Rudy's squirming

And I assume getting his passport papers in order. 

Rudy Giuliani gave his first interview on Thursday following the FBI searches of his home and office, telling Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the DOJ had “spied on me.”

During a sprawling interview, the former lawyer to the former president spun a yarn in which the DOJ was engaged in a multi-year, politically motivated prosecution.

[...]

Giuliani said twice during the show, however, that he had a way out: since exiting the New York City mayoralty in 2001, he had inserted into his contracts with various foreign businessmen and governments a provision that declared that, whatever he was doing for them, it wasn’t lobbying.

  TPM

LOLOLOL

“I never, ever represented a foreign national,” Giuliani said. “In fact, I have in my contracts a refusal to do it because from the time I got out of being mayor, I did not want to lobby.”

Giuliani added that “I’ve had contracts in countries like Ukraine, in the contract there is a clause that says I will not engage in lobbying or foreign representation.”

“I don’t do it because I felt it would be too compromising,” the former mayor said.

The FBI warned Rudolph W. Giuliani in late 2019 that he was the target of a Russian influence operation aimed at circulating falsehoods intended to damage President Biden politically ahead of last year’s election, according to people familiar with the matter.

The warning was part of an extensive effort by the bureau to alert members of Congress and at least one conservative media outlet, One America News, that they faced a risk of being used to further Russia’s attempt to influence the election’s outcome, said several current and former U.S. officials.

[...]

Defensive briefings are given to people to alert them that they are being targeted by foreign governments for malign purposes, former officials said. But they’re also used “to see how they respond to that,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a former senior FBI counterintelligence official. “They’re now on notice.”

[...]

The warning, made by counterintelligence agents, was separate from the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal probe, but it reflects a broader concern by U.S. intelligence and federal investigators that Giuliani — among other influential Americans and U.S. institutions — was being manipulated by the Russian government to promote its interests and that he appears to have brazenly disregarded such fears.

Despite the alert, Giuliani went forward in December 2019 with a planned trip to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, where he met with a Ukrainian lawmaker whom the U.S. government later labeled “an active Russian agent” and sanctioned on grounds he was running an “influence campaign” against Biden. That operation, officials said, involved Ukrainian officials and political consultants who the U.S. intelligence community has since concluded were acting as Russian proxies not only to smear Biden and derail his candidacy but also to curtail U.S. support for Ukraine.

[...]

The FBI last summer also gave what is known as a defensive briefing to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who ahead of the election used his perch as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to investigate Biden’s dealings with Ukraine while he was vice president and his son Hunter Biden held a lucrative seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

Johnson, a staunch Trump ally, recalled receiving a vague warning from FBI briefers in August, but he said Thursday that there was no substance to their cautionary message and that he did not view the meeting as a “defensive briefing” on his oversight of the Biden family’s foreign business ventures.

  WaPo

Dirtbag.   [See *Update below]

Johnson and staffers to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), another Trump ally in the Senate who aided Johnson with his probe, said that in separate briefings earlier in 2020, FBI officials assured them there was no reason to discontinue their inquiry into Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. It is not the bureau’s place to tell lawmakers what to investigate or not, or whether to stop or start an investigation, former FBI officials said.

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

UPDATE:

Jesus Christ, the man is a lawyer, ffs.*

UPDATE:

Oooh, boy.  I'm guessing the investigators have this just about sewed up. 

*UPDATE:

/2 First let's review what a federal search warrant means. It means that the feds provided a sworn affidavit to a magistrate judge showing that there is probable cause to believe these specific locations have evidence of a specified federal crime.

/3 Note there the difference between a criminal complaint and a search warrant -- they don't have to show proof that a particular person committed the crime, just proof that this LOCATION will have EVIDENCE of the commission of the federal crime.

/3 Note there the difference between a criminal complaint and a search warrant -- they don't have to show proof that a particular person committed the crime, just proof that this LOCATION will have EVIDENCE of the commission of the federal crime.

/4 Federal magistrate judges are, in my experience, **decent** at reviewing search warrant applications, particularly for problem locations like a lawyer's office. That means they are not as rubber-stampy as they might be in other circumstances and sometimes turn it down....

/5 ....at least in part, for instance, by rejecting a particular location or a request to look for a particular set of items or documents, or not allowing it to be done at night. Sometimes they make the feds go back and rework it a bit.

/6 This is in sharp contrast to state judges, who in my experience will sign a warrant even if the entirety of the probable cause statement is "you have beautiful thighs."

/7 So ANYWAY, we know that a federal magistrate judge was convinced there's probable cause that Rudy's home and office had evidence of a federal crime. But which crime, and based on what?

/8 Well, RUDY knows better than we do -- because RUDY now has a copy of the warrant -- the document saying "you can search these locations for this evidence of violation of these laws." Note that's NOT the affidavit -- he doesn't get that unless someone screws up.

/9 If we see the warrant -- someone leaks it, or Rudy hands it out because he's legally incontinent -- we'll see what specific federal laws they think were broken, which will tell us something about the investigation. We should also see what they searched for, which tells more.

/10 Rudy will also get a receipt of the things taken. Again, if that gets leaked or dropped by Rudy, we'll see the feds' (usually unhelpfully vague) descriptions of what they took.

/11 We can also tell things from the fact that there was also a search warrant for Victoria Toensing's home, apparently for her phone. That helps us narrow down what the search could be about.

/12 All of this may be corroborated by grand jury subpoenas (if they are leaked or publicized by people who get them), which will further detail what docs are being sought and what statutes are allegedly violated.

/13 Because Rudy is a lawyer, technically, we also know that the warrant required high-level approval. This could not be just some local AUSA power tripping. This went up the chain and got approved.

