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=</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/10/09/768556474/how-a-political-hit-job-backfired-and-led-to-trumps-impeachment-peril">https://www.npr.org/<b>2019/10</b>/09/768556474/how-a-political-hit-job-backfired-and-led-to-trumps-impeachment-peril</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The nation's attention is riveted on the drama unfolding in Washington, where House investigators are assembling evidence for their impeachment inquiry, and President Trump is refusing to cooperate. Our guest, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green, says that, ironically, Trump's impeachment peril is the unintended result of an effort to help him.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last spring, a book came out called "Secret Empires: How The American Political Class Hides Corruption And Enriches Family And Friends." Its author was Peter Schweizer, the head of the Government Accountability Institute, a think tank founded by Schweizer and Steve Bannon. The book includes information about&nbsp;<b>Hunter Biden,</b>&nbsp;the son of Joe Biden and his activities in Ukraine when his father was the vice president.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The book raises questions about possible ethical violations and corruption related to Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<b>The book received a lot of attention on Fox News,</b>&nbsp;where it came to the attention of President Trump and led&nbsp;<b>Trump to send Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine</b>&nbsp;to pressure the new government there to investigate the claims in Schweizer's book.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Joshua Green notes in a new article how this echoes the playbook that Schweizer and Bannon successfully used with their 2015 book "Clinton Cash</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">," which raised questions about the propriety of Hillary Clinton's financial dealings and those of the Clinton Foundation. It led to investigations by the mainstream media.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Joshua Green writes about politics for Bloomberg Businessweek and is the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain."</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;He spoke with FRESH AIR's Dave Davies.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Joshua Green, welcome back to FRESH AIR. You write that the allegations of corruption involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine were first aired in a book published last year by something called the Government Accountability Institute. What is the Government Accountability Institute?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">JOSHUA GREEN: Well, the</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Government Accountability Institute is registered as a&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">nonpartisan research&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">organization. It was founded in 2012 by Steve Banno</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">n, Donald Trump's former chief strategist, and Peter Schweizer, who, I believe, is now the president and still works there. And it bills itself as an investigatory outfit that investigates money and politics, corruption and that sort of thing.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: Right. Who funds it?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN: Well, we don't know all the funders, but one of its chief funders is Rebekah&nbsp;<b>Mercer,</b>&nbsp;who is part of the Mercer family, headed by Robert Mercer, the former co-chair of Renaissance Technologies, the big hedge fund. The Mercer family was and still is a major right-wing donor to various different causes, big Trump supporters, and a family that has come into the spotlight since Trump's election - also involved in Cambridge Analytica and some of the outfits that became famous and even notorious after the 2016 election.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: The funding certainly comes from partisan sources. You know, the co-founder was Steve Bannon. What's interesting, as you write, is that the work - the research that it produced and the books that it produced weren't intended particularly to reach the conservative media or core Republican voters. What was the purpose?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN: Well, the purpose of GAI originally was to, you know, investigate politicians. But given the conservative band of people like Bannon and Schweizer and their funders, the focus often tended to be Democrats. And in my book, I write about how<b>&nbsp;Schweizer and Bannon resolved to go after Hillary Clinton a couple of years before the 2016 election, knowing that she was likely to emerge as the Democratic nominee.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">So through GAI and its investigators, its forensic data scientists, you know, they pored over public records, corporate filings, dark Web scrapings to compile, you know, a damning book about Bill and Hillary Clinton in their work through their nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation, that was published about a month before Hillary launched her presidential campaign. And that book, "Clinton Cash," became an instant New York Times [PARTNERSHIP?!]&nbsp; bestseller and&nbsp;<b>really tarnished Hillary Clinton's image just as she was entering the presidential fray.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: And the interesting thing is that, you know, Bannon was not interested in just generating material for the conservative media. It was important that mainstream media draw on this research and, you know, give it their imprimatur tour too.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN: That's exactly right.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">You know, Bannon's critique of how Republicans deal with the media goes back to the 1990s and Bill Clinton's impeachment, when he thought that Republicans really just wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber and they chased wild rumors and conspiracy theories and really put off ordinary voters. The media didn't listen to them. Voters didn't listen to them.&nbsp;<b>OPPO RESEARCH</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">So with "Clinton Cash," he resolved to compile factual information that he wanted the mainstream media to pick up and amplify.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;And so he explicitly was not looking to reach a conservative audience, which is already going to be predisposed to dislike the Clintons, and was aiming to affect the votes in the views of independents and Democrats and the type of people that Hillary Clinton was counting on.<b>&nbsp;It was important to Bannon that GAI's work be picked up and taken seriously by mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg News.</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: And did those mainstream media organizations publish stories based on the research?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">GREEN:&nbsp;<b>Yeah, they did. I mean, famously, there was a New York Times story based on Schweizer's reporting.</b>&nbsp;And it revealed this in the story, looking at a Clinton Foundation deal in a Russian-backed company called Uranium One that really took off and, I think, poisoned the public views of Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. And, as Bannon intended, a whiff of corruption attached itself to Hillary Clinton</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Of course, that expanded as the media focused on her missing emails and Republicans pushed these ideas.&nbsp;</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But the book really succeeded in what Bannon had set out to do. And that was to&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">raise doubts&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">about the ethics and morals and fitness for the presidency of Hillary Clinton.</span></b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: Right. And we should just note that there is nothing at all unusual about credible reporters getting tips and leads and information from partisan sources. They have to, of course, independently verify the information and assess its credibility. Were the books that the Government Accountability Institute writes generally accurate?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">GREEN:&nbsp;<b>Well, they were based on facts</b>. And what these investigators did was go out and turn out examples of foreign donors that hadn't been disclosed and examples of behavior by former President Bill Clinton that&nbsp;<b>seemed</b>&nbsp;to be conducted on behalf of donors to the Clinton Foundation.<b>&nbsp;You know, Schweizer's style is not to fabricate or allege illegality. Instead, he uses his reporting to lay out a suggestive timeline that leads readers to a conclusion that, hey, something is dirty here.</b>&nbsp;This reeks of influence peddling. Something is not right. And it raises doubts about the subjects.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: So the new book from Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute is called "Secret Empires: How The American Political Class Hides Corruption And Enriches Family And Friends." And it identified Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden as a target for some of the material. What did it find about Joe and Hunter Biden?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN: Well, what it found was that Hunter Biden, the vice president's son, had become&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">a highly paid director at a Ukrainian natural gas company called Burisma</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, a position that he didn't have any obvious qualifications for.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But he did have a very famous last name, and the owner of the company was interested, I think, in building credibility.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Schweizer also took a look at a private equity fund that Hunter Biden became involved in that drew a lot of money from Chinese investors at the same time that Hunter was flying to China on Air Force Two with his father, the vice president.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So in Schweizer's reporting, you know, this is made to look very fishy and possibly illegal and raise doubts about the ethics of Joe Biden and whether or not, you know, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination really belongs in that position or, you know, is in some way corrupt because of his son's business dealings.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: No direct evidence that Joe Biden did anything to assist his son in either of those ventures, right? But there's an association.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN<b>: No. No, there isn't. And Bloomberg News, my employer, has done a lot of reporting and has turned up no wrongdoing.&nbsp;</b>Other outlets have taken a look. I mean, what is going on and what Schweizer is good at finding are situations like this where, you know, I think any objective reader would come to the conclusion that, you know, but for Hunter's last name, he would not be in this position. You and I would not be offered a $50,000 a month board seat at a Ukrainian gas company because our father isn't vice president.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So it's the sort of - it's what, you know, Schweizer calls corruption by proxy. There's nothing explicitly illegal, but it's sort of morally corrupt and an indictment of our system in a way that populist Republicans and Democrats like to criticize.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: The Clinton book got a ton of mainstream media attention and had an impact on the Clintons themselves. This book, did it get a lot of mainstream attention? Did it hurt harm the Bidens?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN:&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">You know, it really didn't. It came out in 2018, and it kind of came and went. It - you know, it didn't attach itself to Biden. It didn't become - it didn't drive the political news cycle in the way that "Clinton Cash" drove the 2015-2016 presidential news cycle. It got a decent amount of attention in conservative media, but it never really broke out into the mainstream.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You know, and I speculated in my Businessweek piece, a couple of reasons for this - one, Joe Biden wasn't yet a candidate, and so there wasn't that kind of urgency to look into his past. There might have been had the book come out later on.&nbsp;<b>It also didn't focus only on the Biden's; it focused on John Kerry, Barack Obama, the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.&nbsp;</b>So I think that influenced how it was received. And of course, unlike "Clinton Cash," it wasn't focused on an actual Democratic presidential candidate; it was mainly focused on his son. And so there - it was sort of one degree removed from the primary actors.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>I think all these things together help explain why the book didn't really break out until, that is, Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, became infatuated with it,</b>&nbsp;started trying to investigate these things themselves and now has kicked off what has become an entire impeachment proceeding and put the book and the Bidens and Schweizer himself very much in the center of the 2020 presidential news cycle.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: So when this book was launched with these stories, what were the ambitions of Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN: Well, I think the ambition was a reprise of what they'd seen with "Clinton Cash," that the mainstream media would look into this stuff and amplify it in the way that they had with the Clinton charges</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. You know, Steve Bannon, who kind of pioneered this model, has a phrase he likes to use - anchor left, pivot right. And what that means is you want to anchor this reporting on the left and the mainstream media - what Bannon considers the left - get them writing about it and then use the right-wing media to amplify what it is the mainstream media is saying and to kind of dominate the entire mediasphere.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So I think Schweizer and GAI were hoping that "Secret Empires," the Biden reporting, would be anchored in the mainstream media, and the whole process would repeat itself, but that never really happened with the second book.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: So what did happen? Why do we know about it now?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN: Well, we know about it now - it got a decent amount of attention in the right-wing media, on</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Fox News, in the New York Post.&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And of course, some of - you know, one of the most loyal consumers of right-wing media is the president,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Donald Trump, who according to reporting watches hours and hours of Fox News every day. So he was exposed to this reporting, exposed to the charges and the insinuations that Schweizer made. He's tweeted about the book. He's tweeted about Schweizer.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, you know, based on everything we've heard from the whistleblower report, from the White House call transcript that was released at the end of September, Trump and Giuliani took it upon themselves to pick up the phone and try and advance Schweizer's reporting into the Bidens. I mean, essentially, calling the president of Ukraine and saying, hey,<b>&nbsp;I know about this Biden stuff. I want you to look into this.</b>&nbsp;I want you to investigate my political opponent. And, you know, if you don't, we're going to withhold this military aid - setting off all the alarm bells that have now led to the impeachment inquiry.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: So it really was the president and Giuliani that took this and ran with it.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN: It really was. I mean, the remarkable thing - a lot of people watch Fox News, watch right-wing media, get upset about the Clintons and the Bidens, but only one of them had the power to pick up the telephone, call the president of the Ukraine and put pressure on him to investigate the Bidens in hopes that they could turn up more damning information about Joe and Hunter Biden, knowing that Joe Biden was very likely to be his Democratic opponent in 2020.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green about the origins of the story about Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine, which drew interest from President Trump and has now led to an impeachment inquiry. Green is the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So President Trump has said that Joe Biden, when he was vice president - I guess in 2016 - sought to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired, who was, at that time, investigating the company associated with Hunter Biden, his son - in effect, kind of scotching an investigation into his son by getting the prosecutor fired. What's the truth of this?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN:&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Well, it is true what Trump says, but it is wildly misleading. Vice President Biden played a central role in overseeing U.S. policy in the Ukraine. But Biden, the Obama administration, Republicans in the Senate, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union were all putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to root out corruption and, particularly, to fire the chief prosecutor at the time, Viktor Shokin, who was not - who was essentially beholden to the oligarchs, was not doing the kind of corruption investigations they wanted.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So Biden threatened to withhold up to a billion dollars in aid from Ukraine if Shokin wasn't fired because he was so deeply corrupt.</b>&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">So Biden and the Obama administration were putting pressure on the Ukraine government to do more investigating of corruption not less, as Trump and his allies are insinuating.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And it's also - I mean, just to be clear, they weren't in - Ukrainian prosecutors were never investigating Hunter Biden. They were investigating an oligarch who owned - who is the co-founder of Burisma, the gas company, on whose board Hunter Biden served.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: Right. And is it clear whether, at the time that he was fired,<b>&nbsp;this prosecutor, Victor Shokin, was actually investigating the company?</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>GREEN: You know, it isn't clear.&nbsp;</b>There have been conflicting reports on this. There does seem to have been an investigation into Burisma. But, you know, they paid a fine. That went away. At no point was Hunter Biden ever implicated in any kind of corruption. And part of what, I think, Trump and Giuliani were trying to do was to reopen this investigation and steer it toward Hunter Biden in hopes that they could find or maybe create damaging material around the Bidens.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: There is a new chief prosecutor in Ukraine and was quoted as saying that he had opened an audit of a bunch of old investigations, including one into Burisma Holdings, the company that Hunter Biden was associated with. What does this portend?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN: Well, it's not clear. I mean, one of the things, I think, a lot of people don't understand about the whole Ukraine situation is that Hunter Biden was never investigated by Ukrainian prosecutors.&nbsp;<b>What happened was that they were investigating an oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky, who co-founded Burisma.&nbsp;</b>And so reopening investigations would be investigations into Burisma Holdings. But they - from what we know, that wouldn't affect or have anything specifically to do with Hunter Biden or his situation there.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the things that Trump and Giuliani are pushing for in these text messages and these - in these meetings and phone calls is for Ukrainian prosecutors to go further and specifically investigate the Bidens in hope that they can turn up dirt that can be used in the 2020 presidential campaign.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>And as far as we know, there's no basis for investigating anything. There is no evidence that I'm aware of or that anybody has reported that would suggest that there was wrongdoing there.&nbsp;</b>And Schweizer himself, in fact, in the New York Times today, has an op-ed saying that, you know, what transpired actually wasn't illegal under U.S. law. It was unseemly. It might have been unethical - the idea of putting a politician's son on a board as a way of maybe trying to influence the political process - but there was nothing illegal here. And that's very much Schweizer's style is not to allege illegality but to insinuate that there is something corrupt going on there.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>And, I think, part of the way that this entire story went sideways and went crashing into this impeachment inquiry is that Trump is very much susceptible to the insinuation that there is something, you know, perfidious going on here and took it upon himself to, you know, push and amplify and even threaten people in hopes of advancing the story.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: You mentioned that Peter Schweizer, the author of this book that was funded by the Government Accountability Institute, has an op-ed in The Times. He's arguing that there's a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for an American company operating in a foreign country to engage in, you know, bribery or nepotism to secure favor from governments in which they operate but that there's a big hole in the law in that there's nothing to prevent a foreign government from hiring the family of U.S. officials or creating relationships in order to, you know, create an appearance which helps their business. Does he have a point?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN: I think he's got a perfectly good point. And that's exactly what seems to be going on with Hunter Biden. He had no traditional, professional qualification for the job that he held with Burisma, you know, and that in itself doesn't seem right. I think that is what Schweizer is pointing to.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, Trump and Republicans have taken it a lot further, twisting a lot of the facts about what was investigated, what the Obama administration and Biden were pressuring the Ukrainian government to do in 2016. But the basic fact that Hunter Biden was on this board and was probably there for political reasons, because there weren't really any other good reasons for him to be on the board - what Scheizer has pointed out here and what he says in his New York Times op-ed is that what Hunter Biden did was perfectly legal, but that, in itself, is a problem.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GROSS: Joshua Green is a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek. After a break, he'll talk with Dave Davies about how the controversy is affecting the Biden campaign and how Trump and his allies are fighting back with counter narratives that paint the president as the victim of Democratic attacks.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview FRESH AIR's Dave Davies recorded with Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green. In a recent column, Green argues that President Trump's impeachment worries are actually the unintended result of an effort to help him. He says Trump picked up on research about Joe Biden developed by a conservative think tank and included in a book last year.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The material was intended to harm Biden's presidential campaign. But when Trump saw the story on conservative media and began urging Ukraine to investigate Biden, he created far bigger problems for himself. Trump is now the subject of an impeachment inquiry into whether he abused the authority of his office. When we left off, Green was talking about an op-ed published in The New York Times by Peter Schweizer, the author of the book with the allegations against Biden.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">DAVIES:&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Are you surprised that The New York Times would publish an op-ed by Peter Schweizer, you know, who got funding from, you know, the Mercers and have a very strong political point of view?</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">GREEN: Yeah. You know, a little bit, given the controversy it kicked up in 2016 when&nbsp;<b>Schweizer's reporting appeared on the front page -</b>&nbsp;in other words, in the news pages. This piece today is in the opinion section, which I think is a little bit more appropriate for the author and the subject and the claims that he's making.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: Right. And just going back to 2016, my understanding is that, you know, the author of the Times' reporting on the Clinton Foundations and the Uranium One story is reporting that they stand by, that they independently investigated all of this and found it credible and newsworthy. Do you disagree?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">: No. I don't disagree with that at all. I mean, part of what made the GAI project so effective is that they didn't do what some conservative authors do, which is to, you know, fabricate or publish rumors. I mean, they're - all of this is based in fact.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;They certainly put their own spin on those facts. They insinuated that there was maybe more going on than was actually going on.&nbsp;<b>But they really did turn up evidence of unreported donations, of relationships that just didn't seem right that, you know, any legitimate investigative reporter, were he or she to come across this information, would want to look into further. And that's exactly what happened.</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">So the fact that there is a grain of truth in a lot of what is written is one of the things that makes it so effective and that Bannon and Schweizer understood from the outset would get the mainstream media to pay attention and amplify these charges.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;I think what happened in 2016 that upsets liberals so much is that, you know, as this stuff was being published in the mainstream media, it was also being amplified and distorted in the right-wing media. And that was having a real effect on Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Her reputation was unquestionably tarnished. She was dogged by these charges and allegations. You add in the amplifying voice of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate calling her crooked Hillary and corrupt and I don't think there's any question - but that - it affected voters' views of her in a way that ultimately proved disastrous for Clinton's own candidacy and for Democrats.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">DAVIES</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">: One of the things that I think adds to the political potency is that the facts of a lot of these stories are so complicated, that it's really hard for an average reader to sort out what it all means. Was there subsequent reporting on the Uranium One story which cast the Clintons' actions in a different light?</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN:</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">&nbsp;Nothing knocked it down. You know, the subsequent reporting - I mean, I think what a lot of Democrats objected to was the fact that this, frankly, partisan outfit and author and right-wing money had produced this information that had made its way onto the front page of The New York Times. And I spoke to the liberal activist David Brock at the time about Schweizer and Bannon. And he shook his head. And he Said, you know, looking at it from their point of view, the&nbsp;<b>Times is the perfect host body for the virus -</b>&nbsp;meaning, you know, the intention all along from these guys was to poison the public image of Hillary Clinton</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.&nbsp;<b>And by getting these charges onto the front pages of The New York Times, they essentially accomplished that mission. I think everything that happened subsequently with Trump's attacks and Clinton's loss in the 2016 election back that up. And this time around, with Joe and Hunter Biden, they were looking to do the same thing.</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">DAVIES:</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<b>In the op-ed, the Times doesn't mention Peter Schweizer's association with the Government Accountability Institute or its funders, you know, the Mercers.&nbsp;</b>What do you think of that?</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">GREEN: You know, if I were running the op-ed page, I think that's something I would've disclosed based on, you know, his background, the political lineage and what we saw in the 2016 presidential cycle.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: So is all of this affecting the Biden campaign?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN: You know, it's not clear that it is. I mean, Biden had been on a bit of a downward trajectory before Trump and the Ukraine charges really came into the news cycle. But, you know, he is - he's starting to slip now. I mean, in the latest averages of polls, Elizabeth Warren has nudged ahead of him. So, you know, it's not clear that this is a deadly development for Joe Biden's candidacy, but it certainly isn't helping.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: Since the whistleblower complaint emerged, there's been a lot of information and text and the summary of the phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine, which has led to this impeachment inquiry, which is clearly picking up steam. I mean, we're going to see, you know, testimony from other players in this including the former ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. The Trump administration says it is not going to cooperate with this because, you know, it's a witch hunt. Where do you see this going?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN:&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Well, you know, the irony here is that Trump, by involving himself, you know, essentially made this entire project blow up in his face and committed actions that, at the very least, have launched an impeachment inquiry and I think are very likely to lead to his impeachment in the House whether or not the Senate ultimately chooses to remove him.