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?

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:

We're going to need a bigger boat

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

Newsflash: the AG doesn't work for Trump

At least, he's not supposed to.






The latter in this instance, since the federal prosecutor is indeed "former".

Sean's in trouble: they're digging now

And look what they found:

On May 25, 2017, KFAQ, a radio station based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, received a cease-and-desist letter signed by two lawyers for Hannity: Victoria Toensing and Jay Alan Sekulow. Toensing’s signature sits above her name and that of her husband Joseph E. diGenova, the members of diGenova and Toensing LLP, who are identified as “Counsel for Sean Hannity,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Atlantic. Sekulow is also identified in the letter page as a “Counsel for Sean Hannity.”

Sekulow is now the only known personal attorney for President Trump working full-time on the response to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry. Sekulow recently announced that diGenova and Toensing had been hired to join him, before reversing course. The letter to the radio station was sent before Sekulow joined Trump’s team.

The letter was sent in response to accusations against Hannity made by the controversial conservative activist Debbie Schlussel. During an appearance on the Pat Campbell show on KFAQ last April, Schlussel said Hannity had been “creepy” towards her and had invited her to his hotel room.

Hannity responded at the time by calling the allegations “100 percent false and a complete fabrication,” and said that he had hired lawyers to plan a response.

[...]

On Monday, Schlussel said she remembered that the radio station where she made the remarks had received a legal letter afterwards, but she didn’t know who the lawyer was. Reached by phone on Tuesday, Toensing acknowledged that “at that time” she was acting as Hannity’s lawyer but wouldn’t comment on whether she still represents him.

“I’ve just learned in the press that anybody who is Sean Hannity’s lawyer is going to be blasted so I think this phone call is over,” Toensing said. “I’m wondering what attorney-client privilege means to anybody. I don’t say who my clients are, sometimes I do, and many times, most of the time, I do not.”

[...]

Sekulow, diGenova, and Toensing have frequently appeared on Hannity’s program; diGenova appeared on the show as recently as Monday night.

  The Atlantic

I won't be surprised if one day we find that Hannity is a subject of the Mueller probe as well. At least that he's involved in some money laundering real estate.

Which makes me wonder if Hannity is the conflict reason diGenova couldn't take on Trump representation recently.

A nest of snakes.

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

Trump's advisors

Former federal prosecutor Joseph diGenova, who was set to join President Donald Trump's legal team, on Wednesday night called for the firing of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, telling Fox News that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has an obligation to dismiss his second in command.

DiGenova joins a chorus of commentators and analysts, a group that includes Fox Business commentator Lou Dobbs and others, that is pushing the president to dismantle the investigation into possible collusion between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

"Rod Rosenstein is so incompetent, compromised and conflicted that he can no longer serve as the deputy attorney general," diGenova told Fox News’ “Hannity” on Wednesday night.

  Politico

DiGenova wants the position, doesn't he? And then he could see himself getting Jeff Sessions' job. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if Trump fired Rosenstein.

President Trump met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Thursday amid speculation his job could be in jeopardy.

The White House said the meeting was arranged to discuss “routine [Justice] Department business.”

  The Hill

In the words of a certain infamous idiot president, "We'll see what happens."

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

No problems at all with his legal team, with whom he is "very happy"

As President Trump heads into one of the most critical phases of the special counsel’s investigation, his personal legal team has shrunk to essentially just one member [Jay Sekulow, a conservative commentator who made his name on religious freedom cases], and he is struggling to find any top lawyers willing to represent him.

[...]

In some cases, lawyers’ firms have blocked any talks, fearing a backlash that would hurt business.

The president lost two lawyers in just the past four days, including one who had been on board for less than a week.

Joseph diGenova, a longtime Washington lawyer who has pushed theories on Fox News that the F.B.I. made up evidence against Mr. Trump, left the team on Sunday. He had been hired last Monday, three days before the head of the president’s personal legal team, John Dowd, quit after determining that the president was not listening to his advice.

[...]

Roger Cossack, a seasoned legal analyst, said the key to successfully defending a high-profile client under immense scrutiny was to have a cohesive legal team with a consistent strategy.

“In these types of cases, you need highly competent lawyers and a client who will listen and follow their advice,” Mr. Cossack said. “If you don’t have both, you have what we’re seeing here: chaos and disaster.”

[...]

“He is looking for the guy who can say, ‘I know how to handle Mueller, I know you think he is bad, and we’ll take care of it.’ Problem is you can’t find that lawyer because no one will be able to do that.”

[...]

