Rudy circling the drain

President Trump had lunch on Saturday with Rudolph W. Giuliani amid revelations that prosecutors were investigating Mr. Giuliani for possible lobbying violations, and speculation that his position as the president’s personal lawyer was in jeopardy.

The lunch, at Mr. Trump’s golf course in Sterling, Va., was among several shows of the president’s support for Mr. Giuliani on Saturday.

  NYT

That's not a show of support. That's a private meeting outside the bounds of the White House note takers.

Mr. Trump, during a Saturday night appearance on Fox News, called Mr. Giuliani “a great gentleman” and said he is still his lawyer. “I know nothing about him being under investigation. I can’t imagine it,” he told the host Jeanine Pirro.

That is absolute bullshit. He knows full well Rudy is under investigation. Two of his accomplices were justs arrested trying to flee the country.

Also beforehand, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Giuliani on Twitter as a “legendary ‘crime buster’ and greatest Mayor in the history of NYC.”

The kind of stuff he does right before he tweet fires someone.

And Mr. Trump dismissed the investigation into Mr. Giuliani as a “a one sided Witch Hunt” carried out by the “Deep State.”

I thought he couldn't imagine Rudy being under investigation.

[Giuliani] his efforts to undermine the investigation’s origins and its conclusions helped lead Mr. Trump into an impeachment inquiry. The inquiry focuses on whether Mr. Trump, with assistance from Mr. Giuliani, abused the presidency to pressure Ukraine to pursue investigations for his political benefit, including into whether Ukrainians played a role in spurring the inquiry of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are now investigating whether Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine may have run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Are we to believe Trump doesn't read the New York Times? (Or at least know what the Times is reporting.)

Mr. Trump was not enamored with the negative publicity around Mr. Giuliani, people close to the president said, but he remains loyal because of his lawyer’s willingness to aggressively defend him during the special counsel’s inquiry.

And on TV. But that's subject to spur of the moment change.

It is not clear what was discussed at the lunch.

I've got a good guess.

Asked over text message about the significance of the lunch, Mr. Giuliani directed a reporter to Mr. Trump’s show of support on Twitter.

He said his relationship with Mr. Trump was “the same as ever,” but declined to answer additional questions.

[...]

Mr. Giuliani has acknowledged that he and two of his associates, who were arrested on campaign finance charges on Wednesday, worked with Ukrainian prosecutors to collect potentially damaging information about targets of Mr. Trump and his allies, including a former American ambassador to Ukraine and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his younger son, Hunter Biden.

Mr. Giuliani shared that material this year with American government officials and a Trump-friendly columnist in an effort to undermine the ambassador and other Trump targets.

A truly brilliant strategy. It got Nancy Pelosi to get off her ass and declare an impeachment investigation.

But Mr. Giuliani said that he had undertaken that work on behalf of Mr. Trump, not the Ukrainian prosecutors.

Even more brilliant. That was supposed to be to get him off the hook for representing a foreign government without reporting it (FARA), and it landed Trump smack in the shitter.

What concerns some of Mr. Trump’s advisers more than a possible FARA prosecution related to his Ukraine work is that Mr. Giuliani, who has been representing the president pro bono, is facing a contentious and potentially costly divorce from his third wife, Judith Nathan, and that he may have taken on clients overseas who could be problematic for him with prosecutors.

While Mr. Trump has been reluctant to separate from Mr. Giuliani, some of his advisers hope he will. They remain concerned about Mr. Giuliani’s public commentary about the president and the Ukraine issue.

As well they should.








Unless the Dems flub it and William Barr tells the Justice Department to let it go.  (Would the SDNY defy him?)

And, there's always more...

Semyon Kislin, a business associate of Donald Trump who is due to give evidence at the US president's impeachment inquiry on October 14, tried to obtain millions of dollars that Ukrainian prosecutors deemed stolen, Al Jazeera can reveal.

Kislin is a long-time friend of Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The Ukraine-born businessman donated to Giuliani's political campaigns in the 1990s.

  alJazeera

Yes, Giuliani and Trump have been involved in Ukraine and Russian crime for a very long time.

In January last year, Kislin lobbied the former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to help him unlock millions of dollars that had in fact been seized in a major criminal inquiry.