/14 Beyond that, we enter into the realm of (a) speculation (b) statements by unnamed sources of uncertain reliability and (c) talking head bullshit. /end

Toensing is widely presumed to have elicited federal interest viz. the Giuliani investigation due to her own representation of Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash and other Ukrainian nationals who played a role in attempting to disseminate information deemed harmful to then-candidate Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

“This makes sense because, during the Ukraine impeachment investigation, we obtained draft retainer agreements between a Ukrainian official and Toensing and diGenova that Giuliani brokered,” Daniel Goldman, former lead counsel for the House impeachment inquiry, said on Twitter.

Firtash himself is currently under a federal indictment, but the role played by Toensing and diGenova is believed to go a bit further than a typical attorney-client relationship.

  Law & Crime

UPDATE: So here's an article regarding the specifics of the search warrant, according to "people familiar with the matter" :

The search warrants executed by federal investigators on Wednesday at Mr. Giuliani’s New York City apartment and office sought evidence related to Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine whom Mr. Giuliani pushed to oust in the spring of 2019, as well as communications with any U.S. government officials or employees regarding the former ambassador or her position, the people said.

[...]

The warrants also sought communications with or regarding associates who worked with Mr. Giuliani to push for Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster and for an investigation by Ukrainian authorities into the Biden family’s activities in the country, the people familiar with the warrants said.

[...]

The warrants specifically sought evidence related to former Ukrainian prosecutors general Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko, former Ukrainian prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the people said.

[...]

The warrant also sought evidence related to three Giuliani associates who were arrested in 2019 on campaign-finance charges— Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman and David Correia—as well as two lawyers close to Mr. Giuliani, Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, and conservative columnist John Solomon. Investigators on Wednesday executed a search warrant for Ms. Toensing’s phone.

[...]

Messrs. Parnas and Fruman have pleaded not guilty to the campaign-finance charges and are tentatively scheduled to go to trial later this year.

Mr. Correia pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced in February to a year and a day in prison for lying to federal election authorities and for duping investors in a fraud-insurance company.

  WSJ

*UPDATE:

UPDATE 9/11/21:

Igor Fruman found guilty in Trump campaign charge

UPDATE 10/24/21:

Lev Parnas found guilty in Trump campaign charge

Biden-Ukraine Senate report - Part 2

A pro-Russian political party in Ukraine sought to partner with one of the most important witnesses in a Republican-led probe of the Biden family.

[...]

The offer of cooperation came in the fall of 2019 from a political party in Ukraine that is co-chaired by Viktor Medvedchuk, a friend and trusted ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Medvedchuk’s party made the offer to Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat and political operative, who has been a key witness in the year-long U.S. Senate investigation into the Ukraine connections of the Biden family. The party’s operatives, Telizhenko tells TIME, “offered me to help them with the Republicans much more closely, to be a back channel to Moscow.”

The offer, which Telizhenko says he turned down, marked the start of a complex influence campaign on the part of Putin’s allies in Kyiv, an effort that went further than has previously been reported. For over a year, agents and allies of the Kremlin in Ukraine have tried to feed information to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill. The information passed through a variety of channels, including an indicted gas tycoon with deep ties to the Kremlin, and a Ukrainian lawmaker trained in a Russian spy academy.

[...]

Medvedchuk and the political party of which he is co-chairman, Opposition Platform – For Life, also attempted to air their unsubstantiated claims of corruption against Biden in the Ukrainian parliament. They failed to get enough votes to open a parliamentary inquiry in Kyiv. Instead these claims about Biden found a far more prominent platform in the U.S. Senate.

[...]

In the fall of 2019, when Telizhenko received the offer of help from the pro-Russian political party in Ukraine, he had already been working with Giuliani for several months on an effort to dig up political dirt on the Biden family.

Telizhenko got in touch with Giuliani that spring with help from another U.S. lawyer aligned with President Trump, Victoria Toensing, a Republican stalwart and Fox News pundit [who, along with her husband Joe DiGenova, is the attorney for Dmitry Firtash, accused Russian mobster and Putin ally].

[...]

Over the past year, Telizhenko has repeatedly aired his claims about corruption in the Biden family while appearing on Giuliani’s YouTube channel and podcast. The claims are drawn from Telizhenko’s past work as a diplomat in the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, his employment with a DC lobbying firm and his stint in the office of the prosecutor general of Ukraine. While serving in these positions, Telizhenko claims to have witnessed signs of corruption and conflicts of interests involving the Biden family and other Obama Administration officials.

With help from Giuliani, these claims also found their way to the U.S. Senate, where Johnson and his staff have had repeated contacts with Telizhenko for over a year.

[...]

Russian allies in Ukraine made repeated efforts to lend credibility to these claims of corruption against Biden. Some of these efforts involved Medvedchuk, a personal friend of the Russian President. Putin is the godfather to Medvedchuk’s teenage daughter, and their relationship serves as a primary channel of Russia influence in Ukraine.

[...]

Medvedchuk’s political party approached Telizhenko, who was then working both with Giuliani and Senator Johnson in their efforts to investigate the Biden family. “They tried to go through me to get to Donald Trump or his team,” says Telizhenko. He turned down the offer to work with Medvedchuk, he says, because it would “toxify” his work with Giuliani. “I don’t do the Russians,” Telizhenko added.

  Time

Want to buy a bridge?

“I never discussed this idea with Putin or other senior Russian officials, because I see it as an internal matter for Ukraine,” Medvedchuk wrote. He also denied any attempt to set up a “back channel” to Moscow for President Trump’s associates. “The situation with corruption in the United States of America never interested me. That is an internal matter of the USA.”

How about THIS bridge?

