Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani dismissed suggestions he is encouraging a foreign government to impact the upcoming US election with his trip to Ukraine, telling CNN on Friday that it is not meddling because the 2020 general election is a year and a half away.

Giuliani tells CNN he intends to travel soon to Ukraine to meet with President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky in an effort to push the country to investigate matters connected to the release of negative information about Paul Manafort, the then campaign chairman for Trump's 2016 campaign. The former New York mayor also said he will continue to pursue questions about Vice President Joe Biden's call in 2016 to remove the top Ukrainian prosecutor, who at one point had been investigating a Ukrainian natural gas company connected to Biden's son.

That prosecutor's ouster was called for by many Western governments and donors who criticized him for failing to tackle the country's problems with corruption. There's never been any evidence that Biden acted improperly.

"I don't want any favors, I just want this investigated," Giuliani said in a phone interview.

A week ago, Giuliani told CNN that he was done looking into the Ukraine matters regarding Biden, but in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday he first said he was going to travel to Kiev to press the matter. Giuliani told the Times in defense of the effort.

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