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But what the whistleblower report showed, what the subsequent text messages that have now been revealed between the U.S. ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, and Bill Taylor, a top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, that show that the U.S. apparently was withholding military aid to help a political campaign, as Taylor put it in his text. That is the quid pro quo that Democrats are alleging. And I think if there is a trial in the House, that's what it's likely to show. And the evidence we've seen so far certainly supports that.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So I think, from an impeachment standpoint, Trump is in real trouble. Whether or not he's ultimately removed from office, we'll see. I'm skeptical. But certainly this isn't the outcome that Schweizer and GAI and I think Trump and Giuliani expected to happen when they started making noise about this over the summer.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">DAVIES: Right. Well, the president's defenders are aggressively promoting other narratives. I mean,&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Giuliani, a couple of weeks ago, was on the ABC weekend show waiving an affidavit from Viktor Shokin,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;you know, the prosecutor that was fired in 2016, in which alleges that, in fact, he was investigating the company Hunter Biden's - was associated with. There are certainly reasons to doubt his credibility in the eyes of a lot of people. And then, you know, last week,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Senator Ron Johnson had a heated exchange with Chuck Todd on "Meet The Press" in which he was arguing that there's all this credible evidence that people in the Ukraine were trying to hurt Trump and help Hillary Clinton in 2016. [RUSSIAN DISINFO]&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It's a very aggressive strategy to - you know, bringing up other stuff. What do you think the effect will be?</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN: Well, I think the intention on the part of Republicans is to muddy the waters and to turn the charges of corruption against Trump that we've seen laid out in the whistleblower report and the text messages - turn them back against the Democrats.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">What is troubling to a lot of people is that a lot of these charges are based on discredited conspiracy theories. What Ron Johnson was talking about was a&nbsp;<b>conspiracy theory that Trump and Giuliani have propagated that it wasn't Russia that hacked the Democratic National Committee servers in the 2016 election but Ukraine.&nbsp;</b>That's something that's been knocked down by every intelligence official, U.S. and otherwise, who's looked into this. And yet, this is what's being propagated by Trump.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And I think a lot of Republican politicians, fearful of Trump's wrath and eager to toe the partisan line, have found themselves forced or obligated to repeat these wild charges in a way that bears no relationship to reality but is nonetheless, I think, muddying the waters and shaping public opinion in a way that is intended to mitigate the damage of the charges against Trump.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: Is Steve Bannon playing a role in stoking any of these allegations?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN: You know, he really isn't anymore. I mean, Bannon had a very public falling-out with Donald Trump in 2017, where Trump sort of publicly humiliated him and excommunicated him from the Republican Party. He lost his position as the head of Breitbart News, was essentially sent out into the wilderness.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>I mean, Bannon is still around on the scene. He is focused more on China these days and trying to, I think, strengthen Trump's resolve to conduct the trade war</b>. Trump did tweet favorably about him a couple of months ago. But there isn't a close relationship there in the way that there was during the presidential campaign.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">DAVIES: Yeah. I asked because&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">you wrote a book about Steve Bannon and talked to him a lot. He was also going around Europe trying to kind of build a, you know, nationalist, populist movement. How did that go?</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">GREEN: Well, it basically failed. I mean, the nationalist movements in Europe weren't really interested in an American political strategist coming in and telling them what to do.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;They didn't perform nearly as well in the May European parliamentary elections as Bannon and some of the nationalist contingent were hoping for.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And so he's focused mainly these days on kind of beating the war drums against China, going out and publicly defending Trump's aggression against China when it comes to tariffs and the trade war and that sort of thing, and seeking to remain relevant in that way. But so far, there has been no reproach with Trump and the White House, or the Mercer family, for that matter. And so he's off on his own.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: You know, looking at the strategy of the Government Accountability Institute with this book, you know, the idea was to kind of repeat the playbook that worked with the Clinton candidacy in 2016, where you develop information, it becomes adopted by the mainstream media and becomes a scandal. And in this case, it seems like another - kind of a different weird thing happened, which is that it turned into a scandal for the president himself when he pursued a theory and then engaged in conduct which has resulted in this impeachment inquiry.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the same time, Peter Schweizer, the author of the book funded by the Government Accountability Institute, is being quoted. I mean, the story is out there. I wonder how they view this - how it's all worked out.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREEN:</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Well, the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">irony here is that the target was supposed to be the Bidens, not the president. And by the president becoming involved, you know, the original plan has kind of blown up</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> What may wind up happening - as you say, you know, Biden and these charges are very much in the news. That was part of the intention, even if the negative attention toward Trump wasn't part of the plan. What we could see end up happening is a kind of a murder-suicide where Trump really does take out his strongest Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, only, he winds up, in the process, getting himself impeached.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DAVIES: Well, Joshua Green, thanks so much for speaking with us again.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GREEN: Thank you. It's always a pleasure.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GROSS: Joshua Green is a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek and the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain."&nbsp;</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see disinfo note dems not getting briefings/ reports?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/classified-cia-report-putin-probably-directing-disinformation-campaign-against-biden-with-gops-help/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/classified-cia-report-putin-probably-directing-disinformation-campaign-against-biden-with-gops-help/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">russian president Vladimir Putin is “probably directing” a disinformation campaign against Joe Biden ahead of November’s election, according to a top-secret CIA assessment.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Two unnamed sources&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/22/secret-cia-assessment-putin-probably-directing-influence-operation-denigrate-biden/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">told the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Washington Post</em></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;the Kremlin was attempting to interfere with the 2020 presidential election through a Ukrainian parliamentarian with ties to President Donald Trump’s personal attorney </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Rudy Giuliani.</span></b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We assess that President Vladimir Putin and the senior most Russian officials are aware of and probably directing Russia’s influence operations aimed at denigrating the former U.S. vice president, supporting the U.S. president and fueling public discord ahead of the U.S. election in November,” the report states in its first line.</font></p><div class="story_page_incontent_instagram_container story_page_incontent_ig" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The highly classified report was reportedly published for agency use at the end of last month, and is based on intelligence gathered by the FBI and the NSA. u</font><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">krainian lawmaker&nbsp;<b>Andriy Derkach,&nbsp;</b>who has been working publicly with Giuliani and was recently sanctioned by the Treasury Department for election meddling, has been spreading disinformation about Biden through Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).</span></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies">https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">db no lnx pix docs</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The network of Russian-linked trolls identified by The Daily Beast goes beyond just a single post on COVID-19 conspiracies. From at least 2016 through this year, trolls sought to spread disinformation on elections in the U.S. and Europe, pit Western countries against each other, and ruin Ukraine’s international reputation.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In December 2019, as impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump took place, Russian-linked trolls spread an article that falsely claimed Democrats colluded with a former KGB officer during the 2016 elections. The article, “Former KGB agent sponsored Democrats in the 2016 election,” falsely accuses Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk of having worked for Soviet intelligence during the Cold War and financing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The theme of Democratic collusion with Ukraine to undermine Trump’s candidacy, often touted by President Trump and his allies, is a theme Russian intelligence operatives have pushed for years, according to The New York Times.&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Relying on Rudy</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Many of the Secondary Infektion stories used phony screengrabs or forged documents to further their narrative. <b>By contrast, the authors of the fake KGB support story relied on the conspiracy theorizing of Rudy Giuliani and the Trump-cheering cable news channel OANN to push their story.</b></span></div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Rudy Giuliani's recent visit to Ukraine exposed many secrets of the Democratic Party, which is trying to distract the public from its crimes through the impeachment of the incumbent US president,” the trolls wrote alongside links to OANN’s coverage of the impeachment scandal.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Secondary Infektion crew also ventured beyond the relitigation of America’s 2016 presidential election to meddle in elections in Europe.&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In advance of Sweden’s 2018 elections, the trolls used a series of fake conspiracies focused on the right wing nationalist Sweden Democrats party to interfere in Sweden’s 2018 election.&nbsp;</b>Secondary Infektion propagandists forged a fake letter in stilted English purporting to show Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warning Poland’s foreign minister that “Russian special services are going to provide technical and material support to the Swedish Democrats and help them in the election campaign” as part of a hacking campaign.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“It bears the digital hallmarks of forgery,” said Sam Meyer, a research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Meyer ran the Pompeo letter image through the Tungstène imagery analysis software and found that the image was based on a digital template bearing the State Department letterhead and Secretary Pompeo’s signature with the text digitally added separately.&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Many of the the Secondary Infektion articles identified by The Daily Beast appeared aimed at dividing the U.S. from its allies in Europe.&nbsp;</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Since its forces began occupying eastern Ukraine, Russia has tried to oppose the U.S. sale of lethal aid to Ukrainian forces, particularly the Javelin anti-tank missiles which could be useful in fending off Russian armor.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;As the Trump administration mulled the prospect of a sale in the fall of 2017, Russian trolls published a forged screenshot pretending to come from the Twitter account of U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria. “Javelins from Ukraine will help #YPG/#YPJ fighters defeat #IS in Deir al-Zour. #JazeeraStorm #defeatDaesh.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Except the tweet was never sent and neither American nor Ukrainian forces ever transferred Javelins to partner forces in Syria. The apparent goal of the forgery and accompanying article was an attempt to paint the Trump administration’s arms sale to Ukraine as reckless and to create tensions between the U.S., Ukraine, and Turkey, which has strongly objected to transfers of less sophisticated arms to Kurdish forces in Syria.&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But not all of the articles fit into such neat thematic categories. At least one appeared aimed at diverting attention from or at least provoking confusion about a criminal case involving the theft of classified information from the National Security Agency.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Federal prosecutors charged former NSA contractor Hal Martin in 2016 with unlawfully taking home vast amounts of classified NSA data. Martin had initially come under suspicion as a result of an investigation into the publication of classified NSA hacking tools released by a group calling itself “The Shadow Brokers,” which some believe may be a front for Russian intelligence.&nbsp;</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Martin was never charged with involvement in the Shadow Brokers leak. But in November 2016, a month after prosecutors arrested him, personas bearing the hallmarks of the Secondary Infektion campaign began posting articles falsely claiming that Martin had betrayed the identities of undercover CIA officers associated with the Bush-era torture program.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Another Secondary Infektion article took aim at what would seem an unlikely target for the Kremlin: former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. In 2018, while Medvedev was still serving as prime minister of Russia, the trolls used a fake screenshot of a nonexistent article from The Guardian to cast doubt on his political future, writing that Medvedev was “facing a whole bunch of problems, from lack of financing to health issues and even alcohol.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bang for the buck?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For all the effort put into the troll campaign, the impact appears to have been small to nonexistent. In 2016, IRA trolls operating Twitter and Facebook accounts racked up millions of views throughout the U.S. presidential election, but the greater scrutiny of Russian disinformation and more cautious operational security practices used by the Secondary Infektion have come at a steep cost in terms of reach.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">None of the articles or forgeries identified by The Daily Beast appear to have been picked up and amplified by news outlets or social media users outside of Secondary Infektion.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"One of the biggest mysteries about Secondary Infektion is what the operators thought they were doing,” said Nimmo. “I've never seen so little bang to the buck."</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the history of documented Secondary Infektion articles, only one appears to have gained any traction—the leak of authentic U.K.-U.S. trade documents shortly before the British general election in 2019.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Leaked: Secret Documents From Russia’s Election Trolls</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">RED SPILL</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Spencer Ackerman,&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gideon Resnick,&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ben Collins</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">MOONLIGHTING</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Kevin Poulsen]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The reach of articles identified by The Daily Beast is much shorter. The posts, published to obscure and niche web forums like WorthyChristianForums and DefendingTheTruth, garnered just a few dozen views according to view counters available on some of the sites. Some generated agreement or at least debate among a handful of forumgoers and social media users where they were posed, but they also generated derision and skepticism as well.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Arthur,” one Reddit commenter wrote under a Secondary Infektion persona’s piece about Brexit, “you've done something that I couldn't imagine was possible. You've written a piece so poor that brexiteers and remainers can unite around how dreadful your opinions are. There's something in here to make everyone scoff.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Others social media users noticed the pattern of single-use accounts posting articles on known Russian themes and found them appropriately suspicious. “New Reddit User. 1 post. Article about the east.” a Redditor commented on a post trying to stir up tensions between Hungary and Ukraine. “You almost got me Putin.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Adam Rawnsley</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">adam.rawnsley@thedailybeast.com</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">t<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-latest-conspiracy-theory-seems-to-echo-facebook-antifa-panic-and-rudy-giulianis-blm-paranoia/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;">rump’s latest conspiracy theory seems to echo Facebook ‘antifa panic’ — and Rudy Giuliani’s BLM paranoia</a></font></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/rogersollenberger/" title="Posts by Roger Sollenberger" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Roger Sollenberger</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/salon/" title="Posts by Salon " class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Salon&nbsp;</a></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">September 2, 2020</span></font></div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump&nbsp;pushed&nbsp;a baseless and bizarre conspiracy theory on Monday&nbsp;that a <b>plane “almost completely loaded with thugs” </b>was sent&nbsp;to&nbsp;disrupt the Republican National Convention, a&nbsp;claim that appears almost identical to a rumor…</font></p></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx vid twt pix</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Rudy Giuliani Flew Into Ukraine On A Budget Flight. He Left On A Private Jet.</b></font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The private jet used by Giuliani is connected to some of Ukraine’s most controversial figures — and costs $3,300 per hour.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Christopher Miller</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">BuzzFeed Contributor</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Posted on December 18, 2019</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Rudy Giuliani flew to Kyiv on a budget airline when he visited earlier this month — but he left in style, on a private jet.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">It was the afternoon of Dec. 4 when Giuliani flew to the Ukrainian capital from Hungary with low-cost commercial carrier WizzAir. He was there to film a three-part video series for the staunchly pro-Trump OAN channel, which framed the trip as a mission to “destroy” the Democrats’ impeachment narrative.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Flying WizzAir, which demands that customers pay for everything à la carte and forces them to fight for unassigned seats and overhead bin space, often feels like a particularly chaotic Black Friday at Best Buy.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">After experiencing that, it’s no wonder Giuliani wanted to fly out of Kyiv on a private jet.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">According to flight data, videos, and photographs analyzed by BuzzFeed News, and confirmed by a Giuliani associate who joined him, the former mayor of New York left on a flight from Kyiv to Vienna on the night of Dec. 6, aboard a Beechcraft Premier 1A light business aircraft with<b>&nbsp;tail number T7-UTS.</b></font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>That number ties the jet to ICS Aero, a company that’s registered in the tiny state of San Marino, famous for its corrupt business practices, but operates out of Kyiv</b>.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ukrainian media have reported that the company’s owner is Alexander Rovt, a Ukrainian American</span>. The logo of another Rovt company, IBE Trade Corp, which adorns the tails of the company’s jets, provides further evidence of Rovt’s ownership.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">OAN / Via youtube.com</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A screenshot from the OAN show about Ukraine.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Rovt has done business in the past with Dmytro Firtash,&nbsp;</b>a Ukrainian oligarch with ties to organized crime and the Kremlin who is currently under house arrest in Vienna and is fighting extradition to the US, where he faces federal bribery charges. While those charges are unrelated to the House impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, Firtash has been at the nexus of Trump and Giuliani’s effort to undermine their enemies.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On Tuesday, prosecutors said in court that a lawyer for Firtash paid $1 million to one of Giuliani’s Ukraine campaign cohorts, Lev Parnas, and Parnas’s wife. In an interview with Reuters published on Wednesday, the Firtash lawyer, Ralph Isenegger, said he loaned the Parnases the money to purchase a home in Florida.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Parnas and another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, have been charged with funneling illegal contributions to a member of Congress, whose help they sought during their back-channel Ukraine campaign to remove former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch from her post in Kyiv.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Giuliani’s use of the private jet raises questions about how he is funding his back-channel Ukraine campaign to dig up dirt on Trump’s political rivals. And it is likely to come under scrutiny from congressional Democrats who back Trump’s impeachment and federal prosecutors in Manhattan who are reportedly investigating whether Giuliani broke lobbying laws in c<b>onducting his back-channel Ukraine campaign, including his efforts to undermine Yovanovitch</b>, who was recalled in April.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Neither Giuliani nor his spokesperson responded to BuzzFeed News’ requests for comments. Rovt didn’t respond to an emailed request, nor did the communications offices of ICS Aero and OAN.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Rovt, a towering New York real estate investor with Ukrainian roots, made his billions in producing and trading fertilizer. In 2011, he sold his overseas fertilizer assets to Firtash in a deal that involved a Russian chemical conglomerate, according to Bloomberg.</b></font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But Rovt appears to have retained close ties to powerful elites in Ukraine. In 2016, then-president Petro Poroshenko awarded him the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for distinguished services to the state and the people of Ukraine, according to a decree published on the presidential website.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Rovt, a pro-Trumper, reportedly tried to donate $10,000 to the president’s campaign on Election Day but had all but the legal $2,700 maximum returned. He’s also connected to a $3.5 million mortgage loan to former Trump campaign chair and convicted financial fraudster Paul Manafort, through a real estate investment firm founded by a former Trump business partner.</b></font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Joining Giuliani was his spokesperson Allen,<b>&nbsp;OAN host Chanel Rion,</b>&nbsp;an OAN camera operator, and a former Ukrainian diplomat by the name of Andriy&nbsp;<b>Telizhenko</b>whom Trumpworld has held up as a “whistleblower” of its own.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In Kyiv, the group met with several controversial Ukrainian political figures, including former prosecutors general Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko, both of whom have peddled disinformation to Giuliani for months.<b>&nbsp;Giuliani’s visit sent Kyiv into a frenzy, with Zelensky’s office working hard to avoid and ignore the former New York mayor and journalists running around trying to find him.</b></font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Shortly after the visit, OAN released video footage of Giuliani’s trip. BuzzFeed News was able to identify the jet he flew out on by matching the one in the OAN video and a tweet from Allen when the group was on board with publicly available photographs that showed similar stripes, logos, and interior. Telizhenko then confirmed the plane information by phone from Kyiv.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Asked how the plane was booked for the group, Telizhenko said: “We had a company that we use book the flight and that’s it. The guy you’re talking about [Rovt], I didn’t even know who owned the plane. We got it through a third company. I heard about that guy before and he has a lot of planes all over Europe, so that’s why it’s convenient</span>."</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Telizhenko said that Vienna was the chosen destination because its airport offered more flight options to Washington than the alternative offered by the charter company, Warsaw.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>“It wasn’t Vienna because it was Vienna</b>,” Telizhenko said when asked if the destination had anything to do with possibly meeting Firtash in the Austrian capital. “It was a transfer. The next morning [Giuliani] flew out [to the US]. I can guarantee you that no meetings of that kind [with Firtash] happened.”</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Plus it’s not expensive because it was a group of people with bags and everything else," he added. "It was the same price to use a charter as to buy tickets for everybody [on a commercial flight only a few hours in advance].”</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>The Beechcraft appears to have been booked through VipSky, a Kyiv-based charter company. Its website lists the Beechcraft Premier 1A as costing $3,300 per hour.</b></font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">While it’s not clear who paid for the flight, Telizhenko said he believed that “Mr. Giuliani paid for [the flight] himself.”</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“If OAN reimbursed him or not, I don’t know. But I know he paid for himself and that’s it,” he added.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The jet departed from Kyiv at about 12 a.m. local time and landed in Vienna at 12:56 a.m. local time, according to publicly available flight trackers. That would mean the flight lasted around two hours, for a cost of at least $6,600.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">City Of Kharkiv / Via city.kharkov.ua</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Giuliani steps off a plane adorned with the IBE Trade logo in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 2017.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>This appears to be the second time Giuliani has used a jet owned by Rovt’s ICS Aero. Giuliani flew on another one adorned with the IBE Trade logo from London to the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in 2017,</b>&nbsp;flight data and photographs published by the city of Kharkiv show. Giuliani visited Kharkiv to consult with the city on security issues, according to a press release at the time.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Flying the luxurious private skies is indicative of the way Ukraine’s elite travel to and from Western Europe. ICS Aero planes adorned with Rovt’s IBE Trade logo have been used by several prominent Ukrainian figures, including former president Poroshenko, his scandal-plagued business partner, and a former Ukrainian lawmaker who once boasted about having his own private militia to assassinate an unarmed pro-Russian separatist.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Christopher Miller is a Kyiv-based American journalist and editor.</font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Contact Christopher Miller at christopher.miller@buzzfeed.com.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></p></div><div><div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--twitter-tweet paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="field field--name-field-twitter-tweet field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/19/journalists-blast-one-america-news-series-giuliani-087893">https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/19/journalists-blast-one-america-news-series-giuliani-087893</a></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></font></font></div><div><section class="page-contentrow page-contentrow--story" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 2; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 84.375rem; border: 0px; padding: 1.875rem 1.875rem 0px;"><div class="container container--story story-layout--fluid-fixed" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; border: 0px; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story summary-middle" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 960px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="containerrow containerrow--story story-layout--fixed-fluid" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row; border: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%; margin-top: 0.625rem;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-horizontally" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 630px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; margin-top: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%; margin-left: 1.875rem;"><div class="story-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 39.375rem; margin: 0px auto;"><div class="story-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1.875rem; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; line-height: 1.2;"><div class="story-metaauthors-timestamp has-social-tools " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0.46875rem; letter-spacing: 0.1rem; display: flex; -webkit-box-align: center; align-items: center; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row; -webkit-box-pack: justify; justify-content: space-between;"><div class="story-metadetails" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5;"><p class="story-metaauthors" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-transform: uppercase;"><a href="https://www.politico.com/staff/michael-calderone" target="top" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MICHAEL CALDERONE</font></a></span></font></font></p><p class="story-metatimestamp" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><time datetime="2019-12-19 11:22:17" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">12/19/2019</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span></font></time></font></font></p></div></div></div><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Upstart conservative network One America News’ decision to turn over three hours this week to Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy theories gleaned from his trip to Ukraine found a receptive audience in the White House — less so in major newsrooms and TV studios.</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Wednesday that Giuliani brought back “dirt of questionable credibility” from his trip with a reporter from a “far-right fringe cable channel.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;On MSNBC, national security correspondent Ken Dilanian said Giuliani floated a “bogus conspiracy theory” about Joe Biden on OAN, a network “which makes Fox News look like PBS.” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/16/one-america-newss-ukraine-rudy-giuliani-expose-is-stunning-piece-propaganda/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">labeled</a>&nbsp;the OAN series “a stunning piece of propaganda.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"</span></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">charles Herring, president of One America News, shot back in an email to POLITICO. “We recognize that some ‘media’ outlets won’t acknowledge proven facts and won’t do their own time consuming and costly investigate work if the facts don’t fit their narrative,” he wrote. “This is simply a part of our media landscape today.”</font></font></font></p></div></div></div></div><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story hide-under-small" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 18.75rem; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-left: 1.875rem;"><aside class="story-enhancement" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div id="pol-02-wrap" class="content-group ad is-loaded" aria-label="Advertisement" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1; overflow: hidden; margin: 0px auto;" /></aside></div></div></section><section class="page-contentrow page-contentrow--story main-section" data-content-section="4" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 2; margin: 1.875rem auto 0px; max-width: 84.375rem; border: 0px; padding: 0px 1.875rem;"><div class="container container--story story-layout--fixed-fluid" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; border: 0px; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-horizontally hide-under-medium" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 18.75rem; border: 0px; min-width: 0px;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 960px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; margin-top: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%; margin-left: 1.875rem;"><div class="containerrow containerrow--story story-layout--fluid-fixed" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-horizontally" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 630px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="story-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 39.375rem; margin: 0px auto;"><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But for much of the media world, OAN’s decision to give Giuliani a direct role in preparing its Ukraine report presents a troubling ethical development in the media landscape</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Where once opinion shows began supplanting traditional news, now openly partisan content — presented largely unfiltered by the president’s personal attorney — is seeking to supplant content that’s opinionated but still independent.</span></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Trump has celebrated OAN’s willingness to take his largely unfiltered line, retweeting several clips from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.oann.com/oaninvestigates/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">three-part OAN series</a>&nbsp;this week in making his public case against impeachment. That’s come as he continues to carp at Fox News over its&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1206289904470233088" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">polling</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1206003487076749313" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">bookings</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1206012960285642753" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">suggested</a>&nbsp;that<b>&nbsp;only its “pro Trump Fox shows do well.”</b></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump has displayed no similar frustrations with OAN, which promised in the three-hour series to dismantle House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff’s impeachment case,</b>&nbsp;and, like the president, framed the proceedings as a hoax. [some gop rep at rnc called it "illegal"?] But while the series features many of the storytelling attributes of a news documentary, media experts say it departs from traditional journalism in giving such a prominent role to the president’s personal attorney.</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I think this completely crosses a line,” said professor Kathleen Culver, director for journalism ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I would define one of the central characteristics of journalism as independence and here there is no independence. It is taking a source and bringing that source into the actual information gathering,” she said.&nbsp;<b>“By making Giuliani a central figure in the gathering of information,” she added, “I think they’ve moved out of the realm of journalism and into the realm of advocacy."</b></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mark Lukasiewicz, dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, said “the advocate is in the driver’s seat” in the OAN series, with Giuliani bringing forth documents on screen and helping conduct interviews. “<b>The role typically played by an investigative journalist is played by Rudy Giuliani,” he said.</b></font></font></font></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></section><section class="page-contentrow page-contentrow--story main-section" data-content-section="12" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 2; margin: 1.875rem auto 0px; max-width: 84.375rem; border: 0px; padding: 0px 1.875rem;"><div class="container container--story story-layout--fixed-fluid" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; border: 0px; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 960px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; margin-top: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%; margin-left: 1.875rem;"><div class="containerrow containerrow--story story-layout--fluid-fixed" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-horizontally" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 630px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="story-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 39.375rem; margin: 0px auto;"><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-1" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Herring did not respond directly to a question about about OAN’s independence with regard to Giuliani’s involvement in the project. But OAN correspondent Chanel Rion told viewers why her team took Trump’s attorney along to Ukraine and Budapest.</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“His hundreds of hours and months of research into what he calls the great political scandal of our time made him the only person to go with us on this trip,” she said of Giuliani. Rion told viewers that&nbsp;<b>their findings would “both astound and enrage” and offer a side kept from viewers by a “complacent media.”</b></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Herring family, which made a fortune printing circuit boards, is a fairly new entrant to the media business.</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;The company launched lifestyle channel Wealth TV, later renamed AWE, in 2004, and created One America News in 2013.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;The San Diego-based network, which is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/story/2019-09-26/one-america-news-san-diego" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">reportedly available</a>&nbsp;in about 35 million homes — compared with at least 90 million for Fox News — generally covers the major headlines of the day without excessive punditry and turns to conservative hosts at night.</span></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But OAN's pro-Trump leanings became apparent during the 2016 election, as it turned to his rallies live, and have continued into the presidency</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/an-inside-look-at-one-america-news-the-insurgent-tv-network-taking-pro-trump-to-new-heights/2017/07/05/7475f0a4-4fa2-11e7-91eb-9611861a988f_story.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">reported</a>&nbsp;in a 2017 profile of OAN that CEO and founder Robert Herring “directed his channel to push Trump’s candidacy” and “steer away from the new president’s troubles.”</span></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Charles Herring disputed the notion that his father takes such a heavy hand in news coverage. “<b>News anchors are not allowed to express opinions,” he told the Post. “They simply deliver the news and we leave it up to the viewers to decide</b>. It’s not our family’s mission to determine the news.”</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On Twitter, Robert Herring’s views are clear. “Our ratings are going up because we treat you like you are the President of the United States,” Herring&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/RobHerring/status/1127926932077547520" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">responded</a>&nbsp;to Trump when touting OAN’s ratings. “Your ratings are going up because you are doing a great job. Let’s keep it up!”</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-7" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As Trump visited San Diego in September, Herring&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/RobHerring/status/1174732209388802049" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;">pointed out</a>&nbsp;to the president that OAN “ran a 30-minute special report detailing the accomplishments you have made."</b></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-7" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="0-7" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The network’s official Twitter account, however, once&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/436553-conservative-outlet-complains-about-lack-of-trump-shout-out-at-rally" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">called</a>&nbsp;“bullshit” when Trump didn’t mention OAN among his media boosters.&nbsp;</b>“President Trump recently gave a speech, thanking his supporters in the media. Not a single mention of One America News — one of his GREATEST supporters,” read the tweet, which, according to a Guardian&nbsp;<a href="http://read/" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">report</a>, was sent by Robert Herring. Earlier this month, he&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/RobHerring/status/1202711973881737216" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">tweeted</a>: “If you are upset about the Democrats trying to impeach President Trump, let everyone know by putting an @OANN sticker on your car!”</font></font></font></p></div></div></div></div></div></section><section class="page-contentrow page-contentrow--story main-section" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 2; margin: 1.875rem auto 0px; max-width: 84.375rem; border: 0px; padding: 0px 1.875rem;"><div class="container container--story story-layout--fixed-fluid" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; border: 0px; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 960px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; margin-top: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%; margin-left: 1.875rem;"><div class="containerrow containerrow--story story-layout--fluid-fixed" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-horizontally" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 630px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="story-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 39.375rem; margin: 0px auto;"><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump has returned the affection. He&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1182288206806560769" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">tweeted</a>&nbsp;in October that OAN “is appreciated by many people trying so hard to find a new, consistent and powerful VOICE!” and last month&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1191028748818116608?lang=en" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">lauded&nbsp;</a>the network for “seeking the facts and the truth.” Trump retweeted at least five clips from the OAN series this past week.</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charles Herring told POLITICO that OAN is “very appreciative of all our viewers and the support and encouragement they extend to us via comments on our feedback page and tweets/retweets — including from a special viewer in the White House.”</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The testimony of current and former officials, along with Trump’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/25/trump-ukraine-phone-call-transcript-text-pdf-1510770" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;">own</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/03/donald-trump-china-should-investigate-bidens-024697" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;">words</a>, has shown that he urged Ukraine’s president to launch investigations into the Bidens and a 2016 election conspiracy theory as the U.S. withheld aid to Ukraine. The allegations from an unnamed whistleblower, which ignited the scandal, have been largely confirmed, as&nbsp;<b>PolitiFact concluded Monday in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/dec/16/lie-of-the-year-donald-trump-whistleblower-wrong/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;">giving</a>&nbsp;Trump its “Lie of the Year” award.</b></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rion told viewers OAN was holding "our own hearing" where they'd be the jury. The OAN team and Giuliani, she said, will present a side “<b>that not only destroys Adam Schiff’s case for impeachment, but uncovers what may be one of the greatest cover-ups of our time."</b></font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in the series, Giuliani makes the unsubstantiated allegation that Biden committed “bribery” in calling for the removal of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin because his son Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Biden’s request at the time was the view of the Obama administration, which, like several Western nations and international organizations, saw Shokin as not aggressively prosecuting corruption cases.</font></font></font></p></div></div></div></div></div></section><section class="page-contentrow page-contentrow--story main-section" data-content-section="18" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 2; margin: 1.875rem auto 0px; max-width: 84.375rem; border: 0px; padding: 0px 1.875rem;"><div class="container container--story story-layout--fixed-fluid" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; border: 0px; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 960px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; margin-top: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%; margin-left: 1.875rem;"><div class="containerrow containerrow--story story-layout--fluid-fixed" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-horizontally" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 630px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="story-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 39.375rem; margin: 0px auto;"><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="1-0" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" data-content-child-index="1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">rion and Giuliani traveled abroad to interview Shokin, as well as Yuriy Lutsenko, whom The New Yorker&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/23/the-ukrainian-prosecutor-behind-trumps-impeachment" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">dubbed</a>&nbsp;in an extensive profile this week as a key Giuliani contact. They also met in a studio with Ukrainian “witnesses” alleging corruption involving Democrats. (The Daily Beast’s Anna Nemtsova&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-giulianis-ukraine-investigation-on-oan-stars-some-kyivs-most-dubious-characters?ref=scroll" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">wrote</a>&nbsp;the OAN investigation features “some of Kyiv’s most dubious characters”)</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span></font></font></font></p></div></div></div></div></div></section><section class="page-contentrow page-contentrow--story main-section" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 2; margin: 1.875rem auto 0px; max-width: 84.375rem; border: 0px; padding: 0px 1.875rem;"><div class="container container--story story-layout--fixed-fluid" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; border: 0px; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 960px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; margin-top: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%; margin-left: 1.875rem;"><div class="containerrow containerrow--story story-layout--fluid-fixed" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-horizontally" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 630px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="story-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 39.375rem; margin: 0px auto;"><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Herring said over email that “One America News is seeking the truth regarding Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 Presidential election</b>” and that “the best way to determine what happened in Ukraine is via interviews with first hand witnesses and a thorough review of the support documentation.” He suggested that “there is an effort to keep the ‘lid on the jar’ regarding corruption that traces back to the United States.”</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We appreciate the efforts by others to shed light on the facts, including first hand witnesses, other investigative reporters and media outlets, and politicians,” he added.</font></font></font></p><p class=" story-textparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One prominent senator indicated Sunday that he’s interested in hearing about Giuliani’s Ukraine trip. On CBS’ “Face the Nation,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">” Lindsey Graham&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-impeachment-inquiry-lindsey-graham-says-house-democrats-weaponizing-impeachment-this-whole-thing-is-a-crock/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation;">said</a>, "Rudy, if you want to come and tell us what you found I'd be glad to talk to you.”</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></font></font></p></div></div><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-vertically right-zone hide-under-small" aria-hidden="true" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 18.75rem; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; -webkit-box-pack: center; justify-content: center; margin-top: 0px; margin-left: 1.875rem;"><div class="story-enhancement is-hidden-offscreen is-right-zone" id="aside-0" data-aside-index="0" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: absolute; left: -999em; top: -999em; width: 18.75rem;"><div class="ad" aria-label="Advertisement" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-flex: 0; flex-grow: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 0px auto;" /></div></div></div></div></div></section><section class="page-contentrow page-contentrow--story below-article-section" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 2; margin: 1.875rem auto 0px; max-width: 84.375rem; border: 0px; padding: 0px 1.875rem;"><div class="container container--story story-layout--fixed-fluid" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; border: 0px; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-horizontally" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 18.75rem; border: 0px; min-width: 0px;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 960px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; margin-top: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%; margin-left: 1.875rem;"><div class="containerrow containerrow--story story-layout--fluid-fixed" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: row; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div class="containercolumn containercolumn--story center-horizontally" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; width: 630px; border: 0px; min-width: 0px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex: 1 1 0%;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto;"><aside class="story-enhancement" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="story-tags" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; display: flex;"><ul role="list" aria-label="Filed Under:" class="story-tagslist is-expanded" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none none; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font></font><li aria-hidden="true" class="story-tagslist-item title-tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; font-weight: 700;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FILED UNDER:</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></li>&nbsp;<li class="story-tagslist-item" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/media" target="top" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;">MEDIA</a>,</li>&nbsp;<li class="story-tagslist-item" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/rudy-giuliani" target="top" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;">RUDY GIULIANI</a>,</li>&nbsp;<li class="story-tagslist-item" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/ukraine" target="top" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;">UKRAINE</a>,</li>&nbsp;<li class="story-tagslist-item" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/trump-impeachment" target="top" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; background-color: transparent; touch-action: manipulation;">NEWS ON TRUMP IMPEACHMENT</a></li></ul></div></aside></div></div></div></div></div></div></section></div></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-rudy-giuliani-became-the-shadow-secretary-of-state-with-shady-ties-sprawling-far-beyond-ukraine/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-rudy-giuliani-became-the-shadow-secretary-of-state-with-shady-ties-sprawling-far-beyond-ukraine/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>How Rudy Giuliani became the shadow secretary of state — with shady ties sprawling far beyond Ukraine</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald J. Trump recognizes former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani prior to signing H.R. 1327; an act to permanently authorize the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Monday, July 29, 2019, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Bob Dreyfuss / TomDispatch March 6, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Imagine, just for the sake of argument, that the president of the United States was an arrogant, information-challenged, would-be autocrat with a soft spot for authoritarian leaders from China, Russia, and North Korea to Egypt (“my favorite dictator”), Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. And then, suppose that very president, while hollowing out the State Department and slamming its diplomats as “Deep State” troublemakers, were to name a voluble wheeler-dealer attorney as his unofficial, freelance White House go-between with shady characters worldwide. Imagine further that the president would do an end run around the professionals of the U.S. intelligence community — more Deep Staters, natch — and rely instead on conspiracy theories trundled back to Washington in that attorney’s briefcase.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, one last unimaginable thing, but humor me: accept that the attorney in question went by the name of Rudy Giuliani.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That, of course, is a reasonable description of the state of America in 2020. Three-plus years into Donald Trump’s misshapen presidency, as the “adults” fled the room one by one or were pushed to the exits, the president was left with a rump collection of family loyalists and third-tier yes-people around him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rarely, if ever, do mainstream media types take a step back to survey the classic Star Wars bar-like crew of know-nothings, Bible-thumpers, and connivers who’ve been assembled as Trump’s “team” and their breathtaking incompetence and perfidy. Luckily, with Giuliani in the mix, there’s at least one figure so wildly over-the-top that analysts and pundits have heaped scorn or ridicule on his head, and often his alone, as a person so outrageously unfit, so borderline deranged, so nakedly in it for profit that it’s impossible to consider him without marveling at the tragicomedy of it all.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 2017, however, Rudy Giuliani has emerged as Trump’s shadow secretary of state with his hands in American foreign policy and politics from Iran to Russia, Turkey to Ukraine and beyond. That means anyone, anywhere in the world, with a few million bucks to proffer and an angle to pursue in Washington can avoid Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Christian-right uber-hawk from Kansas, and sidle up instead to the former U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York and mayor of New York City.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During most of 2019, as is well known to anyone who even casually followed the impeachment proceedings in Congress, Giuliani had a starring role in President Trump’s conspiracy-laden efforts to prove that Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the 2016 election and that Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, were mixed up in something nefarious there. (To those in the reality-based world, of course, it was Russia, not Ukraine that meddled massively in 2016. And the Bidens, it’s clear, did nothing illegal in Kyiv.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As we shall see, the Trump-Giuliani conspiracy theory about that country originated with and was “fertilized” by three individuals who’d earlier been caught up in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation of the White House: Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security advisor in the White House; Paul Manafort, who chaired Trump’s election campaign; and Manafort’s Ukraine partner and ally, an apparent operative for Russia’s GRU intelligence service, Konstantin Kilimnik. In other words, the Trump-Giuliani Ukraine adventure did indeed get a boost from Vladimir Putin’s secret service and Moscow’s propaganda machine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>You’ll remember, perhaps, or maybe you’ve forgotten, that before Mike Pompeo was secretary of state, before his predecessor Rex (“Rexxon”) Tillerson even took the job, it looked for a while like Giuliani was going to get it.</b> He and Donald Trump had been political friends-with-benefits since the mid-1990s, as evidenced by a cringe-worthy 2000 video of Trump placing his lips unbidden on Giuliani-in-drag’s “breast.” The former mayor had quietly sought to reposition himself as the reincarnation of Roy Cohn, the mob-connected lawyer who had been a mentor to the up-and-coming New York real estate tycoon. (“Where’s my Roy Cohn?”) It’s hardly surprising then that, following Trump’s surprise victory in November 2016, Giuliani began lobbying hard for the secretary of state job. At the same time, he was fervently urging the president-elect not to select never-Trumper Mitt Romney for it. (Giuliani did, however, also endorse John Bolton, Washington’s warmonger-in-chief, for the job.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in 2016, a week or so after the election, a New York Times editorial drily noted that the appointment of Giuliani as secretary of state “would be a dismal and potentially disastrous choice,” that he lacked “any substantive diplomatic experience and has demonstrated poor judgment throughout his career,” appeared “unhinged,” and would come with a “flurry of potential conflicts of interest.” And keep in mind that, back then, Giuliani was only getting started.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent years, much has been written, and accurately so, about the exodus of veteran diplomats — ambassadors to toilers in the ranks — from a gutted Foggy Bottom and its global outposts under both Tillerson and Pompeo. Writing last October for Foreign Affairs, for instance, former diplomat William Burns noted that fewer people took the department’s entrance exam in 2019 than in any year in previous decades. “Career diplomats,” wrote Burns, “are sidelined, with only one of 28 assistant secretary-rank positions filled by a Foreign Service officer, and more ambassadorships going to political appointees in this administration than in any in recent history.” He added: “One-fifth of ambassadorships remain unfilled, including critical posts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the State Department, as one ambassador told the Hill, morale “is at a new low, although I am not sure it could fall much lower than where it has been for the past three years.” And that decline only accelerated after the humiliating dismissal of the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch, whose ouster was orchestrated by Giuliani.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To be sure, the State Department was never a progressive bastion, not during the Cold War years nor in the era when America was the global hyperpower. It is, nonetheless, the main vehicle for any president wishing to use the levers of diplomacy rather than the oft-chosen military option. Now, with the adults gone and the diplomats increasingly neutered, we’re left with Trump and Giuliani. Neither hawks nor doves, they’re vultures, viewing every country as part of a vast veldt where they can pick at carcasses of every sort for their own business or political gain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How to Become a Shadow Secretary of State</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani’s foreign policy portfolio extends far and wide, though it was in Ukraine — specifically with that country’s many corrupt, Russian-leaning oligarchs — that he rocketed to world attention and helped trigger the president’s impeachment. In his world travels, Giuliani has combined his roles as businessman, security consultant, political fixer, and the president’s personal attorney into a mishmash of overlapping identities. He has, in other words, become a kind of walking, talking conflict-of-interest machine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Before zeroing in on Ukraine, however, let’s consider just a few of Giuliani’s other foreign ventures. Since leaving office as New York’s mayor,</b> through Giuliani Partners, the Bracewell & Giuliani law partnership, and (after 2016) the giant law firm of Greenberg Traurig, along with Giuliani Security & Safety and Giuliani Capital Advisers, the former mayor has pulled in millions of dollars working on behalf of foreign clients, including highly controversial ones</span>. Among those deals, contracts, and maneuvers, before and after Trump became president and hired his old friend Rudy to serve as his personal attorney in 2018, Giuliani has been involved in a far-flung series of deals: he’s been a paid lobbyist in Romania; had a cybersecurity contract in<b> Qatar; had deals in Colombia, Argentina, and El Salvador; worked shadow diplomacy (with a business angle) with Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro; operated in Japan, Serbia, and Guatemala; and that only begins to tell the story</b>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider Turkey, starting in 2017. Back then, when Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was forced to resign after just a few weeks as national security advisor, it turned out that he had quietly (and without reporting it) been working on behalf of Turkey’s autocratic government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during the 2016 election campaign. Erdogan was disturbed by the presence of a dissident, Fethullah Gulen, in the United States. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As an unregistered advocate for Turkey, Flynn lobbied in 2016 to have the United States expel Gulen and send him back to Turkey. Early the next year, Flynn was gone, but no fear, Rudy Giuliani promptly took up the same cause. He began urging President Trump to extradite Gulen to Turkey, where Erdogan was accusing him of having plotted an attempted coup d’état. (In the end, Gulen wasn’t expelled.)</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Given Giuliani’s ability to mix policy with business, you won’t be surprised to learn that he was also enmeshed in more lucrative efforts in Turkey. At around the same time, he was lobbying Trump to endorse a prisoner swap involving one of his clients, an</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Iranian-born Turkish gold trader named Reza Zarrab whom the FBI had arrested in 2016 on charges of money laundering and trying to do an end run around economic sanctions on Iran</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. According to the New York Times,<b> Zarrab had been working with Halkbank, a major Turkish bank with close ties to Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak who is also President Erdogan’s son-in-law, to “funnel more than $10 billion in gold and cash to Iran.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At first blush, it might seem odd for Giuliani to offer his services on behalf of an Iranian expat accused of trying to break U.S. sanctions whose family, it turned out, had close ties to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Curious, yes, but for Giuliani, business is business and there were bucks to be made.</span> That he would use his connections to the Oval Office in an ultimately unsuccessful appeal for his client is even odder, given that Giuliani is otherwise a militant hardliner when it comes to demanding the overthrow of the Iranian government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Case in point: his long-time affiliation with the People’s Jihadists, otherwise known as the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq, or MEK. Like many of Giuliani’s escapades abroad, his efforts with MEK were a money-making project. </b>Along with John Bolton, the late Senator John McCain, former National Security Advisor Jim Jones, and former Attorney General Mike Mukasey, Giuliani has for years been affiliated with the MEK, making perhaps a dozen appearances, mostly paid speeches, at its conventions and rallies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The MEK has almost no support inside Iran, not only because it’s conducted a terror campaign against that country’s top officials since 1981, but because it operated with the backing of Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein during and after the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. It’s also widely regarded as a cult. Last year, in the midst of his anti-Joe Biden skullduggery in Ukraine, in his 11th appearance at an MEK confab, Giuliani traveled to Albania, of all places, where the group has established a military and political base. There, he called Trump “heroic” for “doing away with the reckless nuclear agreement and putting [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] on the terrorist list.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2018, this reporter attended one of the MEK’s large-scale events, held at a hotel in midtown New York City. General Jim Jones, who became an ultra-hawk after being ousted as President Obama’s national security advisor in 2010, spoke to the gathering first, noting proudly that he is supposedly on a list of people the government in Tehran plans to assassinate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rising to speak after Jones, Giuliani seemed jealous. “I hope I say enough offensive things that they’ll put me on that list to kill me,” he commented. Needless to say, both Jones and Giuliani are still alive and kicking, and there’s no evidence that either one is on any Iranian kill list. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">However, thanks in part to Giuliani’s hardline, anti-Iran advice to the president, that country’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, was indeed placed on a presidential kill list and drone assassinated as 2020 began.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Then There Was Ukraine</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was, of course, in connection with Ukraine that Giuliani’s freelancing came to the world’s attention. In the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s impeachment report, his name is mentioned about 160 times. He’s cited, first and foremost because, in that infamous “perfect” July 2019 phone call of his, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work through him; because the former mayor was the primary organizer of the smear campaign against the actual ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was subsequently fired; and because it was he who, starting as early as May 2019, masterminded a months-long political witch hunt against the Bidens, demanding over and over that Ukraine carry out an ersatz investigation of the man the president then expected to be his chief 2020 election opponent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Numerous figures, including Ambassador Bill Taylor, who succeeded Yovanovitch at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, would express dismay over Giuliani’s role as the “irregular” channel for the Trump administration’s Ukraine policy — the “Giuliani factor,” as Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker called it. The story of how all this led to the president’s impeachment is too well known to be rehashed here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Joe Biden/Hunter Biden part of the Ukraine story was straightforward enough in its own way. Far more complicated and troubling was the adherence of the president and Giuliani to a weird conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, used its intelligence service to try to sway the 2016 election. According to various official reports and in the opinion of virtually every expert who’s studied the matter, it was Russia that intervened to boost Trump’s election campaign. According to Trump and Giuliani, however, Ukraine meddled in 2016 on behalf of Hillary Clinton and indeed, they argue, the actual Democratic National Committee server somehow found its way to Kyiv, thanks to a computer security firm called <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">CrowdStrike, which Trump claimed was owned by a wealthy Ukrainian. (It is not.)</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Naturally enough, this Trump-Giuliani theory was nonsense, but according to the Washington Post, it had its origins — perhaps not surprisingly — in propaganda generated in Moscow. The Post reported that Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Manafort’s partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, “played a role in convincing Trump that Russia did not actually interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, despite what both Mueller and the U.S. intelligence community have concluded, and that it was actually Ukraine.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>According to Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy, the Ukraine conspiracy theory originated with his boss who “parroted” the line from Kilimnik.</b> And both Manafort and Kilimnik — who was indicted by Mueller — had ties to Moscow operatives and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, while Kilimnik himself was identified by Mueller and the FBI as part of Russia’s GRU.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Post concluded: “So we have two men [Manafort and Flynn] who have been convicted of offenses related to their Russia ties, have both lied to investigators about their interactions with Russian interests, and who apparently played a significant role in pushing a theory to Trump that Russia did not actually interfere in the 2016 election. They instead pointed the finger at Russia’s nemesis, Ukraine, and that has apparently stuck with Trump for more than three years.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it was that line that would be spread eagerly by pro-Trump writers like the Hill’s John Solomon. In a review of Solomon’s pieces, released this month, the Hill’s editors analyzed 14 of his columns with titles like “As Russian collusion fades, Ukraine plot to help Clinton emerges.” In doing so, they found numerous troubling facts about Solomon, his sources, and his overall reporting. As the Hill report put it:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Giuliani has indicated he was a key source of information for Solomon on Ukraine, telling the New York Times in November 2019 that he turned over information about the Bidens earlier in the year to Solomon. ‘I really turned my stuff over to John Solomon,’ Giuliani said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The former New York City mayor later told the New Yorker he encouraged Solomon to highlight information on the Bidens and Yovanovitch, stating, ‘I said, “John, let’s make this as prominent as possible,”’ adding, “‘I’ll go on TV. You go on TV. You do columns.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Two colorful characters who acted as Giuliani’s Ukraine go-betweens, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, have been indicted on conspiracy charges </b>and, according to Fortune, Giuliani, too, could be indicted in that case. As CNN noted in January, it’s nearly unheard of for a U.S. Attorney’s office — in this case the one for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) — to end up indicting a former U.S. attorney who led the same district. CNN added: “The SDNY community has watched in disbelief as Giuliani continues to seek the spotlight even as the investigation has unfolded and expanded into new fronts on a nearly weekly basis. The impeachment inquiry has also unleashed new evidence regarding his role performing shadow diplomacy on behalf of President Donald Trump as recently as [mid-January].”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, Giuliani is still at it. In concert with a collection of corrupt ex-prosecutors in Ukraine and in his ongoing role as shadow secretary of state-cum-intelligence chief, Giuliani is still gathering conspiracy-riddled information on the Bidens in Kyiv — and Attorney General William Barr has obligingly created an “intake process in the field” to absorb Giuliani’s work product straight into the Department of Justice. One thing is guaranteed: “Secretary of State” Giuliani will have a clear field in Kyiv, since Ambassador Taylor was unceremoniously fired on January 1st of this year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bob Dreyfuss, an investigative journalist and TomDispatch regular, is a contributing editor at the Nation and has written for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the American Prospect, the New Republic, and many other magazines. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Copyright 2020 Bob Dreyfuss</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/giuliani-trump-corruption/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/giuliani-trump-corruption/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; Rudy Giuliani</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; Donald Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; Corruption</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani and Trump: Bound by Corruption From the Beginning?</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To understand how the onetime odd couple became partners in political crime, you have to go back to 1980s New York and a tale of money laundering, mortgage fraud, and, yes, an election.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Tom Robbins</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">October 11, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then-President-elect Donald Trump poses with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse in New Jersey on November 20, 2016. (AP / Carolyn Kaster, File)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is a musty notion from a bygone era, but once upon a time the idea that Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump could be a tag team in search of political dirt on common enemies was as foreign as the Ukrainian soil they now till.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the New York of the 1980s, when both rose to prominence, they were at opposite poles of the civic landscape.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One was a swaggering crime-buster taking down Mafia bosses, Wall Street predators, and corrupt politicians. The other was a rules-bending real estate tycoon, a shiny emblem of the age of Greed Is Good, bent on success at any cost.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet both reveled in public brazenness. Giuliani walked stockbrokers off the trading floor in handcuffs. Trump ripped down precious landmarks to make way for his buildings. Both were also fluent in the language spoken among the elite of New York deal-makers, where favors are traded, punches are pulled, and the public interest always finishes a dismal last.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And as laughingly obvious as it is today, those of us back then who cheered on the prosecutor, while raking the muck on the developer, eventually learned the hard way that these two were cut from the same cloth, destined for a partnership far more enduring than their many marriages.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first glimmerings of that lesson surfaced one night in an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village as Jack Newfield, the legendary investigative digger, and I dined with a federal agent named Tony Lombardi.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although technically employed by the Internal Revenue Service, Lombardi’s only apparent duties were to serve as the trusted special investigator for Giuliani, then the hard-charging United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Giuliani had at his beck and call a squad of FBI agents and other investigators, he preferred Lombardi for sensitive assignments. It was Lombardi, a dapper man given to double-breasted suits and pocket hankies, who was asked to look afte the unstable daughter of a judge facing corruption charges, who had been persuaded to provide testimony for the prosecution against her own mother. It was Lombardi who was detailed to work on an investigation into city contracts granted to a health consultant rumored to have been the lover of Mayor Ed Koch, against whom Giuliani was then pondering a campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with a bevy of other local reporters, we knew that Tony Lombardi was, as our friend and Village Voice colleague Wayne Barrett dubbed him, “the eyes, ears and mouth of Rudy Giuliani.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That night, amid the opening pleasantries, Lombardi shot the French cuffs from his suit jacket, leaned forward on the table, and announced: “I have another year or so to go with the department, and then I’m going to be head of security for Donald.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No last name was needed to explain this promising exit plan from public service. This was 1988, and Donald Trump had forced himself into public consciousness like the car alarms that blared mercilessly without stop. He had already put his name on a soaring tower in midtown, repaired an ailing city skating rink in Central Park, launched casinos in Atlantic City, and publicly toyed with the idea of running for president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lombardi’s comment was decidedly off-kilter with what was on the menu that evening. Two years earlier, Giuliani had won convictions against a ring of scoundrels who had been happily looting city coffers under the nose of the Koch administration. Most prominent among his scalps was that of Stanley Friedman, the goateed Democratic Party chieftain from the Bronx who had been nailed while attempting a flimflam worth millions on the city’s transportation department.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A former deputy mayor, Friedman had been a partner in the law firm of Roy Cohn: Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Iago, a master of the legal dark arts, and lawyer to some of the biggest mobsters Giuliani was simultaneously pursuing. While Friedman had worked from the top floor of Cohn’s East Side townhouse and law office, Cohn had been on the ground floor offering lessons in the use of bluster, bravado, and outright lies to his prize client and pupil, Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Rudy Giuliani was the anti-corruption scourge of New York, Cohn’s budding protégé should have been a likely suspect, even a prized quarry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the table, Lombardi offered no details about how his richly rewarding job offer had arisen. In the course of business, he said, he had come to know Trump. The two had grown friendly. The discussion then moved on to more pressing matters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It wasn’t until several years later, thanks to the steady drilling of Barrett and fellow Voice reporter William Bastone, that we learned the back story: At the time of our meeting, Lombardi had recently finished a quiet inquiry on behalf of his boss into allegations that organized crime figures had laundered hefty sums of cash as they bought apartments in Trump Tower, the flagship of the developer’s then-growing empire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The charge had come froma mob-tied financial consultant facing a federal tax fraud indictment looking to help himself by offering to tell a far more interesting story. The consultant said he had helped the underworld figures—most notoriously, Robert Hopkins, a numbers kingpin working for the Luchese crime family—buy the apartments at Trump’s complex with fraudulent mortgages. The developer himself, the consultant alleged, had been present as suitcases of cash had changed hands at Hopkins’s closing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The purchase landed Hopkins two apartments worth $2 million on the upper floors of Trump Tower. That’s where the Manhattan DA found him when he was arrested in 1986, charged with orchestrating a mob hit. Hopkins’s defense lawyer? Another partner of Roy Cohn.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This was potentially rich Giuliani territory: the Mafia, bank fraud, and a possibly complicit high-profile figure</span>. But the investigation ended before it even began. Instead of building a case by working his way through knowledgeable witnesses and records, Lombardi went straight to Trump himself with the allegation. He was quickly won over. As the agent later told Barrett in a 1993 Voice story about the episode, he was so impressed with Trump’s openness and honesty that he decided there was nothing to investigate. “The guy met me without an attorney,” Lombardi said. “He answered all my questions. There was never any hesitation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of this, Lombardi insisted, was done with the approval of higher-ups at the US Attorney’s office. “[E]veryone that should have known about this thing knew,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>There was another possible reason for the sudden lack of prosecutorial interest. That spring, Trump began touting Giuliani as a would-be mayor, claiming he could raise $2 million in a half hour if the US Attorney decided to run.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Of course, that was just Trump spin. He did briefly back Giuliani and raised a few thousand for his failed 1989 race, but by 1993 Trump was hedging his bets, hoping for approvals by David Dinkins, the sitting mayor, for his pending projects.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Things didn’t work out for Tony Lombardi in the end. An internal investigation by the IRS faulted him for engaging in prohibited fundraising for Giuliani and abusing his authority with sources. He wound up jilted by Trump, who gave the security job to someone else, and by Giuliani, who never offered him even a nominal post in City Hall. Lombardi died in 2015.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani now works feverishly on behalf of the man he once investigated. Eyes bulging, waving his phone with McCarthy-like flair as he insists it holds all the damning information he has discovered, he thunders away on the talk shows. Once-loyal fans say they hardly recognize that man. But he’s not the one who has changed. He is the same zealous, win-at-any-cost inquisitor he always was, a genuine “Made in New York” schemer. Just like his client.</font></div><div><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tom Robbins has been investigative journalist in residence at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY since February 2011. He has been a columnist and staff writer at The Village Voice, the New York Daily News, and The New York Observer.</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/rudy-giuliani-southern-district-us-attorney/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/rudy-giuliani-southern-district-us-attorney/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">g<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: white 0px 1px 0px, rgb(17, 17, 17) 0px 4px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">IULIANI SECURED</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">&nbsp;</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">a dubious distinction earlier this month&nbsp;when he became the&nbsp;second known ex-U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York to face investigation by his former office.</span></font></div><div data-reactid="219" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The news followed a succession of incriminating allegations against Giuliani. The sources of these leaks are not public, but the information behind them comes from the U.S. Attorney’s office, where Giuliani himself introduced the media leak as one of the most devastating tools in a prosecutor’s arsenal.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fact that Giuliani — who has advocated a distinct brand of lawlessness as President Donald Trump’s TV lawyer — merits the attention of federal investigators only emphasizes the through-the-looking-glass quality of Attorney General William Barr’s Department of Justice.&nbsp;<b>The only other Southern District U.S. Attorney to be implicated in a potential crime by his own office was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/04/07/archives/cohn-trial-hears-of-33333-payoff-to-us-prosecutor.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Morton S. Robson, who was accused of receiving a bribe from&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Roy Cohn</span>&nbsp;to drop a case</a>. (The prosecutor was never charged and Cohn was acquitted.)</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More recently,&nbsp;New York City’s most famous former mayor has provided the president legal advocacy that suggests a contempt for the laws he once enforced. There was the time he said that alleged campaign finance violations are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-jared-kushner-replaced-michael-cohen-as-trumps-national-enquirer-connection" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">“not a big crime” because “nobody got robbed. Nobody got killed.”</a>&nbsp;Or when he&nbsp;<a href="https://video.foxnews.com/v/5779706421001/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">confessed Trump’s role in a conspiracy that involved “funneling” $130,000 through a law firm to pay off Stormy Daniels</a>, the&nbsp;porn star with whom Trump allegedly had an affair. Or the times he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Muelller-Report-Redacted-Vol-II-Released-04.18.2019-Word-Searchable.-Reduced-Size.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">floated pardons for Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, Giuliani’s entire post-government life has provided a case study in ethical adventurism, if not actual criminal conduct. Among the many clients for whom he did political consulting was&nbsp;Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2014/10/17/Peru.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">whose father, a previous Peruvian president, was convicted of ordering the extrajudicial execution of 15 people</a>.&nbsp;<b>Fujimori lost both her campaigns for the presidency; she was named in the Panama Papers as a client of Mossack Fonseca,</b>&nbsp;the law firm at the center of the document leak, and accused of funding her political career&nbsp;<a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Panama-Papers-Reveal-Keiko-Fujimori-Funded-by-Dirty-Money-20160404-0037.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">through money laundering</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/bribery-division/moustache-little-pillow-among-odebrecht-code-names-revealed-in-new-testimony/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">and bribes</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani also consulted for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304331204577356001702540714" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Aleksandar Vucic, a mayoral candidate in Belgrade, Serbia</a>, who once served as the information minister to accused war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. Vucic eventually won the Serbian presidency and the Trump White House sent a delegation to attend his inauguration. Last year, Vucic’s political party<a href="https://balkaninsight.com/2018/01/24/serbia-s-progressives-open-office-at-wwii-camp-s-location-01-24-2018/#.WmiWU_GcS8w.twitter" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">&nbsp;opened an office</a>&nbsp;on the site of Staro Sajmiste, a concentration and extermination camp run by the Nazis during their World War II occupation of Belgrade. (In 1989, a Holocaust survivor charged by Giuliani’s prosecutors was placed opposite a blackboard inside the U.S. Attorney’s office with the slogan “arbeit macht frei.” The man was acquitted, and the judge in the case did not find evidence of Giuliani’s involvement in what the suspect described as an effort to pressure him to cooperate with federal investigators.)</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani’s post-government work eventually brought him into direct conflict with Southern District prosecutors when he represented Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader charged with evading U.S. sanctions. The case raised immediate diplomatic issues, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/11/22/why-turkey-cares-about-the-trial-of-reza-zarrab/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">pressing both the Obama and Trump administrations to release Zarrab</a>. Giuliani did not intend to appear for his client at trial, according to his co-counsel; his role was to pursue an outside resolution to the case. That ultimately involved Trump seeking to enlist then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to ask the Justice Department to drop charges against Zarrab, as Bloomberg<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-09/trump-urged-top-aide-to-help-giuliani-client-facing-doj-charges" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">&nbsp;first reported last week</a>. To break that down: Giuliani sought help for a Turkish-backed client accused of violating Iranian sanctions from a president who has a one-word policy for dealing with Tehran: sanctions. In the end, Zarrab pleaded guilty. After Erdogan embarrassed Trump last week by attacking Kurdish-held northern Syria, the Southern District<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/prosecutors-charge-turkey-s-halkbank-in-sanctions-evasion-scheme-11571178896" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">&nbsp;announced new charges&nbsp;</a>against a Turkish state-owned bank connected to the gold trader.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it was Giuliani’s work in Ukraine that crossed whatever invisible line had existed between the former U.S. attorney and federal investigators in the Southern District and placed him at the center of the House impeachment inquiry. The rapidly unspooling narrative connects Giuliani to efforts to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, as well as, oust former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a career diplomat. Yovanovitch testified before the House earlier this month that “individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She was presumably referring to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were recently indicted on the very same charges that Giuliani once called “not a big crime”: campaign finance violations stemming from their alleged efforts to funnel foreign cash into U.S. campaign coffers. Giuliani acknowledged receiving $500,000 in payments from a company called Fraud Guarantee, where Parnas serves as CEO. Federal investigators have also subpoenaed former&nbsp;Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ex-rep-sessions-subpoenaed-over-interactions-with-giuliani-giuliani-associates-11571176908" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">for information related to his involvement with Giuliani</a>. Sessions reportedly received a campaign contribution from the Ukrainians and shortly after meeting the men, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for Yovanovitch to be removed from her post. Giuliani, for his part,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/politics/rudy-giuliani-jon-sale-impeachment/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">defied a subpoena</a>&nbsp;from House investigators working the impeachment inquiry.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The volume and speed of the revelations about Giuliani can be daunting to follow. Yet it is worth considering the source. In the Southern District, authorized releases of information on the target of a criminal investigation make for reliable plot points in high-profile cases. It is somewhat ironic that Giuliani now finds himself on the opposite end of such leaks. When he served as Manhattan’s top prosecutor, he changed the tight-lipped culture of the office to one that actively shapes the narrative surrounding investigations. He made such frequent use of fortuitous leaks that judges&nbsp;<a href="https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/ex-prosecutors-challenge-giulianis-assessment/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">repeatedly admonished him for talking to the media.</a>&nbsp;As U.S. attorney, Giuliani’s use of the media soured the environment to such an extent that the judge overseeing Giuliani’s final prosecution — of Bronx Democratic boss Stanley Friedman and others as part of a bribery and fraud scandal involving the Parking Violations Bureau&nbsp;— moved the trial to New Haven because of the publicity surrounding it. When former FBI Director James Comey worked under Giuliani as a junior prosecutor in the 1990s, he learned quickly that “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4CovDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=giuliani%20and%20leaks%20and%20%22southern%20district%22&pg=PT36#v=onepage&q=giuliani&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">the most dangerous place in New York is between Rudy and a microphone</a>.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani’s reliance on leaks didn’t stop when he left the Justice Department. In the days leading up to the 2016 election, he relied on leaks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/092818-Sweeney-Interview_Redacted.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">originating from the FBI</a>&nbsp;that agents had discovered emails relevant to the Hillary Clinton investigation on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Those leaks prompted an inquiry by the Justice Department inspector general.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the leaks surrounding Giuliani’s conduct have so far prompted an incurious response. There is little discussion of their origins or what’s driving them. Former Southern District prosecutors have achieved something of regulatory capture on<a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/10/13/trump-giuliani-impeachment-cross-exam-honig-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">&nbsp;cable</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/-what-i-ve-seen-horrifies-me-ny-fed-insider-on-giuliani-criminal-probe-71337029517" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">news</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://cafe.com/insider-podcast/cafe-insider-10-15-rudy-in-the-middle/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">podcasts</a>, and in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/the-sdny-takes-on-rudy-giuliani" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">print</a>. Networks rely on these former civil servants to&nbsp;interpret each revelation emanating from their former office’s work in real time. These are some of the same pundits whose laudatory and uncritical appraisal of special counsel Robert Mueller’s capabilities as a federal prosecutor failed to probe the limits of his authority under Justice Department policy, his decision not to depose the president, or the shortcomings of his performance before Congress.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District now faces challenges to be seen as impartial. Many of the line prosecutors in the office served under Preet Bharara, who has emerged as a vocal critic of both</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=trump%20(from%3Apreetbharara)&src=typed_query" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Trump</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://twitter.com/search?lang=en&q=giuliani%20(from%3Apreetbharara)&src=typed_query" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">and Giuliani</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">. And the office won a conviction against Michael Cohen, demonstrating that one way to adhere to Justice Department policy against charging a sitting president is by pursuing his attorney instead. The office recently filed — and lost — a motion to protect Trump’s tax returns from a state subpoena. Many Southern District alumni expressed outrage, saying that the decision to do so marked a fatal breach of the office’s storied independence. But if you read the fine print, you saw that no attorneys from the Southern District signed the filing.</span></font></p></div><div data-reactid="230" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Federal judges in the Southern District may not fare much better when it comes to being viewed as impartial with regard to Giuliani. When Comey briefly held Giuliani’s job as U.S. attorney, he found that “Rudy’s demeanor left a trail of resentment among the dozens of federal judges in Manhattan, many of whom had worked in that U.S. Attorney’s office.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the investigation into Giuliani does take on an outwardly political character, he may ultimately bear historical responsibility for politicizing the prosecutorial culture in the Southern District. The capstone of his tenure as a federal prosecutor was a targeted attack on corruption in the city’s Democratic machine, which many saw as the overture to his political career.&nbsp;Neither Giuliani nor the U.S. Attorney’s office responded to requests for comment.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani closed his final trial with an appeal to the jury that resonates today.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The people who know best about what was going on inside a cesspool of corruption like this one are the people who were wallowing in it,” he said. “If you don’t get your evidence from them, it keeps going on and on and on, and this kind of corruption will never end.”</font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/rudy-giuliani-paul-manafort-ukraine-black-ledger-894242/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/rudy-giuliani-paul-manafort-ukraine-black-ledger-894242/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rolling Stone</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>OCTOBER 3, 2019&nbsp;</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who Would Be the Worst Possible Person to Help You Avoid Ukraine-Related Crimes?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rudy Giuliani is consulting with Paul Manafort. What could go wrong?</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By RYAN BORT&nbsp;</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rudy Giuliani has consulted with Paul Manafort “several times” in recent months as he quests to smear Joe Biden and boost a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine and Democrats — not Russia — were the ones who did the real malfeasance ahead of the 2016 election, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This isn’t exactly a great look for Trump’s personal lawyer-turned-global conspiracy theory propagator, as Manafort is currently in prison for a smorgasbord of financial crimes, many related to his dealings in Ukraine. So why exactly was Rudy seeking guidance from Trump’s disgraced former campaign manager? It’s complicated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani has been in touch with Trump’s former campaign manager (through a lawyer) because of their&nbsp;<b>shared interest in discrediting the Mueller investigation, which led to Manafort’s imprisonment, and the role a controversial “black ledger” could play in proving the probe was a hoax — just as Trump, Hannity, and the rest of the GOP’s crackpot crew has been saying all along.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The ledger, which was obtained by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, contained<b>&nbsp;evidence of Manafort receiving over $12 million in off-the-books payments from the political party of Viktor Yanukovych</b>, the Putin-friendly former Ukrainian president whom Manafort helped get elected. Manafort resigned as Trump’s campaign manager after the existence of the ledger was reported by the New York Times in August 2016, and now Giuliani is out to prove the ledger was fraudulent and part of a joint effort by Ukraine and the Democratic Party to to sink Trump’s campaign.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[RELATED</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lev Parnas arrives to court in New York, . Parnas and Igor Fruman, close associates to U.S. President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, were arrested last month at an airport outside Washington while trying to board a flight to Europe with one-way tickets. They were later indicted by federal prosecutors on charges of conspiracy, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission and falsification of recordsTrump Impeachment, New York, USA - 02 Dec 2019</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Impeachment Evidence: 'The Biden Case Will Be Investigated'</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Top Democrats React to Unredacted Emails: 'What Else Is Trump Hiding?']</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Manafort is, not surprisingly, happy to offer his assistance. “I said, ‘Was there really a black book? If there wasn’t, I really need to know. Please tell him I’ve got to know,’” Giuliani told the Post of his conversations with Manafort’s lawyer. “He came back and said there wasn’t a black book.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The only problem is that there is no actual evidence the ledger is fraudulent. If there was, as the Post points out, it probably would have been brought up by Manafort’s defense team when he was on trial last year, and before he admitted to receiving $60 million in payments for his work in Ukraine, $30 million of which he laundered. As U<b>krainian journalist Serhiy Leschenko, who played a central role in exposing the ledger</b>, wrote for the Post in September, the idea the ledger is fake is nothing more than a scam meant to muddy the waters and raise suspicion. “<b>Giuliani’s entire approach is built on disinformation and the manipulation of facts,” he wrote. “Giuliani has developed a conspiracy theory in which he depicts my revelations about Manafort as an intervention in the 2016 U.S. election in favor of the Democratic Party.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Sadly, Giuliani’s efforts have indeed raised suspicion in some Senate Republicans, who have added some kindling to the conspiracy theory in the form of a congressional inquiry. “Ukrainian efforts, abetted by a U.S. political party, to interfere in the 2016 election should not be ignored,” wrote<b>&nbsp;Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.)&nbsp;</b>of their new investigation into the matter. “Such allegations of corruption deserve due scrutiny, and the American people have a right to know when foreign forces attempt to undermine our democratic processes,” the senators wrote in the letter.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, this conspiracy theory probably isn’t going away anytime soon. After all, Republicans don’t have much left to cling onto as they try to position themselves on the side of the president.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite having no official government role, Giuliani has emerged as one of the central figures in the scandal surrounding Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 election. He’s long been in contact with a host of shadowy Ukrainian figures, and his name was mentioned several times in both the whistleblower complaint and the president’s July 25th call to Ukrainian President Zelensky. “Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy,” Trump told Zelensky, according to a partial readout of the call released by the White House. “If you could speak to him that would be great.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On Monday,&nbsp;<b>House Democrats subpoenaed Giuliani for documents related to his efforts in Ukraine, going back to early 2017</b>. “Our inquiry includes an investigation of credible allegations that you acted as an agent of the president in a scheme to advance his personal political interests by abusing the power of the office of the president,” Reps. Adam&nbsp;<b>Schiff (D-Calif.), Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.</b>) wrote in a letter to the former mayor.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani likened the request to McCarthyism</b>. “We’re getting really close to, if we haven’t met, the standard of the McCarthy hearings where nobody seems to care about things like attorney-client privilege,” he told the Times. Though Giuliani has not said explicitly that he won’t comply with the subpoena, it doesn’t appear he’s going to. On Tuesday, he hired former Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In This Article: Paul Manafort, Rudy Giuliani, Ukraine</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/damning-parnas-docs-are-what-trump-has-been-afraid-of-and-demolish-his-3-key-impeachment-defenses-former-acting-solicitor-general"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/damning-parnas-docs-are-what-trump-has-been-afraid-of-and-demolish-his-3-key-impeachment-defenses-former-acting-solicitor-general</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>‘Damning’ Parnas docs are ‘what Trump has been afraid of’ — and demolish his 3 key impeachment defenses: former acting solicitor general</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story January 15, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a column for the Washington Post, ex-acting solicitor general Neil Katyal and former Justice Department official Joshua A. Geltzer, stated that the Tuesday afternoon document dump of notes and texts by Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas is exactly what President Donald Trump worried might happen if he didn’t get his Senate impeachment trial wrapped up as soon as possible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Americans who have been wondering why President Trump has taken the extraordinary step of trying to block every document from being released to Congress in his impeachment need wonder no longer. The new documents released Tuesday evening by the House Intelligence Committee were devastating to Trump’s continuing — if shifting — defense of his Ukraine extortion scandal, just days before his impeachment trial is likely to begin in the Senate,” the two lawyers wrote. “These new documents demolish at least three key defenses to which Trump and his allies have been clinging.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As the New York Times reported, “One of the new documents shows Mr. Giuliani saying that he had Mr. Trump’s blessing to seek a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president-elect, last spring, potential new evidence on the eve of the president’s impeachment trial,” adding that “In a separate series of cryptic text messages, Mr. Parnas communicated with another man who appeared to be monitoring the movements of [Ukraine ambassador] Ms. Yovanovitch. The texts, exchanged in March on WhatsApp, indicated that the second man, Robert F. Hyde, was in touch with people in Ukraine who were watching Ms. Yovanovitch.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Katyal and Geltzer, “The documents released Tuesday now show what Trump has been so afraid of. For starters, they prove that Trump’s already-eyebrow-raising claim to have been fighting corruption in Ukraine was bogus. Notes taken by Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas — now facing federal criminal charges — show what his and Giuliani’s mission was when they got in touch with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: ‘get Zalensky [sic] to Announce that the Biden case will Be Investigated.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“One of those documents shows just how important it might be to have such witnesses testify before the Senate. The document is a letter from Giuliani to Zelensky when he was Ukraine’s president-elect. It begins: ‘I am private counsel to President Donald J. Trump. Just to be precise, I represent him as a private citizen, not as President of the United States.’ The letter then requested a meeting with Zelensky.” they wrote. “This letter is a devastating indication of what’s been clear to many all along: that Trump’s pursuit of an announcement that Ukraine was looking into Biden was an abuse of his public office for personal gain. That’s what this letter sure seems to be saying. And it makes clear that what was afoot had nothing to do with law enforcement or Biden’s corruption — it wasn’t a request from the official ‘President of the United States’ but rather one from a ‘private citizen.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“It’s so damning to Trump that we can foresee the president claiming during impeachment that Giuliani was lying — back then, and even still today. That’s where Senate testimony can prove crucial,”</b>&nbsp;they continued. “All told, the documents help to explain Trump’s consistent push to bury the evidence against himself. Every week, it becomes clearer why Trump has withheld documents from Congress, blocked executive branch officials and even private citizens from testifying before Congress, and overall, well, obstructed Congress, as the second article of impeachment rightly describes it. It’s because Trump is a man with something to hide. Let’s see what else he’s hiding — in front of the Senate next week, in a good, old-fashioned American trial for all to see.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can read the whole piece here.</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/damning-parnas-docs-are-what-trump-has-been-afraid-of-and-demolish-his-3-key-impeachment-defenses-former-acting-solicitor-general"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/damning-parnas-docs-are-what-trump-has-been-afraid-of-and-demolish-his-3-key-impeachment-defenses-former-acting-solicitor-general</font></a></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/here-are-7-stunning-new-pieces-of-impeachment-evidence-just-released-by-the-house/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/here-are-7-stunning-new-pieces-of-impeachment-evidence-just-released-by-the-house/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Here are 7 stunning new pieces of impeachment evidence just released by the House</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Cody Fenwick January 14, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, dropped a new slate of deeply revealing evidence Tuesday night in the impeachment case against President Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though the evidence doesn’t change the basic narrative of the case against Trump — that he and a group of his cronies used the administration in various ways to put pressure on Ukraine to announce investigations into his political rivals as the 2020 campaign heated up — it adds more color and detail to the story and should make the president’s culpability in a disturbing plot even harder for his Republican allies to deny.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here are seven stunning new facts the new evidence revealed:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">1. Rudy Giuliani told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky he’s working with Trump’s “knowledge and consent.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Writing to Zelensky on May 10, when Giuliani was trying to plan a trip to Ukraine to pressure the country into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden, the president’s lawyer wrote that he is acting with Trump’s “knowledge and consent.” This claim fundamentally undercuts the argument some defenders of the president have been inclined to make that Giuliani was operating as a rogue agent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>2. In the same letter, Giuliani says he is acting in his “capacity as personal counsel to President Trump.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“I am private counsel to President Donald J. Trump,” Giuliani wrote. “Just to be precise, I represent him as a private citizen, not as President of the United States.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This confirms, as many have argued repeatedly, that Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine were clearly for Trump’s personal benefit, not the country’s. That’s part of the reason why it was so grossly wrong, and indeed impeachable, for him to use the powers of his office to induce Ukraine to announce an investigation into Biden and other political opponents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kyle Cheney</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@kyledcheney</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;· 20h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Replying to @kyledcheney</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The House released 50 pages of the evidence here, but it’s just a portion of the materials: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20200114-hpsci_transmittal_letter_to_hjc-new_evidence_attachment.pdf …https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20200114-parnas_excerpts_translated_slide_deck.pdf …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kyle Cheney</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@kyledcheney</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AMONG THE EVIDENCE: A letter from Giuliani to Zelensky seeking a May meeting which he says has Trump's "knowledge and consent."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">3. Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow gave John Dowd, another attorney, permission from the president to defend Igor Furman and Lev Parnas, two of Giuliani’s associates who have been indicted on campaign finance charges, in part, for their Ukraine-related work.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has claimed he doesn’t know who Furman and Parnas are, even though he has appeared in pictures with them. This evidence makes it harder to believe this is true and raises more questions about why he was trying to conceal his dealings with them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. Parnas wrote notes on Ritz-Carlton stationery suggesting he was directly involved with the Ukraine scheme.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“get Zalensky [sic] to Annonce [sic] that the Biden case will Be Investigated,” he wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a letter to House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler, Schiff said Parnas’ lawyer confirmed that he wrote the note.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>5. Parnas texted with a man named Robert F. Hyde, believed to be the same person who is running for a House seat in Connecticut, about removing former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schiff explained:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to some articles, tweets, and videos accusing the Ambassador of being disloyal to President Trump, Mr. Hyde wrote “Wow. Can’t believe Trumo [sic] hasn’t fired this bitch. I’ll get right in that. Mr. Hyde then sent a series of text messages suggesting that he had Ambassador Yovanovitch under physical surveillance in Kyiv and that “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6. Parnas was also communicating with Ukrainian officials which, Schiff argued, demonstrated “that Mr.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas served as a direct channel between President Trump’s agent, Mr. Giuliani, and individuals close to President Volodymyr Zelensky.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas tried to set up a meeting for Giuliani and Zelenksy in May 2019 via senior aides to the Ukrainian president, the texts show.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7. Giuliani tried to get a visa approved for a disgraced former Ukrainian prosecutor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas told Giuliani that former<b>&nbsp;Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin,</b>&nbsp;who has been feeding the unsupported allegations against Biden, was denied a visa to the U.S. Giuliani said in response: “I can revive it,” despite having no formal role at the State Department.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cody Fenwick is a senior editor at AlterNet. He writes about politics, media and science. Follow him on Twitter @codytfenwick.</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/30/headlines/washpost_giuliani_held_back_channel_call_with_maduro" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(241, 242, 243); text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" text-align="text-align" center="center"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">WaPo: Giuliani Held Back-Channel Call with Maduro</font></a></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p class="newsclipheader" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s lawyer, the Texas Congressman and the Venezuelan president: How Giuliani got involved in back-channel talks with Maduro</font></p><p class="newsclip" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The international call came in September 2018, after months of rising tension between the United States and Venezuela, a key strategic player in South America. On one end of the line was Venezuela’s socialist president, the pariah leader of a disintegrating economy whom President Trump’s administration was seeking to isolate. On the other end: the U.S. president’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and then-Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.).</font></p><p class="newsclip" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both were part of a shadow diplomatic effort, backed in part by private interests, aimed at engineering a negotiated exit to ease President Nicolás Maduro from power and reopen resource-rich Venezuela to business, according to people familiar with the endeavor. Sessions had served as emissary in the back-channel effort, visiting Maduro in Caracas that spring. The phone call, which Giuliani joined, was a follow-up to that visit, Sessions’s spokesman Matt Mackowiak told The Washington Post. The phone conversation involving the Venezuelan president and Trump’s personal lawyer, which has not been previously reported, provides another example of how Giuliani used his private role to insert himself into foreign diplomacy, alarming administration officials confused about whose interests he was representing. Giuliani operated a similar campaign this year in Ukraine, where he pressured officials to announce investigations to benefit Trump — an endeavor that led to the president’s impeachment this month.</font></p></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/30/giuliani-reportedly-made-a-back-channel-call-with-venezuelan-president-maduro.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/30/giuliani-reportedly-made-a-back-channel-call-with-venezuelan-president-maduro.html</font></a></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, called Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro late last year in an attempt to oust him from the presidency,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-lawyer-and-the-venezuelan-president-how-giuliani-got-involved-in-back-channel-talks-with-maduro/2019/12/29/289dc6aa-235f-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html" alt="" class="" rel="" target="blank" title="" role="" tabindex="" data-type="" aria-label="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer;">The Washington Post reported</a>, citing people familiar with the endeavor.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The call is another instance of Giuliani’s involvement in U.S. diplomatic policy. The former New York mayor has come under intense scrutiny for his continuing efforts to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine. Trump’s request for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to announce investigations into the Bidens, along with a conspiracy theory about Ukraine meddling in the 2016 presidential election,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/19/president-trump-impeached-heres-what-it-could-mean-for-markets.html" alt="" class="" rel="" target="" title="" role="" tabindex="" data-type="" aria-label="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer;">are at the center of the charges in the president’s impeachment in Congress</a>.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In September 2018, Giuliani and former Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, called Maduro as part of a back-channel effort to broker a negotiated exit for the embattled Venezuelan leader, according to the Post.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sessions’ spokesman Matt Mackowiak confirmed the Post’s report to CNBC.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Congressman Sessions traveled to Caracas in April 2018 to conduct direct negotiations with President Maduro on a diplomatic mission that was coordinated by the highest levels of the State Department,” Mackowiak said in an emailed statement.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The goal was to arrange Maduro’s peaceful exit to allow a transition to a democratically elected government. Several months later a conference call was held with several participants, including Congressman Sessions and Mayor Giuliani,” he said.</font></p><div id="MidResponsive-8" class="" data-module="mps-slot" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; position: sticky; margin: 0px auto;"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">People familiar with the State Department told the Post that officials there did not organize or participate in Sessions’ communications with Maduro. The newspaper reported that several U.S. officials disputed that the government backed Sessions’ trip.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The White House declined CNBC’s request for comment on the Post’s report.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.S. has challenged Maduro’s legitimacy to lead Venezuela and has joined an international coalition pressuring him to cede power to Juan Guaido, whom they have recognized as the country’s acting president.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The call was made without approval from White House officials, who did not know why Giuliani was involved once they found out about his actions, one former senior administration official told the Post.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The back-channel attempt to deal with Maduro defied the official U.S. policy led by then-national security advisor John Bolton, which involved a campaign of tightening sanctions on the Venezuelan regime, the newspaper reported. Giuliani’s Ukraine involvement also was outside of official U.S. policy.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani who played a role in his Ukraine dealings, was also involved in the shadow diplomacy effort with Venezuela, according to the Post.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mackowiak told the Post that<b>&nbsp;Sessions met Parnas on Capitol Hill in May, and that Parnas wanted to talk about a proposal to sell liquefied natural gas in Ukraine.</b>&nbsp;That meeting came about five weeks after Sessions traveled to Caracas intending to spur progress in Venezuela, according to his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/04/06/u-s-rep-pete-sessions-took-secret-trip-to-venezuela-that-his-office-says-was-peace-mission/" alt="" class="" rel="" target="blank" title="" role="" tabindex="" data-type="" aria-label="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer;">comments to the Dallas Morning News in 2018</a>.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In August 2018, Parnas met with Giuliani and two American executives with business investments in Venezuela to talk about the back channel to Maduro, the Post reported.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas was arrested in October on charges of violating federal campaign finance laws. His indictment alleges that he and another associate made illegal donations to a then-sitting U.S. congressman, speculated to be Sessions, and that Parnas had asked that congressman for assistance in getting the U.S. to remove its ambassador to Ukraine.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Sessions sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a letter urging that ambassador’s removal on May 9 — the same day Parnas posted photos of his meeting with Sessions on social media, the Post reported.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mackowiak told the Post that Sessions did not act at Parnas’ request, but rather wrote the letter after hearing concerns about the ambassador from other members of Congress.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last month, Parnas’ lawyer Joseph Bondy said Parnas&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/04/giuliani-associate-lev-parnas-will-comply-with-house-impeachment-probe.html" alt="" class="" rel="" target="" title="" role="" tabindex="" data-type="" aria-label="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer;">was willing to testify before Congress as part of an ongoing impeachment proceeding</a>&nbsp;against Trump.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding-right: 20px;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-lawyer-and-the-venezuelan-president-how-giuliani-got-involved-in-back-channel-talks-with-maduro/2019/12/29/289dc6aa-235f-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html" alt="" class="" rel="" target="blank" title="" role="" tabindex="" data-type="" aria-label="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Read the Post’s full report here.</font></strong></a></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1219 kos</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">those still blissfully unaware, One America News is a conspiracy-laced, heavily Dear Leader-premised pro-Trump "news" channel that came out of nowhere in recent years to land a spot as one of Donald J. Trump's most-favored allies. It is also now directly involved in Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump's Ukrainian plot.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b>As House impeachment hearings unfolded, it was<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> OAN that accompanied Rudy Giuliani on a trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, </span>for the purposes of taping "interviews" with the same disgraced Ukrainian officials who had assisted Giuliani in ousting the anti-corruption U.S. ambassador to Ukraine&nbsp;</b>and in peddling increasingly weird and categorically false smears against potential Trump political rival Joe Biden. Now The Daily Beast reports that the OAN efforts have been going even farther than even that.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last week, German law enforcement officials arrested former Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleksandr Onyshchenko on a warrant from Ukrainian prosecutors. Onyshchenko, a multimillionaire, was wanted in Ukraine for embezzlement, stealing multimillions from Ukraine's state-owned natural gas company.&nbsp;</span>It is part of the current Ukrainian government's efforts to clean up the rampant national corruption of past years, the same (frequently pro-Russian and/or Russian-tied) corruption that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort involved himself in, and is currently in prison for, and which Giuliani is continuing to stump for in his collaborations with those same corrupt ex-officials.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But German officials might have at least temporarily missed Onyshchenko had they waited any longer, because at the time of his arrest, OAN was attempting to secure him a visa to travel to the United States. And the OAN network president confirmed to Daily Beast that the company is currently attempting to get American visas for other former Ukrainian officials—all apparently part of the Giuliani-helmed "investigation" that claims that disgraced Ukrainian embezzlers and crooked officials are the good guys battling the "corruption" of their declared enemies and that the current anti-corruption Ukrainian government and its American allies are actually the crooked ones.</span></div><div>
</div><div>That's a common-to-the-point-of-parody claim by arrested criminals and fleeing crooked government officials the world over, mind you, but both Rudy Giuliani and OAN have decided, for the purposes of benefiting Dear Leader, to attach themselves to this one. In Rudy's case, we know he has both solicited and received cash for his strange alliances in the country, though the details remain murky. OAN, however, appears to be spending its cash solely for the purposes of furthering an anti-Biden, anti-Ukraine, anti-U.S.-government propaganda video.</div><div>
</div><div>There doesn't seem to be much shame at OAN at being caught trying to help a wanted Ukrainian fugitive pop over to the United States to spread propaganda notions of his own innocence and something-something Joe Biden before law enforcement caught up with him. OAN also isn't revealing the identities of the other Ukrainian ex-officials it is still trying to obtain visas for. Fox News may be the most prominent propaganda outlet for Trump and Trump's preferred conspiracies, but it looks like OAN is trying to position itself as the preferred network of the Ukrainian mob.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/prosecutors-say-giuliani-associate-got-1-million-from-russia-in-september/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/prosecutors-say-giuliani-associate-got-1-million-from-russia-in-september/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prosecutors say Giuliani associate got $1 million from Russia in September</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by 1DmkIIN https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Cody Fenwick December 12, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">30</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lev Parnas, the associate of Rudy Giuliani who has been indicted as part of an alleged campaign finance scheme, misled the government in his bail proceedings and hid the fact that he recently received $1 million from a Russian bank, prosecutors said Wednesday in a new court filing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The prosecutors asked that Parnas have his bail revoked and that he enter the government’s custody, arguing that he poses a serious flight risk.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to omitting the money he allegedly received from Russia, prosecutors said Parnas failed to reveal either the full payment amount he recently received from a law firm or the money he had in an escrow account, tied to a $4.5 million property he intended on buying.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They said with regard to the Russian funds, “While the majority of the money appears to have been used on personal expenses and to purchase a home … some portion of that money existed in Account-1 at the time Parnas submitted his financial affidavit.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During his work with pretrial services, the document explained, Parnas has misled officials in other ways. It said that he falsely let pretrial services to believe that the court had allowed him to leave his home every day. The filing says that such action “confirms that even stringent conditions, of the sort he is currently under, are insufficient to secure his compliance with bail.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for the Russian funds, it’s not clear where they came from or what if any relationship they have to Parnas’s connections to Giuliani’s work in Ukraine.</font></b></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas’s lawyers said they are working on a response to the government’s new claims.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We will file a written response in the coming days,” attorney Joseph Bondy told ABC News. “We look forward to a hearing next week in court.”</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/ag-barr-warns-trump-that-giuliani-has-become-a-serious-liability-for-his-administration-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/ag-barr-warns-trump-that-giuliani-has-become-a-serious-liability-for-his-administration-report/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/report-points-to-trump-1-as-the-ringleader-of-a-global-conspiracy/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/report-points-to-trump-1-as-the-ringleader-of-a-global-conspiracy/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"huge" rudy</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Report points to Trump, ‘-1,’ as the ringleader of a global conspiracy</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board December 4, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The House Intelligence Committee released its report Tuesday. In it were phone call records showing frequent contact between Rudy Giuliani and the White House. The records suggest in the most granular detail yet that the president of the United States is the leader of an&nbsp;<b>international criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people</b>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the call records do more than that. They offer a teachable moment. They provide an illustration, in miniature, of what a conspiracy looks like, and why it’s morally and legally wrong for the head of the world’s oldest democracy to engage in such conduct.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The House Intelligence report does not say Giuliani called Trump. Instead, it says the president’s personal attorney called a number designated as “-1.” Adam Schiff, the panel’s chairman, said his committee is investigating whether “-1” is Trump’s phone. The timing of calls and other strong circumstantial evidence, however, point to him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Biden announced his candidacy on April 25. Leading up to that date, Giuliani, Lev Parnas and John Solomon were in frequent contact, according to the call logs. Parnas was one of Giuliani’s henchmen. He’s now under federal indictment for campaign-finance violations. Solomon was a reporter for The Hill, a Washington newspaper.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As mentioned in previous editions of the Editorial Board, Parnas, under Giuliani’s direction, connected Solomon to Yuriy Lutsenko. Lutsenko used to be Ukraine’s top prosecutor. He was hugely corrupt, because he was intimately linked to Vladimir Putin. In interviews with Solomon, Lutsenko alleged that Joe Biden, when he was the vice president, tried to shield his son, Hunter Biden, from criminal investigation in Ukraine (a lie) and that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered with the 2016 presidential election (also a lie.)&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lev Parnas was deeply involved in Solomon’s “journalism.” He was present at his interviews with Yuriy Lutsenko, according to reporting in Pro Publica.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This we knew. What didn’t know was the timing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On the same day Joe Biden announced his presidential campaign, John Solomon wrote a falsehood-laden column “alleging that Ukraine had planted Russia collusion allegations against the Trump campaign,” according to the Post. “The column also described Biden’s efforts to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor and questioned whether Biden had acted to protect his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company facing an investigation, as the fired prosecutor has alleged.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Coincidence? Unlikely.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The very same day, April 25, Giuliani received a call from “-1” (i.e., Trump). Giuliani then called Sean Hannity at Fox. A while later, Trump appeared on Hannity’s show to comment on Solomon’s report in The Hill. “That sounds like big, big stuff,” he said.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It could have been a coincidence, but again, unlikely. As I noted last week, Parnas’ attorney said he met regularly with the “BLT Team,” a name taken from the restaurant where the group convened several times a week on the second floor of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The BLT team included Parnas, Giuliani, Solomon, attorneys</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">&nbsp;Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">and US Rep. Devin Nunes’ chief aide.</span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coincidence isn’t the right word to describe a president’s dirty lawyer getting a dirty prosecutor to tell a dirty reporter the president’s Democratic rival is dirty, and then getting a dirty TV host to ask the president to comment on the dirty reporter’s dirt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The right word to describe all that is conspiracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Which can be criminal. Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chief, is now serving time in federal prison for defrauding the United States. Legally, conspiracy doesn’t require an underlying crime. Prosecutors were only required to show Manafort conspired to “impair or obstruct the lawful function of any part of the government.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I don’t know if the president’s conduct meets a statutory standard. I do think it meets a political one. Trump, as “-1,” is the ringleader of a global conspiracy to defraud the American people of their right to consent to his leadership. There is no such thing as legitimate consent when presidents collude with enemies foreign and domestic to obstruct the free and fair process by which all Americans exercise self-governance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is a giant of a scandal. It dwarfs Watergate. It boggles the mind of ordinary Americans to contemplate the wide array of seedy underworld characters involved in a vast global conspiracy. (Another side of this involves another dirty former Ukrainian prosecutor who did a favor for a Ukrainian mobster fighting extradition to the US. Dmitry Firtash, the mobster, got Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor, to say Biden was dirty. That won<b>&nbsp;Giuliani’s attention. His friends diGenova and Toensing went to the US Department of Justice to plead with the US attorney general to go easy on Firtash.)</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I said, giant.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But these call logs bring the vastness of the conspiracy down to a human scale. Donald Trump talked to Giuliani, who talked to Parnas, who talked to Lutsenko, who talked to Solomon, who talked to Giuliani, who talked to Hannity, who talked to Donald Trump.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/report-points-to-trump-1-as-the-ringleader-of-a-global-conspiracy/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/report-points-to-trump-1-as-the-ringleader-of-a-global-conspiracy/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"huge" rudy</font></div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Report points to Trump, ‘-1,’ as the ringleader of a global conspiracy</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board December 4, 2019</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The House Intelligence Committee released its report Tuesday. In it were phone call records showing frequent contact between Rudy Giuliani and the White House. The records suggest in the most granular detail yet that the president of the United States is the leader of an international criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the call records do more than that. They offer a teachable moment. They provide an illustration, in miniature, of what a conspiracy looks like, and why it’s morally and legally wrong for the head of the world’s oldest democracy to engage in such conduct.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The House Intelligence report does not say Giuliani called Trump. Instead, it says the president’s personal attorney called a number designated as “-1.” Adam Schiff, the panel’s chairman, said his committee is investigating whether “-1” is Trump’s phone. The timing of calls and other strong circumstantial evidence, however, point to him.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Biden announced his candidacy on April 25. Leading up to that date, Giuliani, Lev Parnas and John Solomon were in frequent contact, according to the call logs. Parnas was one of Giuliani’s henchmen. He’s now under federal indictment for campaign-finance violations. Solomon was a reporter for The Hill, a Washington newspaper.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As mentioned in previous editions of the Editorial Board, Parnas, under Giuliani’s direction, connected Solomon to Yuriy Lutsenko. Lutsenko used to be Ukraine’s top prosecutor. He was hugely corrupt, because he was intimately linked to Vladimir Putin. In interviews with Solomon, Lutsenko alleged that Joe Biden, when he was the vice president, tried to shield his son, Hunter Biden, from criminal investigation in Ukraine (a lie) and that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered with the 2016 presidential election (also a lie.) </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lev Parnas was deeply involved in Solomon’s “journalism.” He was present at his interviews with Yuriy Lutsenko, according to reporting in Pro Publica.</span></font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This we knew. What didn’t know was the timing.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On the same day Joe Biden announced his presidential campaign, John Solomon wrote a falsehood-laden column “alleging that Ukraine had planted Russia collusion allegations against the Trump campaign,” according to the Post. “The column also described Biden’s efforts to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor and questioned whether Biden had acted to protect his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company facing an investigation, as the fired prosecutor has alleged.”</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Coincidence? Unlikely.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The very same day, April 25, Giuliani received a call from “-1” (i.e., Trump). Giuliani then called Sean Hannity at Fox. A while later, Trump appeared on Hannity’s show to comment on Solomon’s report in The Hill. “That sounds like big, big stuff,” he said.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It could have been a coincidence, but again, unlikely. As I noted last week, Parnas’ attorney said he met regularly with the “BLT Team,” a name taken from the restaurant where the group convened several times a week on the second floor of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The BLT team included Parnas, Giuliani, Solomon, attorneys<b> Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, and US Rep. Devin Nunes’ chief aide.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coincidence isn’t the right word to describe a president’s dirty lawyer getting a dirty prosecutor to tell a dirty reporter the president’s Democratic rival is dirty, and then getting a dirty TV host to ask the president to comment on the dirty reporter’s dirt.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The right word to describe all that is conspiracy.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Which can be criminal. Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chief, is now serving time in federal prison for defrauding the United States. Legally, conspiracy doesn’t require an underlying crime. Prosecutors were only required to show Manafort conspired to “impair or obstruct the lawful function of any part of the government.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I don’t know if the president’s conduct meets a statutory standard. I do think it meets a political one. Trump, as “-1,” is the ringleader of a global conspiracy to defraud the American people of their right to consent to his leadership. There is no such thing as legitimate consent when presidents collude with enemies foreign and domestic to obstruct the free and fair process by which all Americans exercise self-governance.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is a giant of a scandal. It dwarfs Watergate. It boggles the mind of ordinary Americans to contemplate the wide array of seedy underworld characters involved in a vast global conspiracy. (Another side of this involves another dirty former Ukrainian prosecutor who did a favor for a Ukrainian mobster fighting extradition to the US. Dmitry Firtash, the mobster, got Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor, to say Biden was dirty. That won<b> Giuliani’s attention. His friends diGenova and Toensing went to the US Department of Justice to plead with the US attorney general to go easy on Firtash.)</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I said, giant.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But these call logs bring the vastness of the conspiracy down to a human scale. Donald Trump talked to Giuliani, who talked to Parnas, who talked to Lutsenko, who talked to Solomon, who talked to Giuliani, who talked to Hannity, who talked to Donald Trump.</b></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/giuliani-scorched-for-claiming-us-constitution-obligates-trump-to-extort-ukraine-to-investigate-bidens/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Giuliani scorched for claiming US Constitution ‘obligates’ Trump to extort Ukraine to investigate Bidens</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/giuliani-scorched-for-claiming-us-constitution-obligates-trump-to-extort-ukraine-to-investigate-bidens/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" /></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/david-badash/" title="Posts by David Badash" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">David Badash</a><span style="text-align: right;">&nbsp;</span><span style="text-align: right;">/</span><span style="text-align: right;">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/the-new-civil-rights-movement/" title="Posts by The New Civil Rights Movement" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The New Civil Rights Moveme</a>nt</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></h3></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/giuliani-foreign-clientele-possible-conflicts-231413"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/giuliani-foreign-clientele-possible-conflicts-231413</font></a></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">g<span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" rem="rem" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">iuliani took money from Qatar, Venezuela, Iranian exiles</span></font></b></font></font></font></div><div class=" story-intro format-s" itemscope="" itemprop="mainEntityOfPage" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1.25em; margin-right: 344.859px;"><div class="summary " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.25em;"><header class="" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><p class="subhead" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His foreign clientele could present conflicts of interest as secretary of state.</font></font></font></font></p></header><footer class="meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-box-align: center; align-items: center; margin-top: 0.5em;"><div itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="" /></font></font></font><p class="byline" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.2em; display: inline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">By ISAAC ARNSDORF</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<p class="timestamp" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.2em; display: inline;"><time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2016-11-15 11:33:39" style="box-sizing: border-box;">11/15/2016&nbsp;</time></p></span></div></footer></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani's paid consulting for foreign governments would present conflicts of interest as the nation's top diplomat that would make the Clinton Foundation look trifling.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since leaving the New York mayor's office, Giuliani has made millions as a lawyer and consultant, including for some clients at odds with U.S. foreign policy. When some of those ties s...w those concerns have no doubt been eclipsed by Donald Trump's own web of business entanglements, which are still not completely known to the public. Giuliani's participation in Trump's transition and contention for the job of secretary of state poses a direct challenge to Trump's promises to root out Washington self-dealing and ban his administration's officials from lobbying for foreign governments.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In 2011, an exiled Iranian political party called the Mujahedin e-Khalq, known as the MEK,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704810504576307102942382660" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">paid</a>&nbsp;Giuliani to give a speech in Washington calling on the State Department to remove the group from its list of terrorist organizations.</b> The MEK recruited a host of other formal officials to its cause and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/world/middleeast/iranian-opposition-group-mek-wins-removal-from-us-terrorist-list.html?mtrref=en.wikipedia.org&gwh=B5B9DFACCDA9536BB90D49001B1472DC&gwt=pay" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">succeeded</a>&nbsp;in reversing the terrorist designation in 2012.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A subsidiary of Giuliani's consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, advised Qatar's state-run oil company on security at a natural gas plant, The Wall Street Journal&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB119440640166884884" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a>. Qatar is a U.S. ally that hosts a major American military base but once stifled an attempt to arrest Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who went on to mastermind the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the 9/11 commission report.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The same subsidiary, Giuliani Security & Safety, provided security advice to a Singapore gambling project on behalf of a partnership that included a tycoon close to the North Korean regime who is considered an organized crime figure by the U.S., according to&nbsp;<a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-11-21/news/0711210085_1_giuliani-partners-rudolph-giuliani-clients/2" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">a report in the Chicago Tribune</a>. "I think the person involved, if it's correct, was a 1 percent owner that had no involvement with us, we never worked for, had nothing to do with," Giuliani&nbsp;<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/09/AR2007120901185.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">told</a>&nbsp;NBC's Tim Russert at the time.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Giuliani Partners also&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/nyregion/07giuliani.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">advised</a>&nbsp;TransCanada, which sought to build the Keystone XL pipeline that President Barack Obama rejected but Trump has said he wants to approve. </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And Giuliani helped the maker of the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">OxyContin</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> painkiller, Purdue Pharma,&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/us/politics/28oxycontin.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">settle</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation with a fine.</span></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Houston-based law firm Giuliani joined as a named partner in 2005&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/politics/15rudy.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">lobbied</a>&nbsp;in Texas for <b>Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company</b> then controlled by President Hugo Chavez, The New York Times reported in 2007. The firm also&nbsp;<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500191_pf.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">did work</a>&nbsp;for Saudi Arabia's oil ministry, according to The Associated Press.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, lobbied at the federal level during Giuliani's time there for <b>energy companies</b> including Southern Company, Duke Energy, Energy Future Holdings, Arch Coal, Chesapeake Energy and NuStar Energy, records show. It also represented Cornell Companies, a private prison operator that later merged with GEO Group. Giuliani never personally registered as a lobbyist. He left the firm for rival<b> Greenberg Traurig </b>this year, and currently is on leave.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani's assistant at Greenberg Traurig and the Trump transition didn't answer requests for comment.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Clinton Foundation has been hounded by Republican suspicions of selling access to Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, and the nonprofit did accept big bucks from foreign governments. But Clinton's defenders point out there's no proof she ever made an official act to benefit a foundation donor, and, unlike Giuliani, she never personally profited from the foreign contributions to her charity.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Giuliani ran for president, he reported assets of $18.1 million to $70.4 million.</font></font></p><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-wealthy-venezuelan-hosted-giuliani-as-he-pursued-ukraine-campaign-then-giuliani-lobbied-the-justice-department-on-his-behalf/2019/11/26/272105a2-0ec5-11ea-b0fc-62cc38411ebb_story.html</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>A wealthy Venezuelan hosted Giuliani as he pursued Ukraine campaign. Then Giuliani lobbied the Justice Department on his behalf.</div><div>