Johnson defends his repeated contacts with Telizhenko. At the start of this year, the Senator prepared a subpoena for Telizhenko to testify before his committee. The Ukrainian even rented an apartment near Washington as he prepared to deliver that testimony and meet with Johnson’s staff. In March, however, the FBI reportedly warned lawmakers in a briefing that Telizhenko could be a “conduit for Russian disinformation about the Bidens,” according to the New York Times. Johnson then shelved his plans to have Telizhenko testify.

[...]

The report released Wednesday details repeated contacts between Telizhenko and the Obama administration National Security Council. The claims of Russian attempts to influence his work, says the Senator, are all part of a Democratic effort to tarnish his reputation. “Because I am investigating corruption in the Obama administration, and they are afraid of what the results of that investigation is, so what they are doing is they are targeting me, trying to destroy me, so that any results of my investigation will be marginalized,” he told a Wisconsin broadcaster last month.

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

The whole lot of them are dirty: Barr again

Attorney General William Barr briefly attended a meeting at the Justice Department last fall between top criminal prosecutors and President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, a department official said Friday.

The meeting reveals a previously undisclosed interaction between two men the President depends on to defend him.

[...]

Barr has kept a notable distance [from Giuliani] even while Trump mentioned them both together in a July phone call in which he urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with Giuliani and Barr to investigate a political rival, Joe Biden.

[...]

The Giuliani meeting at the Justice Department in September became public months ago in the wake of the arrest of two Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were working on Giuliani's Ukraine mission for the President.

Brian Benczkowski, assistant attorney general for the criminal division, issued a public statement at the time expressing regret for holding the meeting and saying he wouldn't have met with Trump's personal lawyer had he known about Giuliani's role in the ongoing investigation.

But department officials didn't mention then that Barr was also in the meeting. Barr was at the meeting for about 10 minutes and had dropped in to greet other lawyers who worked alongside Giuliani to represent the Venezuelan businessman, according to a Justice Department official. His presence is also notable because Justice officials have said he was briefed after taking office in February on the investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors into Parnas and Fruman, and the connections with Giuliani.

[...]

The September meeting, led by attorneys from the Justice Department's fraud section, was unremarkable, and sit-downs of the kind are a common practice in high-stakes investigations. What's unusual is for the attorney general to be involved.

[...]

Giuliani's mission in Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Biden's did not come up in the meeting, the official said, and the Justice Department has maintained that the two have never spoken about the topic. Barr did not participate substantively in the meeting for the few minutes that he was there, the official said.

Barr had greater participation in another meeting around the same time with other lawyers connected to Trump. Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing used their August meeting to ask for the attorney general to intervene on behalf of Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian businessman who is the subject of an extradition request by federal prosecutors in Chicago.

[...]

A Justice Department official said that in his meeting with DiGenova and Toensing, Barr declined to intercede in the Firtash case.

[...]

Barr's ties to DiGenova and Toensing -- and his contact with Giuliani -- have re-emerged in claims made by Parnas, who has broken with Giuliani. Parnas has tried to claim in recent interviews, including with CNN's Anderson Cooper, that Barr had more knowledge about Giuliani's Ukraine work than has been known. Parnas has not provided evidence for his claims.

  CNN

But we haven't seen all his documents yet.

And if Barr didn't "participate substantively" in the meeting, just what DID he do there?

The ever-expanding story of Marie Yovanovitch's ouster

The new material indicates that Parnas played a central role in arranging an interview with a Ukrainian prosecutor who claimed there was a plot in his country to help Hillary Clinton — and then urging a senior contact at America First Action to get Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to tweet it.

Links to stories about Ukraine that Parnas sent to America First Action finance director Joseph Ahearn were tweeted by both the president and Trump Jr., the material shows.

Peter Chavkin, a lawyer for Ahearn, said it was not surprising that his client would be interacting with Parnas, a donor to the super PAC.

[...]

“Nothing in the communications seems out of the ordinary or sparks any concern.”

  WaPo

In the words of Michael Cohen, "Says who?"

The materials also shed light on a far-reaching effort to dislodge then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch from her post.

The documents include a May 9, 2018, letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from then-Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) calling for Yovanovitch to be removed. “I have received notice of concrete evidence from close companions that Ambassador Yovanovitch has spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current administration,” Sessions wrote.

In February 2019, lawyer Victoria Toensing, a longtime Giuliani ally involved in his Ukraine efforts, asked the former New York mayor in a message, “Is there absolute commitment for HER to be gone this week?”

How absolute? That's like asking how pregnant.

Giuliani responded, “Yes, not sure how absolute. Will get a reading in morning and call you. Pompeii [sic] is now aware of it. Talked to him on Friday.”

Don't be surprised when they try to say Pompeii is a different person than Pompeo.

In a May message to Ahearn, Parnas wrote, “It’s more important than ever to get a good ambassador that’s loyal to our president in there please make sure you pass on the message every ear more important than ever.”

In his MSNBC interview Wednesday, Parnas apologized to Yovanovitch, saying he now believes he was wrong about her.

That would fall under two categories: 1) too little too late, and 2) sorry about getting caught.

The new materials released by House Democrats also include months of messages between Parnas and then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko in which the Ukrainian official provided Giuliani’s team with interviews and information in exchange for a pledge that Yovanovitch would be removed from her post.

Bribery. Put that in the articles of impeachment.

The messages show Parnas helping arrange a video interview for Lutsenko with John Solomon, a conservative columnist at the Hill newspaper. On March 12, Parnas sent a letter from Solomon to Lutsenko requesting the interview and included a list of questions to be addressed. “I sent you the questions and the invitation from the journalist, call me when you wake up,” Parnas writes after sending the letter to Lutsenko.

After the interview posted online, Parnas texted it to Ahearn and wrote, “Have jr retweet it.”