I'm guessing that was in her recent testimony.

A plot to withdraw millions of dollars in frozen bank accounts was first exposed by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit in 2018 and now Al Jazeera can reveal Kislin's role in a similar scheme.

Kislin, 83, purchased a Cypriot shell company holding part of a $1.5bn hoard of cash and bonds that the Ukrainian courts identified in 2015 as having been stolen by the disgraced former president, Viktor Yanukovich, before he fled Ukraine in 2014.

Al Jazeera's investigation, The Oligarchs, revealed how another Ukrainian businessman, Pavel Fuchs, had also purchased a Cypriot company holding assets deemed stolen from the state, and was involved in a scheme that aimed to 'unfreeze' these funds at a later date.

[...]

Fuchs also had business dealings with Giuliani and held repeated talks with Trump to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow.

No, no, no. Trump doesn't know Fuchs. He has pictures with everybody.

Opalcore Limited, which Kislin bought in November 2016, held a total of $20m of frozen assets and Quickpace Limited, which documents show was owned by Fuchs, held another $160m.

[...]

The money was frozen in 2015, one year after Yanukovich fled the country following mass protests. Prosecutors then worked to trace the assets, build a case, and return them to Ukraine's budget, which they did in March 2017.

Kislin denies collaborating with Fuchs but in each case the plan to release the funds is similar.

First they purchased Cypriot shell companies that according to Ukrainian authorities held Yanukovich's stolen assets. Then they would appeal to regain the funds, claiming that Ukrainian prosecutors had not followed the correct legal process when they seized the funds.

Finally, they hoped the asset seizure would be declared illegal and reversed, meaning they would have a court order allowing them to withdraw tens of millions of dollars.

[...]

Three days before Al Jazeera's investigation was released in January 2018, Kislin's lawyers wrote to Yovanovitch, the US ambassador, court documents show.

The letter, obtained by the Centre for Investigative Journalism, portrayed Kislin's company Trans Commodities NY (TCNY) as a victim of an "improper scheme" by Ukrainian officials. His advocates requested "assistance" in recovering the funds for the company arguing that the transfer of the bond proceeds was unlawful.

It is not clear if the ambassador or the US government agreed to help the American-Ukrainian businessman but Kislin's lawyers says he was "unaware…. of any efforts" made by the US embassy in Kiev.

I think a good guess would be that she wouldn't help and that refusal led to the plot to have her removed from her post.

Kislin's testimony before the inquiry on Monday could reveal exactly what lobbying he undertook to attempt to release the frozen Opalcore assets and whether he consulted Giuliani about the deal.

In a statement, Kislin's lawyer told Al Jazeera that "neither Mr Kislin nor anyone else on behalf of TCNY worked for, with, or on behalf of Mr Giuliani (or anyone else) …….to persuade prosecutors to investigate Joe Biden or Hunter Biden".

Just to hijack stolen money, eh?

Daria Kaleniuk, director of Ukraine's Anti-Corruption Action Centre, told Al Jazeera: "If you know that you are purchasing a company whose assets are seized in a criminal investigation you will probably not buy this company unless you have an understanding about how you will unseize that (asset). To me it stinks."

[...]

US officials revoked Fuchs's visa in 2017 and banned him from the US, where he owns property, for five years.

It is not clear whether the US action was prompted by Fuchs's dealings with Yanukovich's money or because he was alleged to have made threats to US citizens in the days after Trump's inauguration.

He is currently suing a businessman who he alleges defrauded him of $200,000 paid for a "VIP inauguration package" that never materialised. Fuchs alleged he and his entourage watched the inauguration on television at a hotel bar instead.

In recent months, Fuchs has begun a media campaign in to improve his image.

During a recent interview, he described Giuliani as "the lobbyist for Kharkiv and Ukraine" and said that he had paid Guiliani for what he said was a lobbying contract to improve the city's business reputation.

Giuliani has repeatedly denied working as a foreign lobbyist, something he is not registered to do.

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.

He'll at least be expecting a pardon. He better hope Trump doesn't get impeached first.  And, although  I've never heard of such a restriction, if a president is under impeachment investigation, he should at least be barred from passing out pardons until it's over. 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.