This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

Senior aides to Joe Biden, who is the target of Donald Trump’s efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine that could help his re-election bid next year, have written to TV news channels asking them to keep the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, off air.

Giuliani leads battle against intensifying Trump impeachment inquiry Read more

The extraordinary letter, disclosed by the Daily Beast, comes from two top Biden campaign advisers. They ask the editorial chiefs of all main TV networks and cable news channels to desist from booking Giuliani.

The authors argue that the former New York mayor, who is deeply embroiled in the Ukraine scandal that has prompted an impeachment inquiry, is being given free rein to peddle lies and conspiracy theories.

Giuliani is spreading “false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump”, writes Anita Dunn, a former acting White House communications director under Barack Obama, and Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager.

“By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”

Giuliani has been an almost ubiquitous feature on network and cable news shows since news broke that an anonymous whistleblower had filed a complaint alleging that Trump was trying to solicit the help of the Ukraine government in his 2020 re-election bid. Under US election law, it is illegal to seek or gain electoral benefit from any foreign entity.

Though Giuliani became a figure of national unity in the wake of 9/11 as “America’s Mayor”, he has become a symbol of the extreme partisan divide that has opened up under Trump.

His pronouncements on the Ukraine matter have grown increasingly shrill, to the point that some pundits have wondered whether he is “melting down”.

He called a fellow guest on Fox News a “moron” and an “idiot”. He denied to Chris Cuomo of CNN that he had asked Ukraine to investigate Biden, then said “of course I did” 30 seconds later.

He has also invoked wild conspiracy theories involving Hillary Clinton, the philanthropist George Soros and other rightwing bogey figures.

But the most consistent theme in his outlandish on-air comments has been his attempt to smear Biden, who for months has been a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump in the presidential election next year.

On ABC’s This Week on Sunday he repeated claims that in 2016 the then vice-president pressured Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor because he was investigating corruption in a gas company on whose board sat Biden’s son, Hunter.

In fact, the investigation into the company, Burisma, was dormant by 2016. Top officials in the Ukraine government have made clear that no evidence of corruption relating to either Biden was found.

In their letter, the two Biden aides write: “We … demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative.”

Touching on controversy over Giuliani’s actual relationship to Trump and his freelance role in US foreign policy, they also say he “is not a public official, and holds no public office that would entitle him to opine on the nation’s airwaves”.

Dunn and Bedingfield also demand that if Giuliani does appear, “an equivalent amount of time [should be given] to a surrogate for the Biden campaign”.

Giuliani responded in a text to the Daily Beast.

The letter, he said, was an instance of “the usual leftwing censorship”.