Parnas then urged Ahearn to “Watch Hannity.”

“Sent,” Ahearn responded.

[...]

That same day, Trump Jr. tweeted out the article and wrote that the United States needed “less of these jokes as ambassadors,” referring to Yovanovitch, a career diplomat.

[...]

At one point in March, Lutsenko appeared to have grown impatient that he was holding up his end of the bargain — while Parnas was failing to come through with the ambassador’s removal and other requests that would benefit Lutsenko or his boss, then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

“I’m sorry, but this is all simply b------t,” Lutsenko wrote on March 13. “I’m f-----g sick of all this. I haven’t received a visit. My [boss] hasn’t received jack all. I’m prepared to [thrash] your opponent. But you want more and more. We’re over.”

But they weren't.

The Post reported last year that Giuliani had negotiated to represent Ukraine’s top prosecutor for at least $200,000 as he was hunting for damaging material about Biden from Ukrainian sources. At the time, Giuliani wrote on Twitter that he “did NOT pursue a business opportunity in Ukraine” and that he was “paid ZERO.”

In the newly released messages, Parnas wrote to Giuliani: “This is who the retainer should be me out to: ministry of justice of Ukraine Att: minster Pavlo Petrenko.”

“How much?” Giuliani responded. Giuliani said he would follow up with a call, and the messages suggest he sent an agreement to Parnas, who agreed to “print it out and deliver it.”

Later, Parnas asked Giuliani to send wire instructions and requested a copy signed by Giuliani and “Victoria and joe” so the contract can be executed — an apparent reference to Toensing and her husband, Joe diGenova.

“Can do that tomorrow,” Giuliani replied.

The next day, Parnas wrote, “I received signed retainer.”

Somebody keep an eye on Rudy.

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

Extortion, Inc.

In public hearings over the last two weeks, American diplomats and national-security officials have laid out in detail how Mr. Trump, at the instigation and with the help of Mr. Giuliani, conditioned nearly $400 million in direly needed military aid on Ukraine’s announcing investigations into Mr. Biden and his son, as well as a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

But interviews with [...] two Ukrainian oligarchs — Dmitry Firtash and Ihor Kolomoisky — as well as with several other people with knowledge of Mr. Giuliani’s dealings, point to a new dimension in his exertions on behalf of his client, Mr. Trump. Taken together, they depict a strategy clearly aimed at leveraging information from politically powerful but legally vulnerable foreign citizens.

In the case of Mr. Firtash, an energy tycoon with deep ties to the Kremlin who is facing extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, one of Mr. Giuliani’s associates has described offering the oligarch help with his Justice Department problems — if Mr. Firtash hired two [Trump-allied lawyers — Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova — ] who were close to President Trump and were already working with Mr. Giuliani on his dirt-digging mission. Mr. Firtash said the offer was made in late June when he met with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both Soviet-born businessmen involved in Mr. Giuliani’s Ukraine pursuit.

Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, confirmed that account and added that his client had met with Mr. Firtash at Mr. Giuliani’s direction and encouraged the oligarch to help in the hunt for compromising information “as part of any potential resolution to his extradition matter.”

[...]

Mr. Firtash said he had no information about the Bidens and had not financed the search for it. “Without my will and desire,” he said, “I was sucked into this internal U.S. fight.” But to help his legal case, he said, he had paid his new lawyers $1.2 million to date, with a portion set aside as something of a referral fee for Mr. Parnas.

  NYT

Firtash is up to his eyeballs, and his will and desire were quite in line with whatever deal Giuliani was going to cook up, because Firtash knew who Rudy's client was. He doesn't get a pass.

[I]n late August, Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova did as promised: They went to the Justice Department and pleaded Mr. Firtash’s case with the attorney general, William P. Barr.

Let me phrase that in its most likely accurate meaning: They went to the Justice Department and reported to the other crook involved in all this.

Giuliani acknowledged that he had sought information helpful to Mr. Trump from a member of Mr. Firtash’s original legal team. But, Mr. Giuliani said, “the only thing he could give me was what I already had, hearsay.” Asked if he had then directed his associates to meet with Mr. Firtash, Mr. Giuliani initially said, “I don’t think I can comment,” but later said, “I did not tell Parnas to do anything with Firtash.”

Of course not. That, as we've already read, was done "in late June when he met with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman" at the behest of Rudy Giuliani.

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

UPDATE: 9/11/21

Igor Fruman found guilty in Trump campaign charge

Everything is connected: Nunes in the web

Well, well, well. Look where we find Devin Nunes.

Joseph A. Bondy, the attorney for Lev Parnas [an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani], told CNN that [a] Ukrainian official told his client about [a] meeting with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, in which the GOP lawmaker sought to find dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.

"Mr. Parnas learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December," Bondy said.

  The Hill

Hearsay! will shout Nunes and Company. And Nunes immediately filed another one of his sure-to-lose lawsuits against CNN for printing the story! (AND one against The Daily Beast for a story it published on the same thing.) He's also suing two parody twitter accounts for making fun of him.

Dein Nunes' cow...

And Devin Nunes' Mom...

He'll have even less of a chance to win against major news organizations than parody Twitter accounts. He must have deep pockets.

Bondy told CNN that Parnas put Nunes in touch with Ukrainians to help Nunes get damaging information on Biden, one of the president’s chief political rivals.

Giuliani has previously discussed his conversations with Shokin and Parnas as part of his work on behalf of the president. However, Bondy’s discussions with CNN mark the first time Nunes has been implicated in the effort to dig up dirt on Biden.

We know Nunes was in Vienna last December.

CNN claims that they began to ask Nunes questions about his Vienna trip on November 14, to which Nunes responded to CNN: “I don’t talk to you in this lifetime or the next lifetime. At any time. On any question.”

