Trump's free legal advice may be his undoing

[Rudy] Giuliani first came to prominence as the mob-fighting U.S. attorney in Manhattan in the 1980s, a position that helped propel him into the New York mayor’s office in 1994.

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After leaving office, he parlayed [his fame as New York mayor on 9/11] into a new role as a paid speaker around the world. The money that suddenly began flowing his way was a revelation, according to people who knew him.

One longtime friend recalled that during his travels for speeches abroad, Giuliani learned he could get paid $1 million or more as a consultant to foreign interests.

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By the time Giuliani ran for president in 2008 — a bid that started strong but fizzled — his financial disclosure statement showed he had made $9.2 million for speeches alone between 2006 and mid-2007, many from domestic companies but also from foreign sponsors and think tanks.

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Giuliani was soon moving in the same social circles as Trump, whom he had known for years in New York, emerging as one of the developer’s most vocal surrogates in the 2016 campaign.

After Trump’s surprise victory, Giuliani made clear he wanted to be named secretary of state, according to current and former administration officials. But a team of lawyers vetting potential administration appointees raised red flags about possible conflicts of interest arising from his work overseas.

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Trump’s election provided Giuliani with a substantially bigger platform [than he already had overseas] — and newfound access to the top levels of U.S. decision-making.

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Giuliani has bragged to other Trump allies that he has made millions of dollars since the president took office, according to people familiar with his comments.

He also has regularly boasted about his access to Trump and the closeness of their friendship, said a senior U.S. official who interacted with Giuliani.

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Giuliani used his access to Trump in 2017 to push for two controversial actions sought by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as The Post has previously reported.

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In the fall of 2017, Giuliani attended an Oval Office meeting where Trump urged then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to consult with Giuliani and craft a diplomatic deal that would involve dropping charges against [Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, who was charged in New York with violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, a Giuliani] client in exchange for concessions from Turkey, such as the release of an American pastor in Turkish custody.

People familiar with the incident have said Tillerson was shocked at what he viewed as an inappropriate request to intervene in a criminal matter.

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In late 2017, Zarrab pleaded guilty to orchestrating a multibillion-dollar conspiracy to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran by disguising money transfers so they would appear to be legitimate gold trades. He testified in federal court that the scheme was approved by Erdogan.

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That year, Giuliani also persistently pushed Trump on another top concern of the Turkish president: extraditing exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen back to his home country to face prosecution.

  WaPo

Also involved in that scheme was Mike Flynn.

Giuliani declined at the time to discuss whether he advocated for Gulen’s extradition, writing in a text message earlier this year: “can’t comment on it that would be complete attorney client privilege but sounds wacky.” He later denied that he tried to intervene in the case.

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But inside the White House, officials were so disturbed by how he was promoting Turkey’s causes with Trump that then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus pulled Giuliani aside in the West Wing in 2017 and warned him against lobbying for the country, officials said.

In April 2018, Giuliani formally joined Trump’s legal team to help him deal with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, a position that required him to talk frequently with the president.

White House aides fear Giuliani has used his role as the president’s lawyer to promote the interests of private clients, fretting that they do not know who he represents.

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Priebus’s successor, John F. Kelly, tried to limit Giuliani’s reach, scheduling his meetings with Trump at the White House residence, so he would not interact with other White House staff, former administration officials said. Kelly also told others he did not want to be part of calls or meetings with Giuliani.

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[Giuliani] has continued to take on foreign clients, and, behind the scenes, his advocacy on foreign policy issues has not ceased.

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In the summer of 2018, over cigars and whiskey at New York’s Grand Havana Room, Giuliani met with [Lev] Parnas and two American business executives with investments in the country seeking his advice on how to open a back channel of communication between Trump and Venezuela’s socialist leader, Nicolás Maduro.

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Weeks later, he told the group that he had met with John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, to discuss the idea.

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Bolton’s distaste for Giuliani’s foreign policy freelancing has emerged during the impeachment inquiry. Former national security official Fiona Hill testified that Bolton warned her not to interact with the president’s lawyer, calling him “a hand grenade that is going to blow everybody up.”

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By this summer, Giuliani had picked up an important Venezuelan client: energy executive Alejandro Betancourt López, who hired Giuliani to help him contend with a Justice Department investigation of alleged money laundering and bribery, according to people familiar with the situation.

And Rudy is just the guy to consult on cases of money laundering.

On Aug. 13, days after returning from Madrid, Giuliani was back at the Grand Havana Room, meeting with another potential client: the National Bank of Ukraine, which had taken over a bank once owned by Ukrainian businessman Ihor Kolomoisky.

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He suggested that lawyers with the law firm Quinn Emanuel, which represents the Ukrainian state-owned bank, hire him to wage a public campaign against Kolomoisky, with whom the bank is engaged in a complicated legal battle.

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“Since representing Trump I have considered and turned down all deals in Ukraine, even those not presenting a conflict,” Giuliani tweeted last week.

A spokesman for Quinn Emanuel declined to comment.

Giuliani’s interest in U.S. foreign policy has often tracked with countries where he has had a financial interest.

Imagine that. Trump and Giuliani are both using the US as a tool to make fortunes.

That was the case with his efforts to shape the pick for ambassador to Qatar, where he did security consulting work in 2017 and 2018 related to a hacking incident, Giuliani told The Post earlier this year.

