Giuliani's bungling attempt to discredit Mueller thrust Trump into the Biden Ukraine debacle: report

According to a report at the Daily Beast, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's earlier attempt to smear special counsel Robert Mueller, which did not bear fruit, eventually led him to train his focus on former Vice President Joe Biden which in turn has blow up in Donald Trump's face and led to House Democrats beginning long-awaited impeachment hearings.

With Trump now facing a determined Democratic-controlled House seeking to impeachment him after he reportedly withheld aid to Ukraine for dirt on Biden -- among other possible impeacment offenses -- the report notes that the president can thank his roving attorney, Giuliani, for his latest troubles.

The Beast reports, "That Ukraine-related investigation started as an attempt to delegitimize the Mueller probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. But, according to Giuliani, it tipped him off to the idea of getting the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, despite apparent warnings from one of the top U.S. diplomats in Ukraine that the information he was getting from Ukrainian political figures on Biden was not to be trusted."

The Beast adds, "In March, according to Giuliani, the former New York mayor brought to Pompeo’s attention a packet of information outlining some of the materials that would have been included in the counter-report that was never released by Trump’s legal team. It would prove to be another fateful decision."

Giuliani later boasted Pompeo “then called me back and said he referred it, and said, ‘We’ll do an internal investigation,” however aides to the secretary of state dispute that.

“Secretary Pompeo never promised Rudy Giuliani that he would investigate the contents of the envelope or anything related to Ukraine. The only Ukrainian project that Secretary Pompeo oversaw was Ambassador Volker’s work to reduce corruption and fight Russian aggression," one source close to Pompeo explained, with another adding, "Pompeo was skeptical of Giuliani’s material and only asked for more detail about the allegations because they seemed thin."

"According to both people, Pompeo gave Giuliani’s materials to his close aide T. Ulrich Brechbuhl shortly after he received them," the report states. "Brechbuhl provided them on May 3 to State Department Inspector General Steve Linick. Linick, months later, convened a briefing for legislators alerting them to the material. Despite the time lag, the briefing was described as 'urgent.'"

The Beast goes on to report that the report spread about even though it contained a "dubious story by right-wing Hill journalist John Solomon that Solomon sent pre-publication to Giuliani allies Lev Parnas, Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing claiming the U.S. government squelched a Ukrainian inquiry into a group tied to George Soros and Barack Obama’s administration."

From there, the attempts to dig up dirt on Biden grew until Trump's phone call with Ukraine's president was exposed by a whistleblower -- with another reportedly in the wings - - and Giuliani took the airwaves to defend his actions which have boomeranged on the president.

You can read more here.