Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Akron, Ohio, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. Behind is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Following his fall from grace, Rudy Giuliani is back. The former New York mayor has returned from an evidence gathering trip to Kiev, Budapest and Vienna and has broken his radio silence. In an appearance on Monday night’s “Ingraham Angle,” he explains his opposition to former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. And contrary to her weepy testimony before the House impeachment panel, she was complicit in the corruption.

Democrats were quick to jump on board the ‘Giuliani is corrupt’ train this fall, and the media was only too happy to assist.

The government of Ukraine is notorious for being one of the most corrupt on the planet. Rudy begins by saying that Trump’s request for an investigation was necessary.

“Maybe they don’t understand that there was substantial corruption in Ukraine that went on for years and the President, when he asked for an investigation, was doing his duty as the President of the United States…When the President was asking the President of Ukraine to investigate, he was asking them to investigate crimes at the highest levels of both governments.”

Ingraham pointed out that much of Rudy’s work in Ukraine hinges on the word of the former Prosecutor General, Yuriy Lutsenko, but here’s how he is described by The New Yorker’s Adam Entous in a forthcoming issue.

Lutsenko, sometimes referred to simply as ‘the corrupt prosecutor general’ of Ukraine, has been portrayed, hardly without reason, as an unscrupulous politician prone to telling lies to further his personal ambitions…Lutsenko fed information to Giuliani, which Giuliani, Trump and their allies spun to smear the reputations of the Bidens and of Yovanovitch whom Trump fired in April. One of the House’s star witnesses told [Entous], of Lutsenko, “I don’t think we’d be here if not for him.”

Ingraham notes that, “This piece also has you on the record admitting that you forced out Marie Yovanovitch…So, why did you need her out of the way?”

Giuliani answers:

I didn’t need her out of the way. I forced her out because she’s corrupt. I came back with a document that will show unequivocally that she committed perjury when she said that she turned down the Visa for Mr. Shokin because of corruption. The fact is, in the State Department’s own records, the reason given is because he had an operation and hadn’t recovered yet. The operation, of course, was two years before. It’s documentary evidence that she committed perjury. I have four witnesses who will testify that she personally turned down their Visas because they were going to come here and give evidence either against Biden or against the Democratic Party. There’s no question that she was acting corruptly in that position and had to be removed. She should have been fired if the State Department weren’t part of the Deep State…

I have that testimony [of the four witnesses] under oath. I gave it to the State Department. They never investigated a single witness. When they say that she’s innocent, it’s innocent without investigation.

Ingraham notes that, during Yovanovitch’s testimony, she had presented herself as the corruption fighter and said Giuliani was just pushing the interests of the President.

I also have tape recordings of Ukrainian officials including career prosecutors who say that during the Obama era, the corruption in Ukraine became substantially worse and that she was a contributor to the corruption. For example, remember when she was asked at the end by Jim Jordan about how many things the Ukrainians had done, the statements that were made that he should be destroyed, his campaign should be destroyed, he was insane, the ambassador from the U.S. criticized. She was asked, ‘Did you ever go complain about that to the Ukrainian government?’ This is foreign interference in our election, right? The answer was no.

Also, when she talks about Shokin being corrupt, how come she didn’t talk about the candidate she supported, [Petro] Poroshenko, who stole everything that didn’t move. Poroshenko is right now under investigation for taking $100 million in bribes. She was close to him, Biden was close to him. If they were worried about corruption, why weren’t they worried about their friends who were taking millions?

“Ukraine wanted Hillary to win. I mean, that’s just beyond obvious,” adds Ingraham.

She pivots to reports that some in the White House who, “fairly or unfairly,” are worried about Giuliani’s role. She shows a clip of ABC’s Jonathan Karl. He reports, “If you talk to senior officials in the White House, to a person, privately they will tell you that they wish Rudy Giuliani would just go away and never be seen in public again related to any of this. There’s great frustration.”

Ingraham asks if he thinks this is accurate. He replies:

Are there people in the White House who are saying it? That could be. Is it accurate that in some way, it’s going to hurt to show the substantial amount of corruption that took place and that the President was doing what he should do when he asked for an investigation? I’d say they’re buying into the Democratic spin. The fact is there’s nothing to be defensive about. Joe Biden was involved in a multi-million dollar scheme along with other Democrats. It’s never been resolved. They’ve never been held to account.

As long as those issues remain between the United States and Ukraine, we really can’t fight corruption in the Ukraine. And the fact is there are numerous Ukrainian witnesses that want to come to the United States and explain how much, during the Obama administration, Ukraine was corrupted by Americans.

“Rudy, why are we giving them any money then? Why did the President okay the money?”

I can’t answer that question as to why they’re doing that?…What I will tell you is I have a report from the Ukrainian accounting office from 2017 showing that $5.3 billion of aid seems to have been wasted.

Our State Department, under Yovanovitch, went to the police and told them not to do the investigation and then they demanded they not do the investigation. You know why? Because our embassy was involved in wasting a great deal of that money by giving it to NGOs [non-government organizations]. And, when I was asked if the NGOs had a political bent, the answer I was given? They were Soros-like, they were left of left.

In a later post, I will show how Giuliani’s work corroborates the previous reporting of investigative reporter John Solomon.

Watch the video.