6:46 p.m. ET, December 5, 2019
Questions emerge about House investigator report showing calls between Giuliani and budget office
From CNN's Lauren Fox and Pamela Brown
Rudy Giuliani’s phone calls with a number that House investigators say is associated with the Office of Management and Budget, may have simply been calls to and from the White House, according to information obtained by CNN.
CNN has learned that the number the House Intelligence Committee’s report said was “associated” with the OMB is a number that could go to multiple officials within the White House complex including the White House itself.
The new details cast doubt on whether Giuliani was talking to the OMB in the spring, a critical time in which the ousted US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was facing a barrage of now-discredited rumors that she wasn’t loyal enough to the President. The calls, which occurred in April 2019, were well before any known action by the White House to hold Ukrainian military aid raising questions as to whether there were discussions earlier than previously know. The OMB designation appears again, according to the report, in calls with Giuliani on Aug. 8 when US military aid to Ukraine had already been held back.
The House Intelligence Committee’s report makes clear that “Giuliani had three phone calls with a number associated with OMB” on April 23. And the report detailed that in August Giuliani had a call with a number associated with OMB for 13 minutes.
“The Committees were unable to identify the official associated with the phone number. In the mid-afternoon, someone using a telephone number associated with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) called Mr. Giuliani, and the call lasted for nearly 13 minutes. Mr. Giuliani called the OMB number and the White House Situation Room several more times that evening, but each time connected for only a few seconds or not at all,” the report stated.
After the House Intelligence Committee published their report, one senior committee official told CNN that a number that had been associated with the OMB in the report had been “based on public directories,” but that they are “continuing to investigate these call records as part of our ongoing work, including to assess whether that number, associated with OMB landlines, may also indicate calls received from elsewhere within the White House."
“The White House does not contest that these calls with Giuliani originated within the White House, thereby confirming that Giuliani was in fact in frequent contact with individuals within the White House at key points during the scheme. For his part, Mr. Giuliani has now confirmed speaking to Mick Mulvaney, who continues to serve as both the head of OMB and Acting Chief is Staff in the White House,” the House Intelligence Committee official said in a statement.
After the call logs emerged Tuesday in the intelligence committee’s report, questions arose about why Giuliani was speaking with someone at OMB.
A spokesperson for OMB told CNN that no one from the agency was ever in contact with Giuliani.
One possibility was that the phone was connected to acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who still held his position at OMB. A White House official told CNN on Wednesday that Mulvaney and Giuliani had not discussed Ukraine and Mulvaney's call records never showed he spoke to the President's personal attorney by phone on the dates listed in the report.
Giuliani also said he wasn’t involved in withholding the aid to Ukraine and that he never discussed the issue on any call to OMB.
"(I) don't remember calling OMB and not about military aid never knew anything about it," he told CNN via text on Wednesday.
The call log still reveals Giuliani was in regular contact with the White House at a time that House intelligence investigators say was critical to the withholding of US military aid.