But intermediaries for Mr. Giuliani worked to organize meetings with people who they believed would have insights into the incoming Zelensky administration and the investigations in which Mr. Giuliani was interested. Mr. Trump has also sought to stir up interest in claims that Ukrainian officials tried to benefit Hillary Clinton in 2016 by focusing attention on Mr. Manafort’s business in Ukraine. The attention forced Mr. Manafort to resign from the Trump campaign, but allies of the Ukrainian officials involved have denied that they acted improperly to benefit Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Trump has recently suggested he would like Attorney General William P. Barr to look into the material gathered by the Ukrainian prosecutors. They increasingly began pushing the claim that “the real collusion began in @Ukraine,” as Ms. Toensing put it in a post on Twitter in March.

Source: New York Times May 10, 2019 01:09 UTC