Within a day of the whistleblower complaint being made public, Donald Trump had identified what seemed like a very unlikely candidate for First Person to Go Under the Bus: Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. Despite saying that his phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect,” Trump went on to say that he never wanted to make that perfect call. “Not a lot of people know this but, I didn't even want to make the call,” said Trump. “The only reason I made the call was because Rick asked me to.”
Perry, said Trump, wanted him to talk to Zelensky to convince him that Ukraine should play host to a liquefied natural gas plant. However, the “transcript” of the call released by the White House doesn’t feature Trump talking to Zelensky about natural gas, any sort of plant, or even liquids. And there are those pesky texts exchanged among members of Trump’s crack team of inexperienced would-be diplomats that show them pressuring Ukrainian officials for weeks in advance of the call. There are no mentions of natural gas in those texts, but there are plenty of mentions of forcing Ukraine to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joseph Biden.
It does appear that Perry was involved in the Ukraine scandal. But as The Wall Street Journal reports, not only does Trump appear to be lying about the way in which Perry became involved, but he has it completely backwards. It wasn’t Perry who pushed Trump into a call with Zelensky. It was Trump who forced Perry to call … Rudy Giuliani.
And Perry wasn’t calling Giuliani because of anything to do with natural gas, or any other energy project. Instead, Giuliani was there to pass along to Perry the same stack of propaganda that he circulated to the State Department claiming that Ukraine had somehow taken a role against Trump in 2016. By which Giuliani doesn’t just mean that Ukrainian officials continued to investigate and find corruption on the part of Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort—including millions of dollars in under-the-table payments that were subsequently confirmed and became a part of the charges that landed Manafort in prison. Giuliani is pushing a conspiracy theory that Ukraine worked with Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee to fake the whole Russia thing for … reasons.
That phone call was far from Perry’s only interaction with Giuliani or with the Ukraine scandal. Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney brought Perry into the White House to make him one of the “three amigos,” along with Ambassador Gordon Sondland and special envoy Kurt Volker, and put them in the role of wrangling Ukrainian officials into giving Trump what he wanted while cutting experienced U.S. diplomats out of the loop.
But Perry doesn’t get a mention in all those pre- and post-call texts, making it hard to judge the length or extent of his involvement. In his interview, he claims not to have spoken with Giuliani about investigating Joe Biden. Instead, all the conspiracy theories he exchanged with Trump’s personal attorney seem to be those focused on absolving Vladimir Putin and suggesting that the whole break-in to the DNC server was fake.
Perry, smart glasses and all, seems fairly nonscandalous when compared to some Trump Cabinet members, a fact that can be easily demonstrated by the lack of an “acting” in front of his title. That doesn’t mean he’s done a good or even a competent job. Far from it. But when the National Security Agency has nine out of 10 top seats sitting empty, and the Department of the Interior has become a revolving door for lobbyists, just sitting there staring into space for three years—and not blowing up any of the nuclear weapons that are, scarily enough, under the control of his department—seems like an accomplishment. It’s not.
One thing is particular clear so far: The claim that Trump would not have made the call had Perry not urged him to pester Zelensky over natural gas is just another flat-out lie.