CNN asked Nunes about the trip again on Thursday, to which Nunes responded: “To be perfectly clear, I don’t acknowledge any questions from you in this lifetime or the next lifetime. I don’t acknowledge any question from you ever.”

  Daily Wire

You may remember that Vienna is where Dmytro Firtash is hiding out avoiding extradition to the US.

Imagine that. Kind of gives more clarity to why Nunes' performance in the impeachment hearings has been so over-the-top disgusting and ridiculous.

And, by the way, regarding Firtash, even Republicans are wondering WTF? This SHOULD be where Republicans grow some balls and accept the reality.

Firtash was indicted in 2014 for what federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois allege was his role in bribing Indian officials in order to get a lucrative mining deal to sell titanium to Boeing. He was arrested in Vienna in March 2014, released on $174 million bail, and has been contesting his extradition to the U.S. ever since.

[...]

A U.S. senator's office says that after 18 months it has still received no answer from the Justice Department about why a Ukrainian oligarch linked to Paul Manafort and two men who work with Rudolph Giuliani has not been extradited to the U.S. to face federal bribery charges.

A spokesperson for Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said, "We have not received a response" to a 2018 letter about Dmytro Firtash.

  NBC

You're mighty patient, sir.

On June 25, Austria approved the extradition of Firtash, who has been living in Vienna since his 2014 arrest, but Firtash has asked that the case be reopened.

Sen. Wicker sent a letter to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in April 2018 asking about the status of Firtash's extradition. NBC News exclusively obtained that letter through Freedom of Information Act litigation with the Justice Department.

This administration is pure rot through and through.

Wicker alleged in the letter that Firtash, who has also been linked to Russian organized crime, had made "hundreds of millions" in "illicit profits" while fighting extradition to the U.S.

How much of that went into Nunes' pockets?

"This corruption undermines Ukrainian reform efforts that the United States strongly supports," Wicker wrote to Sessions. He asked Sessions about the status of Firtash's extradition case.

[...]

Rudolph Giuliani has denied any involvement with Firtash and says he has never met him. One of the two Ukrainian-American Giuliani associates who was arrested at Dulles airport before boarding a flight to Vienna last week worked for the Firtash legal team as a translator. Giuliani had planned a trip to Vienna at the same time but said he was not planning to meet with Firtash.

Whatever, Rudy.

The Firtash legal team includes Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, the pro-Trump husband and wife attorneys who Fox News reported were "working off the books" with Giuliani as part of his Ukrainian venture, in which he was seeking information about Joe and Hunter Biden and about the Ukrainian gas industry.

"So, Firtash, I know nothing about," Giuliani told NBC News. "I'm not going to answer any questions about because I'm probably going to get it wrong, and you can ask them."

Whatever, Rudy.

Giuliani said the two men arrested at Dulles on Oct. 9 for campaign finance violations, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, "help me find people," and that he also represents their company as a lawyer.

"Help me find people." That doesn't sound very mobbish, does it? I would think the normal phrase would be "work as private investigators."

Parnas is employed by Firtash's legal team, according to Mark Corallo, spokesperson for diGenova and Toensing.

Sen. Wicker's 2018 letter alleges that prior to 2014, Firtash acted as a "direct agent of the Kremlin" during a separate scheme to skim money from natural gas transfers between Russia's Gazprom and Ukraine.

I don't know how separate that is, because Rudy has been connected to dealings with Ukraine's national gas company Naftogaz.*

"By manipulating natural gas prices," the Wicker letter says, "the Kremlin used RosUkrEnergo as a tool to keep [Kiev] dependent on Moscow." According to the court documents, RosUkrEnergo was a firm created by Firtash and Gazprom, which is majority owned by the Russian government, to skim money.

"Despite his arrest" in 2014, Wicker wrote, "Firtash continues to engage in corruption in Ukraine, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits." His letter estimated the gross amount earned since Firtash's arrest at $1.5 billion.

[...]

In a statement, Rick VanMeter, a spokesperson for Wicker, said, "As the co-chair of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Senator Wicker regularly meets with foreign delegations. He has a deep interest in Ukraine and a strong record of opposing Vladimir Putin's aggression in the region. He stands firmly with the people of Ukraine fighting for freedom and reform. The letter was an inquiry from Senator Wicker to the U.S. administration seeking updates on efforts to extradite Mr. Firtash — widely known for his corruption and connection with the Kremlin and organized crime. The letter was written after considering a range of credible sources, including meetings with foreign delegations, publicly available data, and non-public information."

So Roger Wicker should be seriuosly considering his vote in the Trump impeachment Senate trial. I bet he's being watched very, very closely.

Firtash, 54, owns a valuable portfolio of chemical, real estate and energy businesses. He is perhaps best known in the U.S. as a one-time associate of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, who is now in federal prison.

And I have no doubt soon-to-be-ex-Energy Secretary Rick Perry has fingerprints all over this business.

One of the other partners working with Manafort on the deal was Brad Zackson, the former exclusive broker for the properties of President Donald Trump's late father, Fred Trump.

[...]

According to a December 2008 State Department cable posted by WikiLeaks, Firtash told U.S. Ambassador William Taylor during a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev that he got his start in business with the permission of one of Russia's most well-known organized crime bosses, Semion Mogilevich.

Mogilevich was once on the FBI's top 10 most wanted list and has an Interpol Red Notice out for his arrest. The FBI alleges that he is "involved in weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale."

[...]

"[Firtash] was adamant that he had not committed a single crime when building his business empire," the cable says, and "argued that outsiders still failed to understand the period of lawlessness that reigned in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union."

