Rudy's watches

They get his watches.

Nosferatu's lawyers want out

They don't stop until they're made to stop

Oh my

 

That was painful.

I only hope recent revelations about Fani Willis don't tank this case.  That might be Rudy's only hope here.

And, as if Judge McAfee's case weren't complex or delicate enough...

The judge in Fulton County DA Fani Willis' Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump told attorneys Friday there will likely be a hearing in early February, at the earliest, to address allegations filed against Willis accusing her of having an inappropriate relationship with a special prosecutor on her team.

[...]

Defendant Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign staffer, previously filed a motion Monday seeking to dismiss the charges against him, alleging that Willis "engaged in a personal, romantic relationship" with prosecutor Nathan Wade, which allegedly resulted in financial gain for both of them.

[...]

"So obviously my plan with this was to allow the state an opportunity to respond before setting a hearing date," Judge McAfee said Friday. "Early February would be the soonest that would be happen."

[...]

Willis, meanwhile, has been subpoenaed as part of Wade's divorce proceedings, according to a court filing in a separate case that was obtained by ABC News.

The filing alleged that Wills and Wade's relationship began "while Wade was married" and that he filed for divorce "a day after his first contract with Willis commenced."

Friday's hearing came on the same day that the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee announced an investigation of Wade, with committee Chairman Jim Jordan sending him a letter requesting communications and documents related to "the coordination of the Fulton County District Attorney's Office with other politically motivated investigations and prosecutions and the potential misuse of federal funds."

  MSN

I may not be alive by the time all this is resolved.  Unless Trump gets back in office next year.  Then, my chances are pretty good.

UPDATE 01/15/2024:

Rudy duty

He has no intention of paying it.  Can they attach a lien to his apartment for payment?

UPDATE 12/16/2023:

Asking price: $6,100,000

Wait a bit.  He'll come down more after an appeal.

We'll see.

Like the whole Trump family, to name a few.

Also, is this another trip to court for defamation dollars? ...

UPDATE 12/18/2023:

UPDATE 12/19/2023:

UPDATE 12/21/2023:

And, it is my understanding that a settlement payment is not affected by bankruptcy.

Trial lead-up not going well for Rudy

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said [...] jurors will be told that Giuliani intentionally hid financial documents and other records in defiance of court orders.

“Giuliani’s continued and flagrant disregard of this Court’s August 30 Order that he produce financial-related documents concerning his personal and his businesses’ past and present assets, revenues, income, viewership metrics, and social media, all of which information is potentially pertinent at the upcoming damages trial,” Howell wrote.

[...]

The Judge also said the jury will be instructed to infer that Giuliani received “substantial benefits” for defaming the election workers and that the Giuliani businesses “continue to generate” revenue from their operations.

[...]

The five-page ruling was released Friday, ahead of the scheduled Dec. 11 trial.

[...]

[Giuliani] also will not be able to state or suggest that he is “insolvent, bankrupt, judgement proof, or otherwise unable to defend himself, comply with this Court’s orders, or satisfy and eventual judgement.

  The Hill

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

Rudy is leaking lawyers

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

Quelle suprise

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

Merry Xmas, Rudy

UPDATE 09/22/2023:

Can't bleed a turnip, right Rudy?

And you can't take back services already rendered.

Ex-lawyers for Rudy Giuliani, a longtime ally and former attorney for former President Trump, filed a lawsuit against Giuliani for nearly $1.4 million in alleged outstanding legal bills.

  The Hill

Consider yourselves stiffed. At least lawyers stiffed by Trump can say they once represented a president.

As Giuliani’s legal challenges mount up, so does his debt.

In recent case proceedings, Giuliani’s attorneys pointed to his inability to pay for bills, as well as the apparent cutting off of assistance from Trump’s PAC after it initially provided him with $400,000 this year to help cover the cost of preserving his records as evidence in court cases.

Last month, CNN reported Giuliani and his attorney traveled to Florida in April to appeal to Trump to help cover some of Giuliani’s legal fees. Trump reportedly did not appear interested, though he verbally agreed to assist with some of Giuliani’s legal bills without committing to a specific amount or time frame.

The time frame is never.

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

So....how many people were there?

Former President Donald Trump hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club as Giuliani struggles to pay his mounting legal bills.

[...]

Giuliani’s son, Andrew, said in a radio interview that the Thursday night event was expected to raise more than $1 million for his father and that Trump had committed to hosting a second event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, later in the fall or early winter.

