(Bloomberg) -- Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department designated a U.S. attorney’s office in New York state to coordinate and handle investigations and material related to Ukraine, including receiving information from President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.The department assigned Richard Donoghue, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, to be its point person for handling and sorting Ukraine-related matters, according to a letter sent Tuesday to House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler.“Any and all new matters relating to Ukraine shall be directed exclusively to EDNY for investigation and appropriate handling,” according to a memo accompanying the letter.The memo stated that “there currently are several distinct open investigations being handled by different U.S. Attorney’s Offices and/or Department components that in some way potentially relate to Ukraine.” The subject of the memo is “Coordination of Investigations.” It indicates the Justice Department is involved in far more Ukraine-related probes than may be publicly known.The policy could open a new line of attack against Barr and the Justice Department leadership after a tumultuous week in which the top U.S. law enforcement officer seized control of cases tied to Trump, prompting a team of prosecutors to step down in one high-profile case. Over the weekend, more than 2,000 former Justice Department officials signed a letter condemning the attorney general.Trump has repeatedly called for investigations regarding Ukraine, including into the activities of a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has also given voice to discredited theories that Ukraine, not Russia, led efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.Read More: Trump, Barr Fuel DOJ Turmoil Over Cases Tied to White HouseThe memo released Tuesday says existing matters related to Ukraine will remain with the offices and components where they’re currently being handled but are now “subject to ongoing consultation with EDNY.”Any move to widen or expand existing matters will require prior consultation with Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen’s office and the Eastern District, according to the memo. That could create tension with ongoing investigations, especially in the Southern District of New York office in Manhattan, which is investigating Giuliani and two of his business associates.The department assigned Donoghue “to coordinate existing matters and to assess, investigate, and address any other matters relating to Ukraine, including the opening of any new investigations or the expansion of existing ones,” according to the memo.Stealth CampaignBarr acknowledged last week that an intake process had been established for Giuliani to give the department information he collected in Ukraine, essentially bringing what was a stealth campaign into official government channels. The attorney general didn’t initially provide more information.Giuliani previously said he was collecting information about the activities of Biden and his son, Hunter, in Ukraine. Giuliani’s efforts became a central factor in Trump’s impeachment for pressuring the Ukrainian government to announce investigations into the Bidens to help the president’s re-election. The president was acquitted by the Senate in early February.Barr has not discussed matters related to Ukraine with Giuliani, according to the letter, which was signed by Stephen Boyd, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs. U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Scott Brady has been assigned to assist in receipt, processing and analysis of information provided by the public relating to Ukraine, according to the letter.To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Anna EdgertonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

The top intelligence community lawyer whose initial decision to block the Ukraine whistleblower complaint from reaching Congress helped set off the House impeachment inquiry, will resign from his post, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirms to CNN.

Jason Klitenic, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) whose handling of a government whistleblower complaint helped spur the House's impeachment inquiry into President Trump, is stepping down from his...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a trio of U.S. senators last week that he would continue to steer clear of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, according to one of the senators.

“Zelensky clearly doesn’t really want to talk about this, and I don’t blame him,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote in a Medium post detailing his meeting in Kyiv on Friday with Zelensky and two Republican senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and John Barrasso of Wyoming.

Murphy asked Zelensky whether he was “still feeling pressure” to aid Giuliani’s push for investigations targeting Trump’s political rivals, noting Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine have not abated.

“But he tells us that, though Giuliani has long wanted a meeting with him, he has always stayed clear of Giuliani and intends to keep it that way,” Murphy wrote.

Murphy’s account of the meeting comes two weeks after the Senate acquitted Trump on charges that he solicited foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election by dispatching Giuliani to Ukraine to pressure the country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, among other political adversaries. The inquiry revealed, in part, that Giuliani sought a meeting with Zelensky last year with Trump’s knowledge and consent.

The objective of the Friday sit-down in Kyiv, according to Murphy, was to “send a signal that there is no distance between” Democrats and Republicans when it comes to U.S. support for Ukraine, a beleaguered ally that continues to fight Russian incursions to its east. Several lawmakers have expressed concern that the impeachment saga was further fraying the U.S.-Ukraine relationship and undermining U.S. interests in the region.

Murphy and Johnson began quietly making preparations for the trip during the Senate’s impeachment trial. Murphy said he was restless during a red-eye flight to the region on Thursday as he contemplated how he would tell Zelensky that it would be “disastrous” for Ukraine if he involved himself with Giuliani.

“I felt like I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t once again remind Zelensky of the damage he could do to the country’s reputation if he ever succumbed to the pressure,” Murphy wrote. “I couldn’t sleep as I tried to figure out the tactful way to continue to make this case.”

Murphy indicated that he was satisfied with Zelensky’s response, adding that the Ukrainian leader “has no intention of getting involved in American politics any more than he already has, unintentionally.”