*Regarding Rudy and Ukrainian gas...this is out today:

The CEO of Ukrainian state gas company Naftogaz told Time he is ready to give evidence to U.S. federal prosecutors probing the business dealings of President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. “I will with a high likelihood be invited to testify in this case,” Andriy Kobolyev said, adding that he “would be willing to come and testify” if he were summoned. Naftogaz is reportedly connected to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two men who allegedly worked with Giuliani to pressure Ukraine into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Parnas and Fruman allegedly tried to use their political connections to replace the leadership at Naftogaz, which resisted the two men's efforts for a gas deal.

Kobolyev said he would be willing to give prosecutors information on Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani because, as he said, “everything is connected.”

  Daily Beast

Everything.

And, another Nunes lawsuit:  one against Esquire for a story about the farm he has in Iowa titled “Devin Nunes’s Family Farm Is Hiding a Politically Explosive Secret.”  In that article we learn he also has suits against Twitter and McClatchy newspapers.

If you'd like to keep track of Devin Nunes' cow, click this graphic...

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

UPDATE:

It just got clearer.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

All the president's lawyers

If we survive Trump and there are still things called museums around that display artifacts that present things called facts about historic events, I suspect John Dowd’s October 3 letter to the House Intelligence Committee will be displayed there, in all its Comic Sans glory.

In it, Dowd memorializes a conversation he had with HPSCI Investigation Counsel Nicholas Mitchell on September 30, before he was officially the lawyer for Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, now placed in writing because he had since officially become their lawyer. He describes that there is no way he and his clients can comply with an October 7 document request and even if he could — this is the key part — much of it would be covered by some kind of privilege.

  Emptywheel

"Attorney-client, attorney work product and other privileges."

Parnas and Fruman do work for Rudy Giuliani in the service of the President of the United States covered by privilege, Rudy does work for them covered by privilege, and they also do work for Joseph Di Genova and Victoria Toensing about this matter that is covered by privilege.

[...]

[During the Mueller investigation,] John Dowd, Jay Sekulow, and Rudy Giuliani offered things of value to the others in the JDA [Joint Defense Agreement] — pardons — in exchange for their silence or even lies. Conspicuously, Toensing represented two people that — the Mueller Report seems to suggest — weren’t entirely candid in their testimony, Erik Prince (who managed to lose texts that explained why he was taking back channel meetings with Russians) and Sam Clovis (who sustained his lack of memory of being told that Russians were offering emails long enough for George Papadopoulos to change his mind on that front). Papadopoulos even managed to call Marc Kasowitz, when he still represented the President, to ask if he also wanted to represent a coffee boy with an inclination to lie to the FBI. The strategy all built to its successful crescendo when, instead of cooperating with prosecutors as he signed up to do, Paul Manafort instead figured out what they did and didn’t know, lied to keep them confused, and reported it all back through his own attorney, Kevin Downing, and Rudy to the President.

[...]

And as details of Manafort’s lies came out, it became clear there was some kind of kick-back system to keep the lawyers paid.

Still, Mueller never tied Manafort’s trading of campaign strategy for considerations on Ukraine and payment by Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs to the President. And so it may have seemed sensible for Dowd, in a bit of a pinch, to adopt the same strategy, with Rudy representing everyone, Dowd representing the Ukrainian grifters, and Kevin Downing even filling in in a pinch.

It all might have worked, too, if Parnas and Fruman hadn’t gotten arrested before they managed to flee the country, headed for what seems to have been a planned meeting a day later with their sometime attorney Rudy Giuliani in Vienna, just one day after a lunch meeting with him at Trump Hotel across the street from the Department of Justice that was busy inking an indictment against the Ukrainians even as they paid money to Trump Organization for their meal.

I mean, it still could work. Trump is still the President and DOJ, at least, will give some consideration to the attorney-client claims, so long as Rudy and Trump can maintain the illusion that Rudy is and was really doing legal work for the President.

[...]

[But] by the time Dowd sent the letter, DiGenova and Toensing were on the record as representing Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch who was named in some of the early search warrants targeting Paul Manafort. And in March, Rudy Giuliani went on the record to explain that Firtash was, “one of the close associates of [Semion] Mogilevich, who is the head of Russian organized crime, who is Putin’s best friend.” Yesterday, Reuters closed the circle, making it clear that Parnas and Fruman work for Firtash, the former as a translator for DiGenova and Toensing’s representation of Firtash.

[...]

Thus, when Dowd wrote Congress, explaining that Rudy worked for both Trump and the Ukrainian grifters, and the Ukrainian grifters worked for DiGenova and Toensing, he was asserting that the President is a participant in an ethical thicket of legal representation with a mob-linked Ukrainian oligarch fighting extradition (for bribery) to the United States. And all of that, Dowd helpfully made clear, related to this Ukraine scandal (otherwise he could not have invoked privilege for it).

In other words, the President’s former lawyer asserted to Congress that the President and his current lawyer are in some kind of JDA from hell with the Russian mob, almost certainly along with the President’s former campaign manager, who apparently gets consulted (via Kevin Downing) on these matters in prison.

If this land still goes by the rule of law - and I know that's a very big if - and if the Supreme Court doesn't go all in with the mobsters itself - Trump's going to be looking at some serious shit when he's out of office. I halfway expect him to make a deal at some point: freedom in return for leaving office.

The reason Rudy was emphasizing the mob ties of his current partner in crime lawyering, Dmitry Firtash, back in March is because the President’s former former lawyer, Michael Cohen, shared a lawyer at the time with Firtash, Lanny Davis. Davis, the Democratic version of Paul Manafort, is every bit as sleazy as him [...] .

[...]