</div><div>By&nbsp;</div><div>Rosalind S. Helderman,&nbsp;</div><div>Devlin Barrett,&nbsp;</div><div>Matt Zapotosky and&nbsp;</div><div>Tom Hamburger&nbsp;</div><div>November 26, 2019 at 11:40 AM EST</div><div>
</div><div>When Rudolph W. Giuliani went to Mrid in August to confer with a top aide to the Ukrainian president and press for political investigations sought by President Trump, he also met with a previously unidentified client with very different interests.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>While in Spain, Giuliani stayed at a historic estate belonging to Venezuelan energy executive Alejandro Betancourt López, who h hired Trump’s personal attorney to help him contend with a Justice Department investigation of alleged money laundering and bribery, according to people familiar with the situation.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A month later, Giuliani was one of several lawyers representing Betancourt in Washington. The lawyers met with the chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division and other government attorneys to argue that the wealthy Venezuelan should not face criminal charges as part of a $1.2 billion money-laundering case filed in Florida last year, said the people, who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.</span></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Investigators scrutinize Giuliani firm and donations to Trump super PAC as part of bro probe</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>The criminal complaint alleges that top officials of the Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, elite business leers and bankers conspired to steal money from the company and then launder it through Miami real estate purchases and other investment schemes.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Betancourt is not one of the eight men charged in the case, a group that includes his cousin. But two people familiar with the matter said that he is referred to in the criminal complaint as a uncharged co-conspirator, as previously reported by the Miami Herald.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani’s representation of Betancourt — which has not been previously disclosed — is a striking example of how Trump’s lawyer has continued to offer his services to foreign clients with interests before the U.S. government while working on behalf of the president. And it shows how Giuliani — who says he was serving as Trump’s attorney pro bono — has used his work for paying clients to help underwrite his efforts to find political ammunition in Ukraine to benefit the president.</span></div><div>
</div><div>In response to questions about his relationship with Betancourt, Giuliani wrote in a text, “This is attorney client privilege so I will withstand whatever malicious lies or spin you put on it.”</div><div>
</div><div>Eric Creizman, an attorney for Giuliani, declined to comment.</div><div>
</div><div>Jon Sale, an attorney for Betancourt, said his client denies any wrongdoing. He declined to comment on Betancourt’s relationship with Giuliani.</div><div>
</div><div>A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on the meeting. Justice Department officials were unaware of the Mrid meeting when Giuliani came to meet them, according to a senior Justice Department official who said the topic of Ukraine did not come up in the discussion.</div><div>
</div><div>'The whole package'</div><div>
</div><div>Giuliani, a former New York mayor and top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, is now under scrutiny by the U.S. attorney’s office he once led, which has filed campaign finance charges against two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Investigators are examining Giuliani’s consulting business as part of a bro probe in a raft of possible crimes, including wire fraud and foreign lobbying violations, according to people familiar with the matter.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Giuliani is also a key figure in the ongoing House impeachment inquiry into Trump, in which top government officials have testified that the president’s lawyer led a show effort to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations of Trump’s rivals in exchange for a White House meeting.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump h urged U.S. officials hoping to broker a good relationship between him and newly elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to work with Giuliani, according to congressional testimony.</div><div>
</div><div>‘Talk to Rudy’: Testimony from diplomats highlights Giuliani’s central role in driving Ukraine policy</div><div>
</div><div>On July 25, Trump asked Zelensky to pursue the investigations of Democrats. Days later, Giuliani heed to Mrid to meet with Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Zelensky, to cement the deal, according to Giuliani and congressional testimony.</div><div>
</div><div>Giuliani told The Washington Post in September that Yermak h offered to come to the United States, but he suggested Spain. “I told him I was alrey going to be in Mrid for something else the first weekend in August, so why don’t we just meet there?” he said.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The purpose of the Aug. 2 sit-down: to spell out two specific cases Trump wanted Ukraine to pursue, Giuliani told The Post in September.</div><div>
</div><div>One was a probe of a Ukrainian gas tycoon who h former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden on his board. Another was a claim that Democrats colluded with Ukraine to release information on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the 2016 election.</div><div>
</div><div>Yermak, according to Giuliani, indicated that the Ukrainians were open to pursuing the investigations. The aide reiterated the Ukrainians’ plea for a meeting with Trump, a summit that would be an important signal to Russia of Washington’s support for Ukraine.</div><div>
</div><div>“I talked to him about the whole package,” Giuliani said.</div><div>
</div><div>After the meeting, Yermak began circulating a draft of a statement the Ukrainians were considering issuing regarding their commitment to investigating corruption, according to text messages released as part of the House inquiry.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>A private client</div><div>
</div><div><b>One of the main purposes of Giuliani’s travel to Spain was to meet with Betancourt, who has me a fortune in work for the Venezuelan government, according to people familiar with the trip.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Betancourt, a young member of Venezuela’s elite who attended Suffolk University in Boston, co-founded a company that was awarded $1.8 billion in government contracts to build power plants under Venezuela’s former socialist president Hugo Chávez, leing to allegations the company bilked the government, the Wall Street Journal has reported.</span></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>The company, Derwick Associates, has denied paying bribes to win its contracts and said the contracts reflected the high cost of doing business in the socialist country.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Sale, Betancourt’s attorney, is a longtime friend of Giuliani’s who attended law school with him. He also briefly represented Giuliani as he responded to congressional inquiries regarding Ukraine, sending a letter to House committees explaining that Giuliani would not comply with a subpoena for documents.</span></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Giuliani has defended his work for foreign clients, arguing that their identities and interests are “irrelevant” to his uncompensated efforts for Trump. “My other clients are paying me for the work I do for them. Nobody is paying me for a single thing I’m doing for Donald J. Trump,” he told The Post earlier this year.</div><div>
</div><div>Impeachment inquiry puts new focus on Giuliani’s work for prominent figures in Ukraine</div><div>
</div><div>He told the Daily Beast in October that he met Yermak in Mrid because he alrey planned to be in the Spanish capital for “business and vacation.”</div><div>
</div><div>He said it was an example of how the costs of his travel for Trump were covered by separate work he did for private clients.</div><div>
</div><div>“That particular trip has not been reimbursed, but about three-fourths of it would be business and one-fourth would be personal,” he said. “The Trump part would be considered personal because I don’t get paid for representing the president.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>He told Reuters in September that his expenses “were paid by I assume one client. Since I took two days off I think I paid some of that personally as well.”</div><div>
</div><div>During the trip, Giuliani met with Yermak at a hotel in Mrid, according to people familiar with the trip.</div><div>
</div><div>But he — along with Parnas and Fruman — stayed at an expansive estate belonging to Betancourt on the grounds of an ancient castle once used by Spanish royalty, the people said.</div><div>
</div><div>A Betancourt company purchased El Castillo del Alamín in 2011 for nearly 23 million euros, according to the Spanish news outlet El Mundo. It is about an hour southwest of Mrid.</div><div>
</div><div>On Aug. 3, the day after his meeting with Yermak, Giuliani tweeted images of a Spanish village, writing, “South of Mrid are beautiful small towns and lovely countryside and very wonderful people.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>South of Mrid are beautiful small towns and lovely countryside and very wonderful people. pic.twitter.com/vrnsNM8aS6</div><div>
</div><div>— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) August 3, 2019</div><div>Joseph A. Bondy, an attorney for Parnas, declined to comment. Todd Blanche, an attorney for Fruman, did not respond to a request for comment.</div><div>
</div><div>The Justice Department meeting</div><div>A month later, Giuliani joined a number of lawyers representing Betancourt at a meeting at Justice Department hequarters with Brian Benczkowski, the he of the criminal division, according to people familiar with the session.</div><div>
</div><div>At the time, federal prosecutors in Manhattan were pursuing the case against Giuliani’s associates, Parnas and Fruman.</div><div>
</div><div>When the New York Times reported in October that Giuliani met with the criminal-division chief about one of his clients, the Justice Department said Benczkowski was not aware of the New York case at the time.</div><div>
</div><div>“When Mr. Benczkowski and fraud section lawyers met with Mr. Giuliani, they were not aware of any investigation of Mr. Giuliani’s associates in the Southern District of New York and would not have met with him h they known,” Peter Carr, a department spokesman, said at the time.</div><div>
</div><div>The client who was the subject of the meeting has not been previously reported.</div><div>
</div><div>Giuliani has cast his efforts to dig up damaging information about Democrats in Ukraine as a strategy to assist his client, Trump, but also motivated by a lifelong commitment to fighting corruption.</div><div>
</div><div>“I’ve been doing this for 50 years of my life,” he told conservative brocaster Glenn Beck on Nov. 20. “I’ve never h a complaint. I think people understand that I have a very, very great passion for corruption, and I’ve probably uncovered some of the biggest crimes and disrupted some of the biggest crime organizations in our history.”</div><div>
</div><div>However, his involvement with the Betancourt case puts him at odds with a long-running effort by federal prosecutors to crack down on corruption in Venezuela.</div><div>
</div><div>The United States has been aggressively pursuing bribery, embezzlement and money laundering cases against Venezuela’s elite, arguing the corruption has helped collapse the country’s economy and caused civil unrest.</div><div>
</div><div>Federal prosecutors in Miami have said in court filings that billions have been looted from Venezuela’s state-owned energy company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, which has faced particularly dire economic consequences.</div><div>
</div><div>Betancourt was not named in the July 2018 criminal complaint, but the case’s lead defendant, Francisco Convit Guruceaga, is his cousin and sat on the board of Betancourt’s company. Convit is considered a fugitive by the U.S. government, according to court records.</div><div>
</div><div>While Giuliani’s representation of Betancourt h not been previously disclosed, Venezuela has surfaced as a topic in the House impeachment inquiry.</div><div>
</div><div>In a closed-door deposition given to congressional investigators on Oct. 14, former National Security Council official Fiona Hill alluded to the possibility of a Venezuela tie to the ongoing Ukraine saga.</div><div>
</div><div>“I was told that by the directors working on the Western Hemisphere. I didn’t have a chance to look into this in any way. I was told that the same individuals who h been indicted h been interested at different points in energy investments in Venezuela and that this was quite well known,” she said, referring to Parnas and Fruman, according to a transcript later released.</div><div>
</div><div>She did not detail the information she h been given, only that she h learned the two were “notorious in Florida” and involved with “strange things in Venezuela.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Well, I was extremely concerned that whatever it was that Mr. Giuliani was doing might not be legal, especially after, you know, people h raised with me these two gentlemen, Parnas and Fruman,” she said.</div><div>
</div><div>Josh Dawsey, Aaron Davis, Anne Gearan and Alice Crites contributed to this report.</div><div>
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</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/rudy-giuliani-has-a-long-shady-history-with-ukraine/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/rudy-giuliani-has-a-long-shady-history-with-ukraine/</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mojo</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">March 2018, Rudy Giuliani</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://tgsv.net/triglobal-strategic-ventures-announces-successful-trip-for-city-of-kharkiv-representatives-to-new-york-city/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">met</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">in Manhattan with a delegation of lawmakers from Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million in eastern Ukraine. Giuliani, who joined President Donald Trump’s legal team a few weeks later, was at this gathering because, Giuliani says, his security firm</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giulianis-corrupt-oligarch-ukraine-2018-11" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">agreed</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">in 2017 to help the city improve its emergency services and seek foreign investment.</span></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></font></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But the deal had a murkier element. Giuliani later&nbsp;<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/ukrainian-oligarch-pavel-fuks-scrutinized-by-robert-mueller-was-rudy-giuliani-client/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">conceded</a>&nbsp;that he wasn’t just working for Kharkiv and that for at least some of the work he was paid by<b> Pavel Fuks</b>, a Kharkiv-born business executive who became a prominent real estate developer in Moscow in the 2000s and who has said that he negotiated directly with Trump between 2004 and 2010 about building a Trump-branded<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">&nbsp;</span>tower in Moscow. Fuks was one of several Ukrainians with Russian ties whose attendance at Trump’s presidential inauguration was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/us/politics/ukraine-donald-trump-inauguration.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">investigated</a>&nbsp;by former special counsel Robert Mueller.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> So at the start of Trump’s presidency, Giuliani was hobnobbing with at least one Ukrainian player who would be tainted by scandal.&nbsp;</span></font></font></p><div class="incontent-promo" id="incontent_promo_1" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: rgb(242, 243, 239); position: relative; left: -358.156px; height: auto; width: 100vw; margin-bottom: 1rem; clear: both;"><section id="mj-incontent-ad-widget-4" class="widget mj-incontent-ad-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="incontent-ad-container" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 1300px; margin: 0px auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;" /></section></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-pursued-shadow-ukraine-agenda-as-key-foreign-policy-officials-were-sidelined/2019/09/24/ee18aaec-deec-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">exploded</a>&nbsp;into public view this month, with the revelation that Trump pressured the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to work with&nbsp;Giuliani and Attorney General&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/25/william-barr-ukraine-memo-1512255" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">William Barr</a>&nbsp;to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and information to discredit Mueller’s probe. A complaint filed by an intelligence community whistleblower that triggered this new Trump scandal depicted Giuliani as a Trump henchman prowling Ukraine for negative material Trump could use against Biden. But the former New York mayor’s involvement in Ukraine and other former Soviet bloc countries has been more extensive and even more&nbsp;sketchy than these disclosures indicate.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The New York meeting and an earlier trip Giuliani trip took to Kharkiv in November 2017 were arranged by TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, the firm&nbsp;<a href="http://tgsv.net/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">says</a>&nbsp;on its website. TriGlobal, which claims to have offices in New York, Moscow, and Kiev, sells itself as an international business consultancy that does public relations work for clients in Russia and Ukraine. The firm also brags that it has worked with Giuliani since 2004,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">arranging</a>&nbsp;trips for him to former Soviet states. Last October, Giuliani took a break from his work representing Trump to&nbsp;<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">speak</a>&nbsp;about cybersecurity at a conference <b>TriGlobal organized in Armenia to promote a Russia-led economic bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union</b>. Giuliani appeared at the event alongside a </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Russian official, Sergey Glazyev, who was&nbsp;<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/17/fact-sheet-ukraine-related-sanctions" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">sanctioned</a>&nbsp;in March 2014 for his role in the annexation of Crimea</b> and who has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jpost.com/International/Putin-adviser-denies-antisemitic-conspiracy-about-Ukraines-new-president-589231" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">accused</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/05/07/putin-aide-says-new-ukraine-leader-could-populate-war-torn-region-with-jews-a65509" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">advancing</a>&nbsp;anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Ukraine, an accusation he’s denied. Giuliani was reportedly invited to a conference by Russian Armenian multimillionaire Ara Abramyan, a member of TriGlobal’s board, who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">reportedly</a>&nbsp;suggested at the time that he expected Giuliani to deliver a message for him to Trump.</span></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Friday, the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Washington Post</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">reported</a>&nbsp;that Giuliani planned to participate in a panel led by Glazyev at the same conference in Armenia this year. Giuliani canceled his plans to attend after the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Post</em>‘s report. He said he decided not to attend after learning that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to go. “If Putin’s going it’s easy,” he said in a text.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">These gigs form part of Giuliani’s lucrative post-mayoral career as a roving international security consultant and high-priced lawyer. That career has continued, even after Trump brought Giuliani onto his personal legal team with a mandate to take a combative approach against Mueller’s investigation. Giuliani provides not only pro-bono legal assistance for Trump, but, he says, political advice, and reportedly he acts as somewhat of a personal emissary for the president. All the while, Giuliani has shrugged off questions of whether clients, including foreign interests, are paying him and his firm as he functions as Trump’s consigliere. And he has refused to comprehensively identify his clients. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He claims that he does not need to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act—which would require him to disclose details of his work for overseas clients—because he does no lobbying in the United States for foreign entities and instead merely provides security advice to any client he has abroad.</span></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But at least one former client disputes Giuliani’s claims about his work.</b> “I would call him the lobbyist for Kharkiv and Ukraine—this is stated in the contract,” Fuks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/30/us/politics/ukraine-giuliani-foreign-work.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">told</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">New York Times</em>&nbsp;in March. “It is very important for me that such person as Giuliani tells people that we are a good country, that people can do business with us. That’s what we would like to bring to America’s leaders.” Neither Giuliani nor Fuks has made their contract public. Giuliani has declined to say what he and his firm were paid for the work.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Seven Senate Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.),&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tomudall.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FARA%20Letter%20DOJ.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">pressed</a>&nbsp;the Justice Department this week to investigate whether Giuliani is violating foreign lobbying law. “Like any other American, Mr. Giuliani has legal obligations to report his work on behalf of foreign clients,” they wrote, “and the Department of Justice should not give him preferential treatment or exempt him from his obligation just because he is the President’s personal attorney.”</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani conducted other business in Ukraine while working for Kharkiv and Fuks. In June 2017, Giuliani traveled to Kiev where he reportedly&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ele_schiff_cummings_letter_to_sec_pompeo_on_ukraine.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">met with</a>&nbsp;then-President Petro<b> Poroshenko, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko</b>, and other government officials.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Giuliani also&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.pinchukfund.org/en/news/20207/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">spoke</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;on “democracy” and the “rule of law” at&nbsp;a conference organized by the foundation of Ukrainian metals magnate, Victor Pinchuk—an oligarch whose 2016 payment of $150,000 to Trump’s charitable foundation drew&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/us/politics/trump-mueller-ukraine-victor-pinchuk.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">scrutiny</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;from Mueller. Giuliani, who in 2006&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/us/politics/17candidates.html?module=inline" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">reported</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;receiving up to $200,000 per&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.wsb.com/speakers/rudy-giuliani" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">speech</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, has declined to say how much he he was paid for that presentation. It’s unclear if these activities had any connection to Giuliani’s deal with Fuks and Kharkiv.</span></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a text message Thursday, Giuliani said his work in Ukraine in 2017 was unrelated to his recently revealed activity. “My business in Ukraine ended in Dec. 2017,” he wrote. But Giuliani’s involvement in the country continued after he became Trump’s lawyer in April 2018.</font></span></font></p><div class="incontent-promo" id="incontent_promo_3" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: rgb(242, 243, 239); position: relative; left: -358.156px; height: auto; width: 100vw; margin-bottom: 1rem; clear: both;"><section id="mj-incontent-ad-widget-11" class="widget mj-incontent-ad-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="incontent-ad-container" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 1300px; margin: 0px auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;" /></section></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In May 2018, Ukrainian officials stopped investigating payments to Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort and dropped an offer to assist with Mueller’s prosecution of him.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ukrainian officials&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/world/europe/ukraine-mueller-manafort-missiles.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">told</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">New York Times</em>&nbsp;they feared helping Mueller would anger Trump, potentially complicating their purchase from the United States of antitank weapons aimed at deterring Russian aggression. This week Giuliani insisted in a text message to me that he did “not know anything about” that move.</span></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>At some point in 2018—the exact date is unclear—Giuliani began working on Ukraine-related matters with<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;</span>two Soviet-born American business executives, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. </b>Giuliani has&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1129761193755910144?s=20" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">said</a>&nbsp;they’re his clients, though his work for them appears indistinguishable from his efforts on Trump’s behalf. In a text message on Monday, Giuliani declined to comment on this work, citing attorney-client privilege. Parnas and Fruman did not respond to inquiries.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>According to a joint&nbsp;<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/meet-the-florida-duo-helping-giuliani-dig-dirt-for-trump-in-ukraine" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">investigation</a>&nbsp;by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">BuzzFeed News</em>, it was Parnas and Fruman who first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mikesallah/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-trump-parnas-fruman" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">encouraged</a>&nbsp;Giuliani’s effort to dig up dirt on Biden</b>. Both Parnas and Fruman, who live in South Florida, became big GOP donors in 2018, giving at least $576,500 in combined donations over several months. They used the resulting access to powerful Republican figures to promote a plan to sell American liquified gas to Ukraine. In May 2018, the duo dined with the president at the Trump International Hotel and had breakfast in Beverly Hills with Donald Trump Jr. and Tommy Hicks Jr., who later became co-chair of the Republican National Committee, according Facebook posts by Parnas, which he later deleted. It is unclear if Giuliani was helped connect them with Trump.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to the OCCRP/<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">BuzzFeed News</em>&nbsp;report, Parnas and Fruman organized a late 2018 Skype call between Giuliani and <b>Viktor Shokin</b>, the prosecutor whose firing was pushed by Biden and many European diplomats in 2016.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Shokin was ousted for blocking anti-corruption probes, but Giuliani and Trump have asserted that Biden sought Shokin’s dismissal to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, from investigation. There is no evidence to support that claim.