[Trump attorney Marc] Kasowitz pushed for an adversarial approach to the special counsel, which the president was poised to follow. But Mr. Kasowitz clashed with Mr. Kushner, and he was soon pushed aside after a series of missteps and embarrassing incidents.

[...]

When Mr. Kasowitz took the lead after Mr. Mueller was appointed in May, he wanted to follow a model used by Mr. Clinton, with a separate team of lawyers and communications professionals handling issues related to the inquiry, so that the White House staff could keep its distance.

But Mr. Trump, who trusts few people and considers himself his best lawyer, spokesman and strategist, never wanted that type of system. As a result, his legal and public relations strategies have been out of sync, with the president at times publicly contradicting his lawyers, and the White House often finding itself flat-footed in the face of new disclosures about the Russia investigation.

[...]

This month, the president met with the veteran lawyer Emmet Flood about the possibility of joining the legal team. But Mr. Trump was put off by the fact that Mr. Flood, a Republican, had represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment process, and Mr. Flood has made clear that he will not represent the president if Marc E. Kasowitz, his brash longtime personal lawyer, has any role in the effort.

Mr. Trump also tried to recruit Theodore B. Olson, a well-known Republican lawyer, but Mr. Olson has said he would not be representing the president.

[...]

One reason Mr. Dowd quit was that, against his advice, Mr. Trump was insistent that he wanted to answer questions under oath from Mr. Mueller, believing that it would help clear him.

Mr. Dowd had concluded that there was no upside and that the president, who often does not tell the truth, could increase his legal exposure if his answers were not accurate.

  NYT

"If".

Mr. Trump, hoping to bolster his team, met with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing in recent days but, according to two people told of details about the meeting, did not believe he had personal chemistry with them.

There were also significant conflict-of-interest issues, but Mr. Trump could have waived them if he wanted. Ms. Toensing is representing Mark Corallo, who was the spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team in 2017 before they parted ways. Mr. Corallo has told investigators that he was concerned that a close aide to Mr. Trump, Hope Hicks, may have been planning to obstruct justice during the drafting of a statement about a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign.

How could he have waived that conflict? That's a big conflict. To argue on behalf of Corallo - against Hope Hicks, the lawyers would have to implicate Trump in Hicks' actions.

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

Oops

President Trump’s legal team reversed course Sunday, announcing that a lawyer slated to join the attorneys handling the response to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation will not come on board after all, the latest sign of disarray for Trump’s legal strategy.

[...]

Trump is now left, at least temporarily, without a traditional criminal defense attorney as Mueller’s team appears to be entering a critical phase in its investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and whether the president’s campaign cooperated with Russia in this effort.

Joseph diGenova, the lawyer Trump wanted to replace Dowd, has often stridently defended the president on Fox News Channel and cast the Mueller probe as a conspiracy against him. Trump enjoyed the TV appearances and wanted diGenova on his team even though he did not know him, officials say.

But in a statement on Sunday, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team said both diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, who is also a lawyer, would not be working on the Russia probe because clients they are representing in connection with the investigation posed conflicts of interest.

[...]

Trump’s issues with diGenova and Toensing went beyond their conflicts, said a person who spoke to the president recently. After meeting with the husband-and-wife team on Thursday — after diGenova’s hiring had been announced — the person said Trump was less impressed with diGenova than he had been while watching the former U.S. attorney on television.

  WaPo

Okay, here's the thing about that: diGenova and Toensing would have known they had a conflict because of other clients before they went to talk to him.  And they do. What was the idea?  They'd dump the others in favor of taking on Trump?  Maybe pass them off to some other lawyer in the firm.

So, that's not the reason they aren't taking on the case. It's possible Trump decided he didn't like the guy, but if that's actually the reason (which I don't believe, either, because they originally said diGenova was on the team), then it's because after talking to him, diGenova advised him to do something he didn't want to do, or not do something he wants to do...in other words, it became clear to one or both parties that Trump wouldn't take his attorney's advice, and no attorney worth his salt will take on a client like that.

Trump did not closely research diGenova or even consult with top aides, including Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and White House counsel Donald McGahn, before hiring him.

Of course not.  He saw him on Fox News seeming to defend Trump. Dowd was getting cantakerous, and this guy seemed like he really liked Trump, and that's all the Inflatable Rooster cared about.

Trump had hoped diGenova could serve as a surrogate in television interviews and play the role of attack dog in criticizing the Mueller probe.

DiGenova must have set him straight on that count.