  AP

"More than $1 million". I should hope so. If there were no more than 10 people attending, you'd get that. Maybe he'll have better luck in Florida than in New Jersey.

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

Rudy under the bus

Looks like, unlike some others, Trump's PAC isn't paying Rudy's attorney's bills.

Or maybe Rudy came to his senses (I know, doubtful) and realized he needed to hire someone independent of Trump, so he can make a deal with the prosecutors.

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

Toast

He says it doesn't matter, because he has a constitutional right to lie.

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

UPDATE 07/27/2023:

It’s not entirely clear what caused this about-face, although recent developments in the case suggest that this may be an attempt to avoid further discovery obligations.

[...]

There’s yet another pending motion for sanctions alleging that Giuliani failed to preserve or spoliated evidence. Earlier this week, Giuliani’s buddy Bernie Kerik capitulated to the plaintiffs’ discovery demands after being threatened with monetary sanctions of his own. Kerik, a former law enforcement official with his own checkered past, accompanied Giuliani on his efforts to overturn Biden’s electoral college win. It’s probably not a coincidence that Giuliani had a change of heart just a day after Kerik agreed to turn all of his comms over.

Indeed, Giuliani’s own filings imply that he intends this stipulation to end discovery and obviate the need to pay any future sanctions.

[...]

Rudy appears to believe that his stipulation obviates the need for further discovery, presumably to include the scheduled deposition of Kerik and his agreed-upon document disclosures.

[...]

And perhaps he would be able to “get to the legal issues of the case” if he were not still claiming defenses which bring his state of mind into question. But if he is going to assert his right to, say, comment on issues of public concern, then the plaintiffs are unlikely to agree to waive further disclosures, much less forego the fee award for time already expended to get to this point.

  Above teh Law

Not enough

Doesn't begin to make up for the damage to their lives that asshole cost them.

And don't forget to add a whopping interest for every day he delays or appeals.

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

Rudy's turn

A former associate is suing Rudy Giuliani for alleged sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and other misconduct, accusing the former mayor and Trump lawyer of making "sexual demands" and going on "alcohol-drenched rants that included sexist, racist, and antisemitic remarks," many of which were allegedly recorded.

Noelle Dunphy said she began working for Giuliani in 2019 as his director of business development. Giuliani "began abusing Ms. Dunphy almost immediately after she started working for" him, according to her lawsuit.

"He made clear that satisfying his sexual demands -- which came virtually anytime, anywhere -- was an absolute requirement of her employment and of his legal representation," the lawsuit said.

  ABC

Yes, we're all thinking...and she stuck around?

According to Dunphy, Giuliani promised her a $1 million annual salary but the offer came with a catch: Giuliani was in the midst of an acrimonious divorce and he told Dunphy that her pay would have to be deferred and her employment kept "secret" until the divorce proceedings finished. He claimed that his "crazy" ex-wife and her lawyers were watching his cashflow and that his ex-wife would "attack" and "retaliate" against any female employee that Giuliani hired, the lawsuit said.

[...]

Giuliani apparently decided during the interview that he would use the job offer and his representation as a pretext to develop a quid pro quo sexual relationship with Ms. Dunphy. He was later recorded telling Ms. Dunphy, 'I’ve wanted you from the day I interviewed you,'" the lawsuit said.

[...]

According to the lawsuit, a week into her employment, Giuliani had Dunphy flown to New York on a chartered plane and insisted she stay in a guest suite in his Upper East Side apartment. The two drank and at one point "Giuliani then pulled her head onto his penis, without asking for or obtaining any form of consent. He held her by her hair. It became clear to Ms. Dunphy that there was no way out of giving him oral sex. She did so, against her will," the lawsuit said.

Giuliani often demanded that Dunphy work naked, in a bikini, or in short shorts with an American flag on them that he bought for her, the lawsuit said.

"When they were apart, they would often work remotely via videoconference, and during those conferences Giuliani almost always asked her to remove her clothes on camera. He often called from his bed, where he was visibly touching himself under a white sheet," the lawsuit said.

It really sounds like a mutual agreement. I'm not sure a jury is going to be sympathetic. I'm awaiting criminal charges in the insurrection for Rudy.

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

UPDATE 09:41 pm:

Even better...

UPDATE 12:35 pm:

A representative for Giuliani says that he "completely denies the allegations" being made by Dunphy, adding: "This is pure harassment and an attempt at extortion." Giuliani also denies that Dunphy ever worked for him.

