Washington (CNN) It was a whirlwind 24 hours for Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's top personal lawyer. It began Thursday evening, when Giuliani told the New York Times he was going to Kiev on behalf of his client, and it ended Friday night when he said on Fox News that he was not headed to Ukraine after all.

In the intervening time, Giuliani set off a flurry of questions from the media and condemnations from Trump's political opponents.

The entire ordeal captured in a bottle Giuliani's unique role in Trump's loose inner circle: both public advocate and provocateur, floating theories and schemes designed to sow doubt about the truth, all in the service of Trump's own interests. It was also a showcase for Giuliani's freelance, catch-as-catch-can approach to being a Trump attack dog.

Why was Giuliani going to Ukraine? He planned to meet with the country's president-elect to encourage him to pursue two matters of interest to Trump: restarting an investigation into a Ukrainian company linked to the son of leading 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden, and looking into whether Ukrainians worked with Democrats to prompt the FBI investigation into Trump's former campaign chair, Paul Manafort.

Wasn't this encouraging a foreign power to influence a US election?

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