Trump’s legal effort is now led by [Jay] Sekulow, a conservative attorney and radio host who has concentrated on constitutional issues, and assisted by Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer paid by taxpayers to represent the institution of the presidency rather than Trump personally. Cobb, too, has occasionally drawn the president’s ire, people familiar with the team have said.

[...]

Trump has recently been relying on Marc E. Kasowitz, who led his legal team until this summer and has represented Trump in several cases over the years. Kasowitz and Trump clashed over a number of issues, including Kasowitz’s belief that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a top White House aide, needed to leave the administration because of the potential legal problems he faced due to the probe and the potential problems they could cause Trump. After Dowd’s hiring, Kasowitz took a diminished role in handling the case.

[...]

Trump’s struggles are reminiscent of his difficulties in spring 2017 when he was first seeking new lawyers to represent him in the Russia probe. He interviewed a half-dozen high-profile legal stars in the white-collar defense bar, including Emmet T. Flood, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. and A.B. Culvahouse Jr. All of them declined.

[...]

Ultimately, said one person close to Trump’s legal team, “He’s his own lawyer. Always has been and always will be.”

The person added: “You know what they say about a ‘lawyer’ who has himself as a client.”

Yes. Yes, we do.

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

UPDATE:



Potential ethical problems - or an unwillingness to pay bills - or, in Trump's case, both.

Oh Dear God

Or, are they having second thoughts?

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

Criminal indictment of a sitting president?

I don't see why not. Here's a little flashback to the Clinton Whitewater days when people were asking about this legal issue.

While the Nixon Justice Department took the view that the president couldn't be indicted, the House Judiciary Committee, which draws up articles of impeachment, had a different perspective. A memorandum of law drawn up for the committee during Watergate states: "The Constitution itself provides that impeachment is no substitute for the ordinary process of criminal law since its specifies that impeachment does not immunize the officer from criminal liability for his wrongdoing." Significantly, the committee did not say that such a criminal charge had to await the president's removal from office.

It's possible to imagine many circumstances where such a delay would be unthinkable. Let us suppose that one day a president, tired of the constraints of security, secretly leaves the White House in a car and strikes and kills a pedestrian. Suppose, further, the president was drunk at the time. Does anyone argue that justice must await his impeachment and removal? Impeachment might not even be warranted since this is not the type of "high crime or misdemeanor" contemplated by the drafters of the Constitution.

  WSJ

But I will put you another case: Suppose that one day a vice president invites someone to go hunting with him and shoots the man in the face. And suppose, the vice president is whisked away and hidden until the following morning so that no officer of the law can know his condition. Does anyone argue that justice must await the time needed to pass a breath test?

Robert Bork, when he was solicitor general under President Nixon, declared on behalf of the Justice Department that a president had to be impeached and removed from office before being indicted. By contrast, the Justice Department declared that Vice President Spiro Agnew could be criminally prosecuted, but the issue was never resolved because Mr. Agnew pleaded guilty.

[...]

The Bork position [...] has no basis in law. Nor is it particularly convincing as a matter of policy. Yes, the president is the chief enforcer of the laws, so it would be somewhat odd for him in effect to indict himself. But this is precisely why the independent counsel was created. Independent counsels are not appointed by the White House, so presumably they should be free to pursue criminal charges against the president if his actions warrant it.

[...]

The nation, in fact, could conceivably benefit from the indictment of a president. It would teach the valuable civics lesson that no one is above the law. As an appeals court told Mr. Clinton in the Paula Jones case, the Founders created a presidency, not a monarchy.

You want to know who wrote those words? An attorney by the name of Joseph diGenova, March 6, 1997.

Fast forward.

President Trump is hiring Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney, to be part of his legal team representing him in the Russia probe being led by special counsel Robert Mueller, CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett reported Monday. Trump attorney Jay Sekulow announced the addition of diGenova to the team Monday afternoon.

[...]

DiGenova is seen as devoted to Mr. Trump, fierce in his advocacy and more disciplined in terms of media dealings than Dowd, Garrett notes.

  CBS

Hmmm. This will be interesting, then, in light of his opinion during Clinton's term.

According to sources familiar with this move, Garrett reports that John Dowd will remain on the Trump personal legal team but DiGenova was recruited and hired to limit Dowd's role.

Probably a good idea.

In a radio interview that aired Monday, diGenova slammed FBI Director Christopher Wray, calling him an "embarrassment" over his handling of the firing of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Wray? Wasn't it Sessions' call? Are we going to try to get rid of Wray now?

Also, his wife is Victoria Toensing. And their firm is representing Mark Corallo.

We're gonna need more than three rings for this circus.


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

UPDATE: 3/23: