lottery.Members greeted each other with fist bumps or elbow bumps. Chief Justice John Roberts was the only member of the supreme court present. The cabinet was represented by only two members, Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense, meaning there was no need this time for a “designated survivor” – a senior official who typically stays away at a secure location in case catastrophe strikes.Biden sought to end on a high note. “We have stared into an abyss of insurrection and autocracy – of pandemic and pain – and ‘We the People’ did not flinch. At the very moment our adversaries were certain we would pull apart and fail, we came together, we united,” he said.They were stirring words but, like Sunday’s Oscars, ended in anticlimax. Whatever respect they’ve had for Biden over the years, when Republicans looked up at the dais, they were triggered by the sight of Harris and Pelosi looming behind him.“Boring, but radical,” was the verdict of Senator Ted Cruz who, as if to prove it, looked like he was dozing off. More

Key events

Show

12.30am EDT
00:30

Key takeaways from tonight

12.10am EDT
00:10

Progressive Democrats praise Biden on Covid but call for bolder action

9.59pm EDT
21:59

Biden addresses a divided – and distanced – joint session

9.39pm EDT
21:39

Biden introduces his families plan

9.17pm EDT
21:17

Biden: ‘Go and get vaccinated’

9.07pm EDT
21:07

Joe Biden has arrived

8.52pm EDT
20:52

Why this address is not a “state of the union”

Live feed

Show

12.30am EDT
00:30

Key takeaways from tonight

1) The coronavirus pandemic cast a strange pall on the yearly political tradition.
As Biden took the podium, he brushed past a sparse, masked crowd. He fist-bumped and elbow-tapped lawmakers and members of his cabinet – greeting a crowd that was physically distanced, and ideologically divided.
Because fewer people were in attendance, due to coronavirus safety protocols, applause and cheers were muted – as seemed appropriate for a somber moment in history. Although Biden’s speech signaled hope – there was no denying that the country was still grappling with enormous loss and grief.
After a long dark year, the vaccine offered a light, Biden said. “Grandparents hugging their children and grandchildren instead of pressing their hands against a window to say goodbye,” he said.
But, he added: “There’s still more work to do to beat this virus. We can’t let our guard down now.”
2) It was a historic evening for women in government.
As soon as he took to the podium, Biden acknowledged Kamala Harris, stood behind him, as “Madam vice president,” and then reflected: “No president has ever said these words from behind this podium. And it’s about time.”
For the first time in US history, two women were seated behind the president addressing a joint session of congress. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker and the third person in the chain of command, after Biden and Harris, also flanked Biden.
In 2007, Pelosi was the first woman to sit behind a president during a joint address to congress – after she became the first woman to hold the position of House Speaker. Harris is the first woman, and Black and South Asian American person to be elected vice president. Asked about the significance of the occasion, Harris told reporters it was just “normal”.
3) “Jobs, jobs, jobs”
Biden’s populist, direct appeal to working-class Americans could be summed up by one four-letter word: jobs. At each step, Biden is explaining that his proposals – to improve water infrastructure, to increase internet access, to build highways, to increase childcare options for working families – will boost jobs.
He used the word 43 times throughout his speech.
“When I think about climate change, I think jobs,” he said. “There’s no reason the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing.”
4) Biden ushered in a new era of big government, and big government spending
“Our government still works – and can deliver for the people,” Biden said.
The president introduced his sweeping $1.8tn plan, which would invest billions in a national childcare program, universal preschool, tuition-free community college, health insurance subsidies and tax cuts for low- and middle-income workers.
The vision would be funded by rolling back Trump-era tax cuts, raising the capital gains rate for millionaires and billionaires, and closing tax loopholes for the wealthy.
“Trickle-down economics has never worked. It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out,” Biden said. “We’re going reform corporate taxes so they pay their fair share – and help pay for the public investments their businesses will benefit from.”
The messaging was a clear example of how much Biden has embraced and adopted progressive ideas and policies – even if many of the administration’s proposals are more modest, or watered-down versions of what leading progressive lawmakers have championed.
5) The president pitched reforms that have bipartisan support – among voters, if not lawmakers
Biden proposed major reforms to gun control and policing, and made a major pitch to protect voting rights. Republican lawmakers have fought the administration and their Democratic colleagues on all three issues. But polls indicate that though the country remains deeply divided on many issues, there’s actually broad, bipartisan support among voters for the president’s proposals.
About two-thirds of Americans support tougher gun laws, a USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll found after the mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder this year. “The country supports reform, and the Congress should act,” Biden said.
A March Morning Consult poll found that about 7 out of 10 voters, including majorities of Republicans, support the House’s sweeping elections reform measure. And while Republicans have big reservations about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the reform bill introduced by Democrats in Congress, polls indicate they largely support many provisions.
Republicans, who have routinely denigrated and voted against Biden’s proposals, including his widely popular coronavirus relief plan and proposed infrastructure plan, have found themselves in an odd position of having to convince voters that they don’t actually want what they want.

Updated
at 12.41am EDT

12.10am EDT
00:10

Progressive Democrats praise Biden on Covid but call for bolder action

Adam Gabbatt

The progressive wing of the Democratic party praised Joe Biden for his handling of the Covid-19 crisis in a response to the president’s first address to Congress, but urged the president to be bolder in tackling the climate crisis and economic inequality, and to do more to address “the burning crisis of structural racism in our country”.
Jamaal Bowman, a Democratic congressman from New York, gave a speech responding to Biden’s address shortly after the president finished his address, as progressives seek to convince Biden to pursue more ambitious policies.
Bowman hailed Biden’s handling of the Covid pandemic – in particular the aid given to schools in low income areas – but said the Democratic party, which controls the presidency, the House of Representatives and – narrowly – the Senate, could do more.
“The proposals that President Biden has put forward over the last few weeks would represent important steps – but don’t go as big as we’d truly need in order to solve the crises of jobs, climate and care,” Bowman said.
“We need to think bigger.”
Read more:

Updated
at 12.21am EDT

11.56pm EDT
23:56

Biden’s speech has earned praise from the former president Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton
(@BillClinton)
Great speech from @POTUS, great proposals, great call to action. Let’s do it!

April 29, 2021

11.44pm EDT
23:44

Some images from the evening … More

When Joe Biden gives his first speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, viewers will be treated to a historic first – the sight of two women, Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, seated behind the president.Harris, the first female, Black and south Asian vice-president, and Pelosi, the first female House speaker, will take up their positions as Biden reflects on the first 99 days of his presidency and lays out his vision for the 1362 days to come.Their presence demonstrates a measure of progress in the quest for gender equality in the US – even if Harris and Pelosi will be flanking an aging white, male president – and Harris, in particular, proves a contrast to the past four years, which saw Donald Trump willed on by a bewitched Mike Pence.Biden is expected to use the speech, which comes before his 100th day in office on Thursday, to address the state of the Covid pandemic, and push the $2tn infrastructure plan he unveiled at the end of March. The president will also discuss the need for better healthcare, according to the Washington Post, and will renew his call for police reform.Viewers are likely to see Harris and Pelosi rise to their feet repeatedly during Biden’s address to applaud – something Pelosi largely avoided during Trump’s speeches to Congress.Biden, as vice-president, spent eight years seated behind Barack Obama as the latter addressed joint sessions of Congress, with Harris assuming Biden’s former seat for the first time on Wednesday.Pelosi has plenty of experience in these settings, having served as speaker of the House since 2019, and previously from 2007 to 2011.In 2019 her parental-style clapping of Donald Trump during his State of the Union address became a viral moment, while a year later she was lauded by the left after she tore up a copy of Trump’s speech.A president’s first address to Congress is usually an extravagant affair, witnessed by hundreds of guests, but the Covid pandemic means the audience was scaled back for Biden’s speech. Only one member of the supreme court – Chief Justice John Roberts – was invited, and members of Congress were told not to bring guests. More