He declined to describe the specific work he did but said his contract concluded before he was named Trump’s attorney in April 2018. He said that he did not register as a foreign lobbyist because he never lobbied U.S. officials on behalf of Qatar.

The Qatari Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

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The scope of the ongoing investigation [into Giuliani's business dealings] by federal prosecutors in Manhattan is unclear, but the recent subpoena to Freeh’s firm indicates that investigators appear to be drilling into Giuliani’s work abroad.

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In August 2018, Giuliani sent a letter to the Romanian president, expressing his concern that “excesses” by the nation’s anti-corruption agency were resulting in the prosecution of innocent people.

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Giuliani told The Post at the time that he was hired to send the letter by [former FBI director Louis J.] Freeh’s firm. He declined to say on whose behalf Freeh’s firm was working or how much he was paid.

But Freeh has said he was hired in July 2016 to conduct a review of the conviction of Gabriel “Puiu” Popoviciu, a Romanian real estate executive sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud.

Funny, all their clients seem to be criminals involved in money laundering and real estate.

Popoviciu originally hired Freeh at the recommendation of Hunter Biden, who had been retained by the Romanian.

And here's where things get even hinkier. (And this may be a hint at what Giuliani and Trump have been teasing in the news lately.)

Popoviciu originally hired Freeh at the recommendation of Hunter Biden, who had been retained by the Romanian.

Hunter Biden.

Giuliani’s letter to the Romanian president, written on the letterhead of his firm Giuliani Partners, did not mention his relationship to Trump. But it caused an immediate stir in Bucharest, where news organizations highlighted Giuliani’s role as the president’s attorney and questioned whether the letter indicated a shift in U.S. support for the anti-corruption agency.

The State Department tried to distance itself from him. “Rudy Giuliani does not speak for the U.S. government on foreign policy,” an official told The Post at the time.

Giuliani has repeatedly dismissed questions about the propriety of his foreign work.

“5 different organizations are looking at 8 different cases trying to find something wrong. why if I’m not part of a Left Wung [sic] Witchunt for nailing Biden,” he wrote in a recent text message.

I don't even know what that means. Another thing Trump and Giuliani have in common: they can't put together cogent sentences.

But people familiar with the current investigation have said federal prosecutors are exploring a wide range of potential crimes — including wire fraud and failure to register as a foreign agent — as they examine Giuliani’s relationship with his two associates, Parnas and Fruman.

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Parnas and Fruman were key intermediaries who helped connect Giuliani early this year with Ukrainian officials such as Ukraine’s then-top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, who was offering damaging information about Trump’s political opponents, Giuliani and Parnas have said.

Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine soon merged with official U.S. policy. He pushed White House and State Department officials to issue a visa to a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was blocked from traveling to the United States because of corruption allegations, according to testimony from U.S. officials during the impeachment hearings.

And he lobbied Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to dismiss the U.S. ambassador, speaking with Pompeo twice by phone and then sending him a packet of material advocating her removal, documents show.

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By July, Trump was personally involved in the effort, pressing Zelensky by phone to work with Giuliani to open the investigations.

Giuliani has insisted he was not paid for the work he did for Trump. But he has acknowledged that in January he considered representing Lutsenko and the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice, writing a draft contract to formalize the deal in which he would have been paid $500,000.

And it fell through when he got caught?

He told the Wall Street Journal that he quickly decided against the arrangement, fearing it could pose a conflict with his representation of the president.

But he had drawn up a draft contract. Okay.

Last week, Giuliani traveled to Budapest, where he met with Lutsenko, then traveled to Kyiv, where he met with two members of Ukraine’s parliament who have called for a joint U.S.-Ukrainian parliamentary investigation into the gas company that hired Hunter Biden.

During the trip, Giuliani indicated he was speaking for the United States, writing on Twitter that until Ukraine investigates the “criminal conduct” of Biden, it “will be a major obstacle to the U.S. assisting Ukraine with its anti-corruption efforts.”

The only problem with that is, he's not speaking for the United States. He has no role whatsoever in the US government.

In the three years since Trump took office, Giuliani has expanded his lucrative foreign consulting and legal practice.

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Along the way, he also has used his singular perch to try to influence U.S. policy and criminal investigations — at times pushing the interests of foreign figures who could benefit him financially.

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[S]ince the start of the administration, his actions have caused persistent alarm among Trump’s advisers, who worry that it is often not clear who Giuliani is representing — the president, his private clients or his own foreign policy views — in his meetings at the White House and in foreign cities.

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Those worries have become acute since Giuliani emerged as a central figure in the Ukraine pressure campaign that is the subject of the House impeachment inquiry — and the arrests of two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who assisted him in that effort.

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In several conversations in recent months, Attorney General William P. Barr has counseled Trump in general terms that Giuliani has become a liability and a problem for the administration, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations. In one discussion, the attorney general warned the president that he was not being well-served by his lawyer, one person with knowledge of the episode said.

Cue Trump (and Barr): Fake News!

Giuliani has assured the president that he is not in legal trouble, according to White House aides.

Unless you count the fucking federal investigations!

This is a lengthy article detailing Rudy's many controversial activities and foreign entanglements, and the Post is pay-to-read, but if you want to and have a subscription, you can get all the details, here.

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