John Dowd’s desperate attempt to make this scandal go away the same way he made the Russia scandal go away (if you pretend they’re not actually all the same scandal and thus even the past JDA strategy may end up failing) at the same time involved admitting, in a letter to Congress, that his former client and his then current not-yet-but-soon-to-be-indicted clients are in a Joint Defense Agreement with the Russian mob.

I didn't know Dowd made the Russia scandal go away. I thought Dowd quit when the heat got turned up.

At any rate, all this shit now happening must have been known to Mueller at least in some part. I still have to wonder about Mueller.

Judge Beryl Howell's comment in a ruling last week noted there were two witnesses Mueller didn't call before the Grand Jury, even though they would have been deeply involved: Junior and White House Counsel Don McGahn.

Did Mueller get cut off by Barr? That seems possible - maybe even likely. But what about all this other info about Trump's legal connections to the Russian mob?  Was he told to stay away from that?  It certainly seems more and more like he didn't do his job even beyond not stating a finding.



In a word: yes.  Still does.

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

The Vienna connection - Part 2

Wherein we learn what was waiting for Parnas and Fruman (and Giuliani before those two were busted) in Vienna.

In their effort to discredit President Donald Trump’s perceived enemies, close allies of the President have received key documents and information from a Ukrainian oligarch wanted in the U.S. on corruption charges [...] .

The information came from the legal team of Dmitry Firtash, a wealthy industrialist with assets across Europe, who has spent the last five years in Vienna fighting extradition to the U.S. on bribery and racketeering charges. The U.S. Department of Justice said in 2017 he was among the “upper echelon associates of Russian organized crime”—something Firtash vigorously denies, along with all charges against him.

[...]

In his frequent appearances on cable news, Giuliani has presented some of these documents to the American public as evidence for his claims of wrongdoing by Mueller and Biden. The key document is an affidavit from a former Ukrainian prosecutor who accuses Biden of corruption. “The witness I’m relying on,” Giuliani told Fox News on Oct. 6, was the prosecutor Viktor Shokin. “That’s the affidavit I put out,” Giuliani added. He did not mention that the affidavit was obtained by the Firtash legal team.

[...]

Over the last two months, a TIME investigation has traced some of Giuliani’s claims about Biden and Mueller to a troubling relationship, one in which a foreigner wanted by the U.S. government on corruption charges has taken steps, as part of his own legal strategy, that are helping the American President attack his most prominent critics.

This alignment of interests has taken shape at the same time, and with many of the same goals and actors, as the parallel effort by Trump and Giuliani to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden’s family.

[...]

Firtash has established close ties to the former mayor of New York City in part by recruiting several of Giuliani’s associates. In July the oligarch hired two lawyers who have been helping Giuliani in his campaign to discredit Trump’s critics: Victoria Toensing and Joseph DiGenova, a married couple Trump considered hiring in 2018 as part of his private legal team. Best known as diehard defenders of Trump on Fox News, the couple has combed through the oligarch’s case files and used some of them in the effort to defend Trump on television and in the press.

Toensing and DiGenova then hired another Giuliani associate, Lev Parnas, to serve as their interpreter in communications with Firtash in Vienna [...] . The indictment against him alleges that Parnas and his business partners secretly channeled money from an unidentified Russian donor to various political causes and candidates.

[...]

In acting for Firtash, Toensing and DiGenova’s stated aim has been to prevent their client’s extradition to the U.S.

  Time

Criminal attorneys.

They claimed that one of Mueller’s top deputies in the special counsel investigation, Andrew Weissmann, offered to drop the bribery case against Firtash in 2017 in exchange for testimony that could be damaging to President Trump. This, they claimed, would amount to suborning perjury.

Not unless they knew what he would say would be a lie. Otherwise, it's simply a flipping ploy, which is not illegal.

They declined to provide documents to back up those claims.

Because they don't have any.

In a piece published on July 22, John Solomon, a columnist for the Hill, cited documents from the Firtash legal team to suggest that Weissmann’s attempts to turn Firtash were “wrapped with complexity and intrigue far beyond the normal federal case.”

There is nothing normal about having to investigate a president for conspiracy against the United States.

Documents from the Firtash case have become even more useful to Giuliani and Trump as they roll out their response to the impeachment inquiry. At the center of Giuliani’s counterattack so far is the affidavit signed by Shokin, Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, which alleges that Biden caused Shokin’s dismissal in order to stop a corruption probe into Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board of that company for about five years, reportedly earning $50,000 a month.

“I was forced to leave office, under direct and intense pressure from Joe Biden and the U.S. Administration,” in order to stop that investigation, Shokin said in the affidavit, which was notarized in Kiev on Sept. 4.

These claims have not stood up to scrutiny. Officials in the U.S. and Ukraine, as well as independent experts and investigative journalists, have said Shokin was fired because of his lax approach to fighting corruption.

[...]

But Giuliani’s defense of Trump amid the impeachment inquiry has relied heavily on the statement that Firtash’s legal team obtained from Shokin.

[...]

By the time the Department of Justice publicly referred to him in 2017 as a senior associate of the Russian mob, Firtash had been under investigation in the U.S. for more than a decade, according to interviews with his investigators.

His alleged ties to the Russian mafia go back to the early 2000s, when his work in the gas trade brought him into contact with Semyon Mogilevich, one of the most notorious leaders in the world of Russian organized crime.

[...]

By the mid-2000s, Firtash had established himself as a partner to the Kremlin in the European gas trade. With the approval of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his company had won exclusive rights to buy natural gas from Russia and resell it in Ukraine. Firtash owned about half of the company, while Gazprom, the Russian state gas monopoly, owned the other half. The arrangement made Firtash a billionaire.

[...]

Firtash then bought up factories across Ukraine, especially in the chemicals and fertilizer industries, which helped make him an important powerbroker. In the presidential elections of 2010, he backed the Kremlin’s preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych [...] .