  Inside Edition

I guess if he never paid her, she might have a hard time proving she did. But wait.

Dunphy claims that Giuliani also told her that he and then-president Donald Trump were selling pardons for $2 million.

[...]

That is the same amount of money Dunphy claims Giuliani promised to pay her over two years, but according to the lawsuit, all she got in the end was $12,000.

[...]

Dunphy says in her lawsuit that she was only paid $12,000 over the course of the two years she claims she worked for Giuliani. Dunphy says she agreed to work off the books because Giuliani said that his wife Judith would be upset to learn that he hired her amid their acrimonious divorce.

What was she doing for income those two years?  If he was paying her rent, that might go toward proving she worked for him, in at least SOME aspect.

Accountability in American politics is essentially nonexistent

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

Parnas has a trove of documentation

House committees on Tuesday turned over a cache of documents, including texts and notes, from Parnas to the Senate. The documents had initially been seized by law enforcement following his arrest.

[...]

Hundreds of pages of photos, messages and calendar entries show Parnas enlisting a top official at the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action to assist in promoting media coverage he helped arrange and attending functions with Republican congressmen and Trump family members. A calendar entry released as part of the cache shows Parnas had a scheduled breakfast with Trump in New York on Sept. 26 — after the public revelation of a whistleblower complaint about a call the president had with his Ukrainian counterpart.

  WaPo

Does he have pictures of that?

Following Parnas's interview with MSNBC, Giuliani told The Washington Post, "believe him at your peril."

"We all make mistakes. I feel sorry for him and his family," Giuliani said.

Rudy must be certain he'll get a pardon, or he'd be buying his own one-way ticket out of the country.

You can look at a trove of House documents from Parnas here.

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

UPDATE:

Quid pro quo at work

More info from the Parnas documents.

New materials released by House Democrats appear to show Ukraine’s top prosecutor offering an associate of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, damaging information related to former vice president Joe Biden if the Trump administration recalled the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

[...]

The cache of materials released by House investigators late Tuesday exposed a number of previously unknown details about efforts by Giuliani and his associates to obtain material in Ukraine that would undermine Trump’s Democratic opponents.

[...]

Among the revelations in the documents released Tuesday: a message from Giuliani to Parnas saying he had involved a person he called “no 1” — possibly Trump himself — in an effort to lift a U.S. visa ban on a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was planning to come to the United States to make claims about Biden.

[...]

The materials show that Parnas, a Russian-speaker who helped coordinate Giuliani’s outreach to Ukrainian sources, was directly communicating with an array of top Ukrainian officials. Among them was Yuri Lutsenko, at the time Ukraine’s top prosecutor and a close political ally of then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who was running for reelection.

Lutsenko wanted to get rid of Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador, in part because she had been critical of his office and supported a quasi-independent anti-corruption bureau he despised.

The messages, written in Russian, show Lutsenko urging Parnas to force out Yovanovitch in exchange for cooperation regarding Biden. At one point, Lutsenko suggests he won’t make any helpful public statements unless “madam” is removed.

“It’s just that if you don’t make a decision about Madam — you are calling into question all my declarations. Including about B,” Lutsenko wrote to Parnas in a March 22 message on WhatsApp.

It’s unclear if ‘B’ is a reference to Biden or Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served from 2014 to 2019.

Four days later, Lutsenko told Parnas that work on the case against the owner of the gas company is proceeding successfully and evidence of the money transfers of “B” had been obtained.

“And here you can’t even remove one fool :(” Lutsenko laments, again appearing to push for Yovanovitch’s ouster.

“She’s not a simple fool[,] trust me,” Parnas responded. “But she’s not getting away.”

[...]

The following month, Yovanovitch was removed from her post at Giuliani’s urging. Lutsenko later said publicly that he found no evidence of wrongdoing under Ukrainian law by Hunter or Joe Biden.

  WaPo

Ooooh. Burned 'em. I guess we found the fools.*

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

UPDATE:

Didn't want to rile His Nibs?

* Contradictory?

Must be Rudy exposé day

Are the Washington Post and the New York Times coordinating stories?

Holding court a few nights after the 2016 election in a private cigar bar on Fifth Avenue, glass of Macallan at hand, Mr. Giuliani boasted to friends that President-elect Donald J. Trump would soon nominate him to the most prestigious of cabinet posts.

“How about,” Mr. Giuliani asked, “secretary of state?”

[...]