Federal investigators have executed a search warrant at a New York office and private apartment belonging to Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of the city and personal lawyer to Donald Trump.Federal authorities have been examining whether Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the same time were helping him search for dirt on Trump’s political rivals.Investigators had seized some of Giuliani’s electronic devices from the Upper East Side residence, and from his law office on Park Avenue, early on Wednesday, the New York Times reported.Giuliani’s own lawyer, Robert Costello, condemned the raids as “legal thuggery,” claiming his client had cooperated with prosecutors and offered to answer questions not involving his “privileged” communications with Trump.“What they did today was legal thuggery. Why would you do this to anyone, let alone someone who was the associate attorney general, United States attorney, the mayor of New York City and the personal lawyer to the 45th president of the United States,” he told the Wall Street Journal.Giuliani posted, then deleted, a tweet saying he would be giving a live statement about the raids during his afternoon radio show on WABC radio. When the show started at 3pm, Giuliani was missing and a guest host, Dominic Carter, was presenting.Giuliani was considered a heroic figure in New York politics for his role as a top mafia prosecutor and then as mayor during the 9/11 terror attacks. But his reputation nosedived during the Trump era as he became embroiled in numerous scandals involving the administration and his role as one of Trump’s most fervent cheerleaders and attack dogs.In the infamous “quid pro quo” episode, officials in Ukraine were alleged to be simultaneously attempting to “dig up dirt” on Trump’s political rivals, including Joe Biden, who was shortly to become the Democratic party’s presidential nominee.Biden’s son, Hunter, had business dealings in Ukraine when his father was Barack Obama’s vice-president earlier in the decade, including a seat on the board of Burisma, one of the country’s largest energy companies.The Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) makes it a federal crime to try to influence or lobby the US government at the request of a foreign official without informing the justice department.Giuliani was back at the heart of the news cycle after the 2020 presidential election last November. He was a leading proponent of “the big lie”, Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him by “widespread fraud” in the voting process.Giuliani became something of a laughing stock when he represented Trump in numerous failed legal challenges to the election result and made inept appearances in court and at press conferences.But the anti-democratic campaign ultimately led to the 6 January insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol, during which five people lost their lives.According to the New York Times, the US attorney’s office in Manhattan and the FBI have been seeking a search warrant for Giuliani’s phones for months, which officials in Trump’s justice department continually sought to block.Following Trump’s departure from office in January, and confirmation in March by the US Senate of Biden’s pick Merrick Garland as attorney general, the justice department dropped its opposition.The Times noted that while the warrant is not an explicit accusation of wrongdoing against Giuliani, it showed the investigation was entering “an aggressive new phase”. The newspaper contacted the FBI and US attorney’s office, both of which, it said, declined to comment.In a tweet on Wednesday, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney who was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, campaign finance fraud and lying to Congress, and who has since become a Trump critic, said simply: “Here we go folks!!!”The New York Times further reported that the FBI also served a search warrant Wednesday on the Washington DC home of attorney Victoria Toensing, an associate of Giuliani and reported contact of Ukraine officials who were looking into the Bidens. Toensing, the newspaper said, has previously represented Dimitry Fitash, a Ukrainian energy billionaire with alleged mob contacts who is under indictment in the US for bribery.The Wall Street Journal said Costello told its reporters that authorities arrived at Giuliani’s apartment at 6am and seized his devices.He said the search warrant described the investigation as a probe into a possible violation of foreign lobbying rules and “sought communications between Mr Giuliani and individuals including John Solomon, a columnist who was corresponding with Mr Giuliani about his effort to push for investigations of Joe Biden in Ukraine”.Solomon, a conservative political operative and Giuliani ally, has been accused of using his columns in the Hill to help spread disinformation about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine, his writing earning praise from Trump and his acolytes, who called them worthy of a Pulitzer.The Hill, meanwhile, decided in 2018 to classify Solomon’s future contributions as “opinion.”Costello added that in recent years he had offered to answer investigators’ questions as long as they agreed to say what area they were looking at ahead of time. He said they declined the offer. “It’s like I’m talking to a wall,” Costello said.Prosecutors began looking into Giuliani after building an unrelated case against Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Soviet-born American citizens alleged to have aided his efforts in Ukraine and later charged with crimes including conspiracy and campaign finance violations.The Times said the investigators were looking into Giuliani’s push to remove the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump considered disloyal and obstructive, and whom he removed in May 2019.The Ukraine scandal, and Trump’s dark prediction during his notorious July 2019 call with the country’s prime minister Volodymyr Zelensky that Yovanovitch was “going to go through some things,” was the subject of Trump’s first impeachment trial. More