No longer has a single document stirred Washington up as much as a whistleblower's complaint about Donald Trump's Ukraine policy. The nine pages contain dramatic allegations of abuse of power against the US president and several close associates - and could lead to impeachment.
In addition to Trump, for example, US Secretary of Justice William Barr is charged there: he should have helped to put pressure on the Ukrainian leadership to discredit Trump's democratic rival Joe Biden.
But the Trump vassal, whom the anonymous insider most commonly accuses in his report - as a major player in the escalating Ukraine scandal - is not even a US government employee: it's Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. Trump's private lawyer.
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Whistleblower's complaint about Trump (pdf) PDF size: 4 MB
Giuliani's name appears a total of 31 times in the document, more than any other except Trump himself. "Mr. Rudolph Giuliani", is there at the very beginning of the Ukraine campaign against Biden, "is a central figure in this effort".
Actually, Giuliani, 75, was most recently known for his bizarre TV appearances. For months, he has been treading through US broadcasters to defend Trump: confused, wild interviews, roaring, gesticulating and contradicting himself. It is an entertaining strategy that he seems to be voluntarily fooling with - but which has already served him in the Russian affair to obscure troublesome facts.
The Ukraine scandal suggests, however, that Giuliani played a much more ominous role behind the scenes.
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Giuliani - who is not paid by the White House, but is supposed to work pro bono , as Trump's private plasterer - was his "personal ambassador" for Ukraine, it says. Say: past the then US ambassador, the respected diplomat Marie Yovanovitch, who was prematurely arrested in May.
Giuliani therefore ran a secret channel to Kiev to "news" Trumps to submit and urge Ukraina's President Volodymyr Selenskyj to "play along" - allegedly in Biden. He deliberately bypassed the official "national security decision-making process," the whistleblower said. EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Ukraine Commissioner Kurt Volker had tried in vain to "limit the damage" that Giuliani had done.
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Giuliani has confirmed Ukraine contacts. CNN host Chris Cuomo recently asked if he had forced Kiev on behalf of Trump to investigate Biden. First Giuliani said: "No, I have not." A minute later he answered the same question: "Of course I have!"
Namely, as Giuliani later claimed, because he had been "asked" by the US State Department specifically. "Giuliani is a private citizen," the ministry denied. "He does not speak for the US government."
Or is it? "Rudy knows very well what's going on, and he's a very capable guy," Trump said in his July telephone conversation with Selenskyj, whose minutes the revelations kicked off this week. "If you could talk to him, that would be great."
Giuliani was not just Trump's TV pit bull, but his draftsman in the shade - a whole new side of "America's Mayor," the once revered hero of a sore nation.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the mayor trudged through traumatized New York, taking care of firefighters, police and wounded. He discreetly turned away from the cameras to hide his tears, making sure that his late-night staff at the city hall also got psychiatric help.
At that time Giuliani was considered America's comforter, healer and reassuring personality, personifying the mythical perseverance of America. "Tower of Strength," magazine headlined "Time" on its cover when it named him "Man of the Year" in 2001.
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Heroic aura: Giuliani at the 9/11 memorial service in September in New York
Giuliani cultivated this - largely fictitious - heroes' aura as a trademark by later founding a consulting and security firm that made him a multi-millionaire. Hype and hubris let forget that he had been one of New York's most controversial mayors.
This also connects him to Trump, whom he has known since the 1980s, when they both rose in parallel in the New York Society. However, Giuliani became Trump's scandalist only in the 2016 election campaign - and finally in April 2018, when Trump replaced his legal advisors in the Russian affair.
Of course, Giuliani mourns his heroic reputation. "It's impossible for the whistleblower to be a hero, and I'm not," he mused on Thursday in a phone conversation with Atlantic magazine. "Those idiots - when that's over, I'll be the hero."
