President Donald Trump directed senior U.S. officials to talk directly to his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, about U.S. policy in Ukraine, raising concern that the president was outsourcing American foreign policy to a private citizen, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union said on Thursday.
The envoy, Gordon Sondland, told lawmakers in the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry against Trump that he did not understand "until much later" that Giuliani's agenda included a push for Ukraine to investigate a domestic political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
In prepared testimony to the Democratic-led inquiry, Sondland said he and two other officials — Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Ukraine Special Envoy Kurt Volker — were disappointed in Trump's May order, but he followed it anyway. Sondland said he felt foreign policy should be the work of the State Department, not the president's personal lawyer.