BUT WHO, OTHER THAN DONALD, IS GULLIBLE ENOUGH TO BUY IT?:

The paper cited four former officials familiar with the matter who said the warnings were based on several sources, including intercepted communications. The communications are said to have showed that Giuliani communicated with multiple people who had ties to Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to Ukraine. The former New York mayor made the trip as part of his effort to dig up dirt on the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, related to the latter's work for the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings.

The Post reported that the intercepted communications raised red flags with US officials who worried that Russian officials were using Giuliani as a conduit to feed disinformation to Trump. After the White House was warned about the possibility, the report said, national security adviser Robert O'Brien told the president that he should approach any information Giuliani gave him with caution.

One source told The Post that the message to Trump was, "Do what you want to do, but your friend Rudy has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine." The warning was especially stark because officials wanted "to protect the president from coming out and saying something stupid," the paper reported, especially because he was in the middle of an impeachment at the time over his efforts to force Ukraine to launch politically motivated investigations into the Bidens and Burisma.

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