[...]

Working alongside Firtash in that campaign was the American political operative Paul Manafort, who helped engineer the Yanukovych victory. As the elections approached, Firtash and Manafort also pursued some business deals on the side.

[...]

But [Firtash's] luck began to run out in February 2014, when violent street protests forced President Yanukovych to flee to Russia.

A month later, Firtash was arrested near his mansion in Vienna on an arrest warrant issued by the FBI. The warrant accused him of organizing a scheme to bribe officials in India for the right to mine titanium. Because some of the metal was to be sold to a Chicago-based company, the District Attorney in that city claimed jurisdiction in the case under a law known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

[...]

Since he was released on bail in Vienna in 2014–after paying a bond of $174 million–Firtash hired a formidable team of lawyers to stop his extradition from Vienna to Chicago. Among them is Michael Chertoff, the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, as well as a former Austrian Justice Minister. Perhaps the most outspoken member of the legal team has been Lanny Davis, the former counsel to President Bill Clinton.

Sarah Kendzior is right...the world is run by a global crime syndicate masquerading as distinct governments.

Over the last five years, this team managed to slow the extradition process, but could not stop it. The case appeared to come to a head in early June, when Firtash’s chief attorney in Chicago, Dan Webb, filed a motion warning that his client could be extradited in a matter of weeks.

Firtash’s lawyers [...] told TIME in June that the extradition looked imminent, and they were preparing to defend Firtash before a jury in Chicago. They also said, however, that they were ready to produce evidence that would embarrass officials from the Obama Administration. “This will be very tough against the previous Administration,” one of Firtash’s lawyers said at the end of June. “With the current Administration, I think they will like it.”

Just blowing smoke? Otherwise, I'd think Trump's DOJ butt buddy, Bill Barr, would have put a priority on getting Firtash back here.

Since 2017, Toensing and DiGenova have been among Trump’s most avid defenders on cable news in the fight against the Mueller investigation and other probes.

[...]

The pair have also worked closely with Giuliani in recent months. In early May, Toensing was due to join Giuliani on a trip to Kiev, where the two lawyers intended to pressure the new government in Ukraine to investigate the Biden family, according to a May 9, 2019, report in the New York Times. But the reporting about their plans caused such an uproar among Congressional Democrats that the two decided to cancel their trip.

On July 24, Firtash’s lawyers in Vienna informed TIME of a dramatic change in his legal team: Davis, the former counsel to President Clinton, would no longer be working for Firtash.

[...]

One of the reasons for his departure, according to two people close to Firtash, was that Davis had been representing Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, since July 2018. That relationship had made Davis an enemy of Trump.

[...]

It would have been difficult after that for Davis to get along with Firtash’s new lawyers, Toensing and DiGenova, who joined the legal team in late July [...] .

[...]

Alongside Toensing and DiGenova, another long-time Republican operative began representing Firtash in July: Mark Corallo, the former spokesman for Trump’s private defense team during the Mueller investigation.

Sounds to me like Trump's team of dirty lawyers are making sure Firtash stays in Vienna.

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

UPDATE:



UPDATE:

UPDATE: 9/11/21

Igor Fruman found guilty in Trump campaign charge

Running smoothly

On Wednesday morning, the day after news leaked that Gowdy was set to serve as outside counsel to the president, Victoria Toensing, a veteran Washington lawyer who has been working with Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, expressed concern and disbelief that the onetime advocate for congressional oversight would be coming onboard.

“Trey Gowdy doesn’t know s***,” she said.

[...]

“He screwed up the Benghazi hearings, and he came out with the advice to Trump, ‘Well, if you’ve done nothing wrong, just talk to Bob Mueller.’”

[...]

Toensing went on to suggest that other lawyers working for the president shared her opinion.

“He’s not on the team. Trey Gowdy is not on the team. Who told you Trey Gowdy? Not to my knowledge, not to Rudy’s knowledge, not Joe’s knowledge,” said Toensing, who had not heard of the move at the time of her interview with Yahoo News on Wednesday morning. “I have to check that with Rudy because that would be a joke, because we all don’t think much of him,” she said of Gowdy, adding, “Are you kidding? ... Trey is a joke among us.”

However, by Wednesday evening, Sekulow officially announced Gowdy’s appointment.

  Yahoo

I think she's saying he won't make a good mob lawyer.

Toensing and her husband, Joe diGenova, work with Giuliani though they are not officially on Trump’s legal team. The pair, who are close with the president, are regulars on the conservative cable network Fox News. Last month, the channel reported they were “working off the books” with Giuliani to help get opposition research on former Vice President Joe Biden, who is currently mounting a White House bid.

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

In March of last year, it was announced that Toensing and DiGenova were set to formally join the team of lawyers working for the president on the Mueller probe. However, days later, Jay Sekulow, who works as Trump’s personal attorney along with Giuliani, said the pair could not come onboard due to conflicts. “Those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters,” Sekulow said.

[...]

Giuliani, a former New York City mayor who plays a dual role of legal adviser and media surrogate for the president, defended Gowdy when asked about Toensing’s criticisms. Specifically, he suggested Gowdy’s experience on Capitol Hill would be an asset to Trump.

“My opinion would be he would be an excellent addition, filling a gap that is getting to be more and more important because, frankly, Schiff is off the rails,” Giuliani said.

[...]

“The president is being represented in his personal capacity — because he’s still an American citizen with all the rights of an American citizen — by Jay and me,” Giuliani told Yahoo News. “Joe and Vicky are not representing the president. They are … representing some people that have information that could be very valuable to us.”

Giuliani did not specify who those people were, however.

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

There might be pictures

A story in three parts.



.......





.......





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

UPDATE:

Make that four parts:



UPDATE: