Rick Perry’s Ukrainian Dream

by Simon Shuster, TIME, and Ilya Marritz, WNYC Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica’s investigations into the president’s business practices. This story is co-published with Time and WNYC. Rick Perry came to Washington looking for a deal, and less than two months into his tenure as energy secretary, he found a hot prospect. It was April 19, 2017, and Perry, the former Texas governor, failed presidential candidate and contestant on “Dancing With the Stars,” was sitting in his office on Independence Avenue with two influential Ukrainians. “He said, ‘Look, I’m a new guy, I’m a deal-maker, I’m a Texan,’” recalls one of them, Yuriy Vitrenko, then Ukraine’s chief energy...