Later, Murphy wrote, Zelensky began speaking English and quipped about his past life as an entertainer in Ukraine.

“As an actor, I always dreamed of becoming famous in America,” Zelensky said, according to Murphy. “And now I’m famous in America. But not the way I wanted!”

After meeting with Zelensky, the senators traveled to Munich for an annual security conference. Murphy revealed in his blog post that he met on the sidelines of the gathering with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.

Murphy said he sought to make clear to Zarif that any further attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq “will be perceived as an unacceptable escalation” in the aftermath of a U.S. strike that killed a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, and Iran’s response attack on a base in Iraq that wounded dozens of American soldiers.

“I cannot conduct diplomacy on behalf of the whole of the U.S. government, and I don’t pretend to be in a position to do so,” Murphy wrote. “But if Trump isn’t going to talk to Iran, then someone should.”

Trump responded later Tuesday, suggesting without evidence that Murphy had violated the Logan Act, which bars private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. Trump said he wants to know what Murphy and Zarif discussed.

“I saw that there is a Senator Murphy, met with the Iranians, is that a fact? I just saw that on the way over, is there anything I should know?” Trump mused. “That sounds like to me a violation of the Logan Act. What happened with that?”

A spokeswoman for Murphy said the senator gave the U.S. embassy in Germany a heads up that he was pursuing a meeting with Zarif, adding that Murphy has met with Zarif before — under both the Obama and Trump administrations.

“Unfortunately, President Trump’s Iran policy has been a total disaster. So I can understand that he wants to distract from his failures,” Murphy said in a statement in response to Trump’s missive, adding that he and Zarif discussed “apolitical priorities.”

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, who supported impeachment proceedings against President Trump, made his endorsement two weeks shy of Super Tuesday primaries.

Hunter Biden, son of former vice president Joe Biden, was on the board of a trade group that lobbied the Obama administration for increased U.S. aid to Ukraine, according to a report Tuesday.From 2012 through 2018, the younger Biden served as a director for the Center for U.S. Global Leadership and was connected as well with its affiliate, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, The Daily Caller reported. The two groups, which include about 400 larger corporations and non-government organizations, lobbied for increased spending abroad by the State Department’s International Affairs Budget, including a special focus on Ukraine.At the time, Joe Biden was also advocating for increased U.S. spending in Ukraine.Hunter Biden's small private equity firm, Rosemont Seneca, featured other well-connected politicos as well, including his partner Devon Archer, who was a former adviser on Obama Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, and another partner, Kerry’s son-in-law Christopher Heinz.“Hunter Biden works for [Archer]. So we’ve got the top level politicos with us. All of my guys, is as top tier as it gets,” a businessman named Bevan Cooney wrote in text messages released in connection with an unrelated criminal case against Archer. “You don’t get more politically connected and make people more comfortable than that.”In 2013, the groups held an event honoring Joe Biden for his work supporting increased spending abroad, an event Hunter Biden was also introduced as having a "very special relationship with our honoree."Biden's separate lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings while his father was vice president and in charge of addressing corruption in Ukraine has also drawn scrutiny and featured prominently in the impeachment proceedings against President Trump. That position earned Biden at least $50,000 a month for his advice on “transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities.”During a July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked Zelensky to help his administration investigate allegations that Joe Biden used his position as vice president to help the Ukrainian gas company avoid a corruption probe soon after Hunter Biden was appointed to its board of directors. That phone call led to an Intelligence Community whistleblower complaint that ultimately sparked a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump’s actions.Biden has said that in the spring of 2016, during his tenure as vice president, he called on Ukraine to fire the top prosecutor investigating the energy company paying his son. Biden suggested he would withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine if the country did not fire the prosecutor, who was accused by the State Department and U.S. allies in Europe of being soft on corruption.

Former national security adviser John Bolton criticized the White House on Monday for what he termed its efforts to censor his memoir on working in the Trump administration."For all the focus on Ukraine and the impeachment trial and all that, to me, there are portions of the manuscript that deal with Ukraine, I view that like the sprinkles on the ice cream sundae in terms of what’s in the book," Bolton told an audience at Duke University. "This is an effort to write history and I did it the best I can. We’ll have to see what comes out of the censorship." Bolton also said he hoped the book would survive the pre-publication review process."I’m hoping ultimately I can get the book published,” Bolton said. “I hope it’s not suppressed."Information from Bolton's book, The Room Where it Happened, was leaked towards the end of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. Bolton reportedly wrote that Trump had specifically conditioned military aid to Ukraine on a commitment by that country to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.Republican senators including Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and Ron Johnson (R., Wisc.) called on Bolton to publicly state whatever information relevant to the trial he had written in the book. However, Bolton declined to do so, and Democrats failed to convince enough Senate Republicans to vote to call witnesses in the impeachment trial, dashing Democrats' hopes that Bolton could be called to testify.