It would be a sublime reward for having thrown in with Mr. Trump when the respectable Republican establishment was keeping its distance, a fresh burst of stardom in a public life that had been fading fast. Mr. Giuliani made himself indispensable to the Trump campaign by doing dirty work that no one else wanted and trudging ahead even after the candidate lashed him with humiliations.

Three years on, Mr. Giuliani never got the job he believed he had coming — “a bitter disappointment,” his now-estranged wife says — but in his five decades as a public figure, he has never been more prominent in national affairs.

Step by step, he has escorted President Trump to the brink of impeachment.

  NYT

I'd like to think Rudy is just getting his paybacks, but he's not that smart. He's not intentionally taking Trump down.

Mr. Giuliani himself is now under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in the very office where he enjoyed his first extended draughts of fame nearly four decades ago. The separate troubles he has gotten his client and himself into are products of the uniquely powerful position he has fashioned, a hybrid of unpaid personal counsel to the president and for-profit peddler of access and advice.

[...]

Mr. Giuliani has been the voice in Mr. Trump’s ear when others could not be heard, and served as the voice of Mr. Trump in places where presidents dare not go.

[...]

His personal life has descended into the sort of well-appointed shambles that material wealth can disguise, though not necessarily make any less fraught.

A third marriage has fallen into divorce court ruins, revealing monthly expenses of $230,000 for six homes and 11 country club memberships.By taking President Trump as a client, he lost a position at a law firm in 2018 that paid him $6 million annually, according to court filings.

[...]

“He doesn’t just like the spotlight,” his estranged wife, Judith Giuliani, said in an interview. “He craves it, for validation.”

Yet another trait he has in common with Trump.

During the last three months of the [2016 Trump] campaign, he spun like a tornado from one television studio to the next or jetted around the country, at every stop hurling charges of corruption like boiling brimstone at anyone standing in Mr. Trump’s way.

[...]

[When] an off-camera tape from the television show “Access Hollywood” [was] released of Mr. Trump speaking in crude terms about how his celebrity status gave him license to sexually assault women [...] Mr. Trump’s usual surrogates — Kellyanne Conway, Reince Priebus, Chris Christie — had been booked to appear on the Sunday shows [...] they all bailed.

Then Mr. Giuliani stepped forward.

“Rudy was the only person willing to go on television to defend Donald Trump,” Mr. Bossie said.

[...]

Mr. Giuliani spent that morning rushing between studios — he appeared on all five major networks — pausing long enough to strike a penitential chord and write off Mr. Trump’s words as unfortunate locker-room talk.

[...]

Unknown to the public, the F.B.I. had recently obtained a laptop used by one of Mrs. Clinton’s aides that had not been examined during the investigation of her private email server. That inquiry had concluded in July without charges, but the newly discovered laptop contained about 50,000 emails that might have been relevant. F.B.I. agents planned to go through them in due course, but several ranking officials did not see that any mad rush was called for, the Justice Department inspector general would later report. They believed — correctly, as it turned out — that the emails would be similar to the hundreds of thousands already examined.

Then Mr. Giuliani began dropping those broad hints of a “surprise,” adding that he knew F.B.I. agents were very upset.

[...]

Mr. Giuliani would later deny that he had heard about the emails from F.B.I. agents, though he had bragged about that in broadcast interviews.

Years before, he had shown that working with virtually nothing, he could cultivate the mere existence of investigations to his political benefit. Early in his first term as mayor, facing criticism over patronage hires, Mr. Giuliani and aides announced spectacular claims that a widely respected commissioner in the previous administration, Richard Murphy, had overspent his budget by millions of dollars for political reasons. Moreover, computer records seemed to have been destroyed in a suspicious burglary. The heat shifted from the reality of Mr. Giuliani’s patronage hires to the wispy vapors of the Murphy investigation. A year later, it emerged that Mr. Murphy had neither overspent nor done anything wrong, and that no records had been destroyed or stolen. Mayor Giuliani shrugged.

“This happens all the time,” he said. “And you write about those things all the time. Sometimes they turn out to be true. And sometimes they turn out to be wrong.”

[...]

In year one of the investigation, President Trump went through multiple lawyers [...] By spring 2018, Mr. Trump was having a hard time getting top legal talent to work on the case.

Up stepped Mr. Giuliani, who said he would serve without pay.

The Trump administration turned out to be very good for the business of being Rudy Giuliani, though it was no simple matter to say precisely what that was.

[...]

When he announced that he would be representing Mr. Trump, he said he would be taking a leave of absence from Greenberg Traurig. But his partners, and some of their clients, had had their fill of being associated with Mr. Trump. The firm said Mr. Giuliani was resigning. He said it was a mutual decision.

The loss of the $6 million income came with one consolation. No longer would Mr. Giuliani be subject to a moratorium on his TV appearances, imposed by the firm’s buttoned-down reticence. “The last year and a half, I haven’t been on television,” Mr. Giuliani said in May 2018. “Frankly, I’ve missed it.”

[...]

Other lawyers on the Trump team were dismayed by his rhetoric, but Mr. Giuliani said it was tactical, regardless of how unhinged it seemed. Once he learned that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, had decided that Justice Department policy forbade the criminal indictment of a sitting president, he said, he viewed impeachment as Mr. Trump’s only risk. That would be a public relations war, not a legal one, he explained, with the battles fought on television — an arena that Mr. Mueller did not contest. During his barrage, public opinion shifted slightly against an impeachment based on the Mueller findings, and Congress showed little appetite for pursuing it. Mr. Giuliani took victory laps.

[...]

Without Mr. Giuliani’s push for money and frank yearning for relevance, the Trump Ukrainian initiative might never have amounted to much more than presidential tweetstorms. Mr. Giuliani compressed the digital gases of the president’s suspicions and wishful theories into what is now the molten core of impeachment.

[...]

Mr. Giuliani may have been stopped from becoming secretary of state in 2017 by his business entanglements, but as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer in 2019, he created and oversaw the dominant American foreign-policy channel with Ukraine, running the president’s affairs, his clients’ and his own through it.

[...]

Late last year, Mr. Giuliani began to pursue information in Ukraine that he believed might show that the Mueller inquiry was built on a false premise, that it was really Ukrainians who meddled in the election and then framed the Russians for it.

This had long been the claim of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, now serving seven and a half years in federal prison for laundering millions of dollars from the Russia-aligned political party in Ukraine.

Mr. Manafort maintained that he and Mr. Trump were victims of Ukrainian meddling that took two forms: the release of a mysterious slush fund ledger that detailed payments by the Russia-aligned party, including $12.7 million earmarked for Mr. Manafort; and the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers that was blamed on Russia.

“The original investigation came to me from an investigator who had a client who said that the Ukrainians were the ones who did the hacking,” Mr. Giuliani said in April.

[...]

Pinning the 2016 cyberattacks on Ukraine was a steep hill to climb, as the Senate Intelligence Committee had unequivocally found that they were a Russian operation. Even so, Mr. Giuliani demanded that the country’s new president announce an investigation of it, according to Gordon Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union.

Equally difficult would be showing that Mr. Manafort was a victim of a forged paper ledger: Electronic bank records were so overwhelming that he pleaded guilty.

Nevertheless, if blame were seen to have shifted to Ukraine in these episodes, Mr. Giuliani would provide balm for Mr. Trump’s lingering furies that the findings of Russian involvement had tainted his presidency. Debunking the slush-fund ledger could also help build the case for a pardon of Mr. Manafort, Mr. Giuliani said.

[...]

His project to deliver a crushing blow against a Trump opponent, and to establish that Mr. Trump — not the Democrats — had been the victim of foreign interference in the 2016 election, would fade into a toxic fog of impeachment charges.

[...]

After signs of distance between the president and Mr. Giuliani — when the president hesitated about confirming that he was still his personal lawyer, Mr. Giuliani made a “joke” to The Guardian about having “very, very good insurance” — Mr. Trump gushed praise for him on Twitter and on “Fox and Friends.”

Mr. Giuliani said he appreciated the show of support, but added: “I’m not some little schmuck that needs Daddy to protect him.”

[...]

“I really try very hard to be super-ethical and always legal,” Mr. Giuliani said. “If it seems I’m not — it’s wrong, and I can explain it.”

[...]

Mr. Giuliani predicted that he would emerge from all the investigations wreathed in glory, an indispensable man who served the country against the odds.

“These morons,” Mr. Giuliani said. “When this is over, I will be the hero.”

[...]

The face Mr. Giuliani sees in the mirror, he has always said, is of a man compelled by his idealism to purify government. “I get completely disgusted when I see public corruption,” he said.

Then he must not look in the mirror at all.

Like the Washington Post article cited in the previous post, this is a lengthy article about Rudy's rise to his current precarious position, and it covers many of the same events. And like that article, this one is behind a pay wall.

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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

[...]

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.

[...]

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

[...]

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.”

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

“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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

[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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.