</span></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But Shokin, not surprisingly, was apparently eager to help smear Biden.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Parnas claims that he and Fruman put Giuliani in touch with Shokin’s replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko, late last year. Giuliani and Lutsenko met in New York in January 2018 and in Poland in February, according to the OCCRP/<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">BuzzFeed News</em>&nbsp;report. Giuliani&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-gambit-for-trump-giuliani-engaged-parade-of-ukrainian-prosecutors/2019/09/26/4d3dc72e-e072-11e9-8fd3-d943b4ed57e0_story.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">told</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Washington Post</em>&nbsp;that he has met with five current and former Ukrainian prosecutors overall, including Shokin and Lutsenko, since last year.&nbsp;</span></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Shortly after&nbsp;their get-togethers, Lutsenko and Giuliani began pushing allegations in the US media about Biden and claiming Ukrainian officials interfered in the 2016 election to help the Hillary Clinton campaign. </b>Many of these claims ended up in articles written by&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Hill</em>&nbsp;opinion writer John Solomon, whose reports were amplified by Fox News and other conservative media and by Trump—but his reports have largely been</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-a-conservative-columnist-helped-push-a-flawed-ukraine-narrative/2019/09/26/1654026e-dee7-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">debunked</a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</em>&nbsp;Ukrainian anti-corruption activists&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/10/rumors-joe-biden-scandal-ukraine-absolute-nonsense-reformer-says/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">claim</a>&nbsp;Shokin and Lutsenko were promoting phony accusations, and Lutsenko later&nbsp;<a href="https://thebabel.net/texts/28898-genprokuror-yuriy-lucenko-ne-idet-v-otstavku-vot-chto-on-rasskazal-nam-o-konfliktah-s-poslom-ssha-i-glavoy-nabu-dele-burisma-plenkah-rozenblata-i-istochnikah-korrupcii-bolshoe-intervyu" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">withdrew</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/ukraine-prosecutor-says-no-evidence-of-wrongdoing-by-bidens" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">many</a>&nbsp;of his claims. Daria Kaleniuk, the head of a Ukrainian anti-corruption group,&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/22/reporters-stop-helping-donald-trump-spread-lies-joe-biden-ukraine/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">contends</a>&nbsp;that Lutsenko issued allegations to please Trump in a bid to keep his job.&nbsp;</span></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I was investigating, going back to last year, complaints that the Ukrainian people, several people in Ukraine, knew about a tremendous amount of collusion between Ukrainian officials, and Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee,” Giuliani&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/20/trump-has-been-openly-trying-leverage-ukraine-his-political-benefit-months/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">claimed</a>&nbsp;last week on CNN. These<b> accusations promoted by Giuliani have been embraced by Trump’s Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr.</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b> On Wednesday, the Justice Department said that a probe initiated by Barr and run by a US attorney, John Durham, is “exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.” </b>(The nature of this probe is unclear. Ukraine was not involved in the initiation of the FBI’s investigation of the Russian attack on the 2016 election and the interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia.)&nbsp;</span></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Washington Post</em>, since Zelensky took office in May, Giuliani has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-pursued-shadow-ukraine-agenda-as-key-foreign-policy-officials-were-sidelined/2019/09/24/ee18aaec-deec-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html?wpisrc=al_newsalert-national--alert-world--alert-politics&wpmk=1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">sidelined</a>&nbsp;the State Department and helped force the firing of the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom he accused, seemingly without evidence, of “collusion” and of “working for” liberal financier George Soros. Trump’s request that Zelensky help Giuliani unearth negative information on Biden has received lots of attention. Zelensky agreeing to do so has received less notice. According to the whistleblower’s complaint, Giuliani met with a Zelenksy adviser on August 2 in Madrid to follow up on “cases” discussed in the July 25 phone call.</font></span></font></p><div class="incontent-promo" id="incontent_promo_5" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: rgb(242, 243, 239); position: relative; left: -358.156px; height: auto; width: 100vw; margin-bottom: 1rem; clear: both;"><section id="mj-incontent-ad-widget-10" class="widget mj-incontent-ad-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="incontent-ad-container" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 1300px; margin: 0px auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;" /></section></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani’s role, particularly his work in Ukraine in 2017 and 2018, has not been fully explained. The whistleblower&nbsp;<a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6430345/20190812-Whistleblower-Complaint-Unclass.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">complaint</a>&nbsp;alleges that Giuliani has been “a central figure” in Trump’s covert effort to use his power to press Ukraine to help tilt the 2020 election in his favor. An unnamed US official quoted by the&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Post</em>&nbsp;made a similar claim: “<b>Rudy—he did all of this,” the official&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-pursued-shadow-ukraine-agenda-as-key-foreign-policy-officials-were-sidelined/2019/09/24/ee18aaec-deec-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px">said</a>. “This shitshow that we’re in—it’s him injecting himself into the process.”</b></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asked about his work in Ukraine, Giuliani, in a series of texts, called the issue “bull distraction.” Not enough is publicly known yet to back up Giuliani’s this-is-a-distraction defense, or to assess whether Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine will ultimately help Trump or cause him more difficulty in a scandal that has led to an impeachment inquiry.&nbsp;</font></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trump inc pod</font></font></div><div><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="3.0" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just last week, for example, Giuliani appeared in the former Soviet republic of Armenia, which has close trade ties with Russia. He was invited, according to local press accounts, by Ara Abramyan, an Armenian businessman who lives in Russia. Abramyan once helped reconstruct the Kremlin and also received a medal for “merit to the fatherland” from President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Giuliani said he was in Armenia as a private citizen, but on a local TV news show, Abramyan implied that he expected Giuliani to carry a message for him to Trump. (The conversation was in Armenian, so it’s not clear whether Giuliani understood what Abramyan was saying.)</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="3.1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While in Armenia, Giuliani also attended a technology conference (one of his businesses advises on cybersecurity). The conference program listed him as appearing on a panel that also included a Russian currently on the U.S. sanctions list imposed after Russia’s invasion of Crimea.</font></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-giuliani-upped-trips-to-russia-and-former-soviet-states-after-trumps-election-propublica"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-giuliani-upped-trips-to-russia-and-former-soviet-states-after-trumps-election-propublica</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, appears to have&nbsp;</span><a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine?utm_content=bufferf7573&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer" style="word-break: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">stepped up his appearances</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;in Russia and former Soviet states since Trump was elected. ProPublica reports that last week, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani reportedly was invited to Armenia by Ara Abramyan, an Armenian businessman who lives in Russia. Giuliani said he was in Armenia as a private citizen, but on a local TV news show, Abramyan implied that he expected Giuliani to carry a message for him to Trump, according to ProPublica. Giuliani also attended a cybersecurity conference while in Armenia, where he s<b>poke on a panel with a Russian currently on the U.S. sanctions list</b> imposed after Russia’s invasion of<b> Crimea</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>.</b> ProPublica noted that Giuliani’s work abroad doesn’t appear to break any laws or rules, but that it seems unprecedented. Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and a law professor at the University of Michigan (and a&nbsp;</span><a class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/barbara-mcquade" style="word-break: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">regular Daily Beast contributor</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">) told ProPublica, “I don’t recall seeing anything like this before.”</span></font></font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/massive-criminal-enterprise-new-report-claims-giuliani-sought-ukraine-business-deals-as-he-dug-up-dirt-on-biden-for-trump/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/massive-criminal-enterprise-new-report-claims-giuliani-sought-ukraine-business-deals-as-he-dug-up-dirt-on-biden-for-trump/</font></a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>‘Massive criminal enterprise’: New report claims Giuliani sought Ukraine business deals as he dug up dirt on Biden for Trump</b></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Salon November 28, 2019</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public optics for Rudy Giuliani continued to get worse on Wednesday after the New York Times and Washington Post both reported that President Donald Trump’s personal attorney earlier this year sought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business opportunities in Ukraine from the same government officials he was working with to uncover dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">The Post reported that Giuliani negotiated a contract earlier this year to represent Yuri Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s top prosecutor, for at least $200,000. The negotiations came at the same time Giuliani was working with Lutsenko to dig up damaging information on Biden for the benefit of Trump.</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The agreements were never executed, and there is no indication that Giuliani was ultimately paid by Lutsenko or other Ukrainian officials,” the Post noted. “But the negotiations proceeded far enough that legal agreements were drafted under which Giuliani’s company would have received more than $200,000 to work for the Ukrainians.”</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Times, Giuliani and lawyers close to him were engaged in a months-long effort to take on “various Ukrainian officials or their agencies as clients.”</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Times reviewed “a proposal signed in February by Mr. Giuliani,” which “called for the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice to pay his firm $300,000.”</b></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In return, Mr. Giuliani would help the government recover money it believed had been stolen and stashed overseas,” the Times reported. “The Times could not determine whether the documents it reviewed comprise the entirety of the efforts by Mr. Giuliani and other lawyers to represent Ukrainian government officials.”</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani downplayed the talks in an interview with the Times and said he “never received a penny” from Ukrainian officials.</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The new reporting was viewed by progressives and analysts as further evidence that Giuliani and Trump were pursuing corrupt ends in Ukraine while publicly claiming to be fighting corruption.</b></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is getting so bad for @RudyGiuliani that he’s now getting embroiled in a set of side scandals all his own. @paulwaldman1 on the latest Rudy revelations:https://t.co/PnW9dWa9fz</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) November 27, 2019</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani sought a payments of $200,000 from the recently dismissed prosecutor general of Ukraine earlier this year.</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, Mr. President, about that corruption in Ukraine you said you were so worried about… https://t.co/tOQMu56ue4</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) November 27, 2019</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reflecting on the new revelations, Post columnist Paul Waldman wrote:</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would Giuliani be simultaneously pursuing what former national security official Fiona Hill called a “domestic political errand” on Trump’s behalf — pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation that would smear former vice president Joe Biden — while simultaneously looking to cash in himself?</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The better question is, why wouldn’t he?</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Trumplandia is just a massive criminal enterprise,” tweeted Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic.</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DC rept</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is Rudy Giuliani a true believer or is he just working for Trump in the shadows because it is a way to make money?</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">I believe that Rudy Giuliani is one of the great frauds of all time. Giuliani’s father was a bandit who served time in Sing Sing prison. Giuliani surrounded himself with mobbed up people like Bernard Kerik, who he made first corrections commissioner, and then Police Commissioner. Of note: Giuliani did not try any of the mob cases ][during his time as U.S. attorney in New York.] He just took credit for them. The convictions were won by career prosecutors who did an excellent job.</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>When he worked for the Reagan administration, Giuliani made it clear that he is a horrible racist as shown during the Haitian refugee crisis. Giuliani is an opportunist. He’s certainly looking out for his own pocket and his own welfare. Giuliani now has this lucrative gig with Donald Trump.</b>&nbsp;And Giuliani has made this claim that he’s not being paid by Donald Trump. In fact, lawyers know lots of ways to get paid. It will not surprise to me one bit if Giuliani’s alleged associates in the Ukraine scandal, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, eventually reveal that Giuliani had some side extortion scheme to make money.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/rudy-giuliani/rudy-giuliani-reveals-he-was-feeding-information-john-solomon" rel="bookmark" class="teaserlink" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; outline: 0px;" /></font><div class="teasercontent" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex: 1 1 0%; flex-direction: column; justify-content: center;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/rudy-giuliani/rudy-giuliani-reveals-he-was-feeding-information-john-solomon" rel="bookmark" class="teaserlink" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; outline: 0px;" /><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/rudy-giuliani/rudy-giuliani-reveals-he-was-feeding-information-john-solomon" rel="bookmark" class="teaserlink" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; outline: 0px;" /><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/rudy-giuliani/rudy-giuliani-reveals-he-was-feeding-information-john-solomon" rel="bookmark" class="teaserlink" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; outline: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Giuliani reveals he was feeding information to John Solomon</font></span></a></font></h2><p class="dateline-compact" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; align-items: center; display: flex; font-weight: 600; letter-spacing: 2px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="dateline-compacttype" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; height: 1.5em; margin-right: 1em; width: 1.5em;"><svg viewbox="0 0 24 24" class="icon icon--video" aria-labelledby="icon-label--video" /><font size="4"><font face="Times New Roman"><use xlink:href="#video" xmlns:xlink="xlink" /></font></font><font size="4"><font face="Times New Roman"><svg id="video" viewbox="0 0 25 24" /></font></font><font size="4"><font face="Times New Roman"><path d="M0 24h24V0H0zM9 7l8 5-8 5z" fill="inherit" fill-rule="evenodd" /></font></font></span><time datetime="2019-11-20T17:50:54-0500" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11/20/19 5:50 PM EST</font></time></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/new-trove-of-ukraine-docs-exposes-clear-paper-trail-from-rudy-giuliani-to-the-oval-office-to-secretary-pompeo"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/new-trove-of-ukraine-docs-exposes-clear-paper-trail-from-rudy-giuliani-to-the-oval-office-to-secretary-pompeo</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>New trove of Ukraine docs exposes ‘clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo’</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams November 24, 2019</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A trove of State Department documents obtained late Friday by watchdog group American Oversight provided new details on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s involvement in the White House effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate President Donald Trump’s political rivals.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The documents, which the State Department turned over in compliance with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, showed that Pompeo spoke to Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani by phone at least twice earlier this year as Giuliani was pressing Ukraine to probe former Vice President Joe Biden. At least one of the calls was arranged by Trump assistant Madeleine Westerhout, the documents showed.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani in March was also orchestrating a smear campaign against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump removed from her post in May.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In April, following his calls with Giuliani, Pompeo also called Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who has been implicated in the effort to dig up dirt on Biden.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Oversight</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@weareoversight</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;· Nov 23, 2019</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Replying to @weareoversight</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was just the first production of documents from our first lawsuit seeking the public release of Trump administration Ukraine records. There will be more.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>We also have active lawsuits for records from Perry, Mulvaney, Sondland, DOD, and more.</b> https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/the-trump-administrations-contacts-with-ukraine …</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump Administration’s Contacts with Ukraine - American Oversight</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Oversight is investigating the extent of the administration’s troubling efforts to coerce a foreign government into helping to attack the president’s perceived political enemies.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">americanoversight.org</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Oversight</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@weareoversight</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We can see why Secretary Pompeo refused to release these documents to Congress: the paper trail connects him to Giuliani, showing a March 2019 call right before a call to Rep. Nunes. https://www.americanoversight.org/state-department-releases-ukraine-documents-to-american-oversight …</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">View image on Twitter</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pompeo, who admitted last month that he was on the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has refused to cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry into Trump.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said the newly released documents shed light on the reasons behind Pompeo’s reluctance to testify or hand over information requested by impeachment investigators.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We can see why Mike Pompeo has refused to release this information to Congress,” Evers said in a statement. “It reveals a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a U.S. ambassador.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The evidence is only going to get worse for the administration as its stonewall strategy collapses in the face of court orders,” added Evers. “That American Oversight could obtain these documents establishes that there is no legal basis for the administration to withhold them from Congress. That conclusively shows that the administration is engaged in obstruction of justice.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an interview with the New York Times last month, Giuliani acknowledged that he spoke with Pompeo about Ukraine in late March.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Times reported late Saturday:</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In connection with one such conversation, Mr. Giuliani said he provided Mr. Pompeo a timeline listing what he considered to be key events implicating targets of Mr. Trump, including the Bidens, Ms. Yovanovitch and Ukrainians whom Mr. Giuliani said had disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Shortly after, Mr. Pompeo “called and said, ‘Do you have any backup?'” Mr. Giuliani said in the interview.</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In response, Mr. Giuliani said, he had someone hand-deliver to Mr. Pompeo’s office an envelope containing a series of memos detailing claims made by a pair of Ukrainian prosecutors in interviews conducted by Mr. Giuliani and his associates in January.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The State Department documents come just days after U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified before the House Intelligence Committee that “everyone was in the loop” on Trump’s effort to press Ukraine for an investigation into Biden.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an interview on MSNBC Saturday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the American Oversight documents confirm Sondland’s testimony.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“These documents show that Giuliani was not freelancing, that he was essentially talking to Secretary Pompeo,” said Lieu. “Everybody was on the same page.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PoliticusUSA</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@politicususa</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. @tedlieu says newly released State Department documents show that "everybody was on the same page" regarding Trump's extortion scheme. #ctl #p2</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-rudy-giuliani-how-americas-mayor-became-trumps-grifter/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-rudy-giuliani-how-americas-mayor-became-trumps-grifter/</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The rise and fall of Rudy Giuliani: How ‘America’s mayor’ became Trump’s grifter</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by The Washington Monthly November 18, 2019</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rudy Giuliani was a shoo-in for attorney general or secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in a nascent Trump administration. Not only was Giuliani “America’s Mayor” following his command of the situation on 9/11, he was a former federal prosecutor, presidential candidate, and an early validator—if late endorser—of Donald J. Trump.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Life looked pretty rosy for the ambitious pol, with a clear path to power and privilege, given his expertise.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He didn’t want the jobs proffered, however. He wanted something bigger.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whether he was done with the law or just wanted something that approximated the power and prestige of the presidency, he postured and heavily lobbied to be Trump’s secretary of state. As the former mayor of America’s most important city, he was regularly in the company of foreign dignitaries and, of course, 9/11 gave him a global stage from which to show off his leadership skills.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But translating international experience and foreign hobnobbing into policy focused on America’s global role required diplomatic skill not often associated with New York moxie. It would have been a hard sell—even to a pliant Republican-dominated U.S. Senate. After all, John McCain—and even Lindsey Graham 1.0—were actively looking out for America’s national security interests back then.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani’s jones-ing to become America’s lead diplomat seemed to have more to do with a desire for his own publicly financed jet and private traveling press corps than any real interest or ability to negotiate long, hard hours toward solutions that required uncomfortable trade-offs. He wanted the position’s perks and platform more than the work—or the extraordinarily demanding work schedule that comes with the job.</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fast forward to 2019, and the Giuliani scorned by Jared Kushner has become the roiling Rudy who plays Donald Trump’s personal attorney on TV. Giuliani has never met a Sunday news show he doesn’t like. Trump has turned to this anti-matinee idol and put personal business and state policy in the hands of a freewheeling, out-of-control—and sometimes crazed—Giuliani. His uncanny ability to stay simultaneously both on message and off—yet claim to be reliably consistent and coherent—has allowed him to play rough in all positions of Trump’s political defense and remain untouched.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until now.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now he’s all lawyered up, as investigators in the U.S. House release State Department officials’ closed-door testimony implicating Giuliani in Trump’s move to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless it agreed to investigate Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani so desperately needed to play the globetrotting role of secretary of State that he got to become Trump’s “Shadow Secretary.” In that role, he used presidential proximity to guide America’s foreign activities, fire its diplomats, bully its allies, and bank on the nation’s sheer power to leverage lethal aid into forced foreign state-sponsored oppo research on 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden became the target of the externally run, illicitly operated Giuliani Shadow State Department, doing the Trump-Kushner-Pompeo trio’s dirty work while operating with Oval Office assurances that his free hand and opaque operation was guarded by attorney-client privilege. This questionable privilege was also supposed to protect Michael Cohen, Trump’s previous personal attorney. Cohen is now serving a prison sentence for doing Trump’s shadowy business.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A one-man, oversight-free, power-drenched<b> Shadow State Department is a heady thing. Giuliani recognized that he no longer had to play by the same rules as a government agency. He could operate the way Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, did with his paramilitary organization, Blackwater. </b>Renamed Xe, Blackwater was a private entity conducting a contracted war, freed from the constraints of treaty obligations, multilateral engagement, long-standing bilateral relations, protocol, congressional oversight, budgetary limits, press access, or full transparency.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani was as free to disregard established foreign policy and practice as Prince’s locked-and-loaded organization was to end-run military rules of engagement.</b> Bonus points: Giuliani also was able to profit as a free agent. Who was going to question his private authority when the imperial presidency, with its seemingly unchecked privilege, had his back and could dangle a potential blanket pardon?</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani wanted to run the world. With a distracted and delegating president, Giuliani was not only on track to fulfill his wildest career fantasy, he was executing his capricious and cynical plan while laying the groundwork for four more Trump-Giuliani years. What nobody counted on was him getting caught. After all, the whole team has been expert at covering its tracks, hiding intentions, and burying transcripts on dark White House servers.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is loose talk about a Deep State that is out to get Trump and overthrow his presidency. Too little attention has been paid, however, to the Shadow State and the president’s use of private contractors and legal machinations to keep this government’s questionable practices from ever seeing the light of day.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani is just one of Trump’s many bit players—albeit a big grifting one—in an operation full of self-righteous and self-aggrandizing people out to do seemingly justifiable work at the expense of sound policy supporting American interests and values.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy should have stuck with the law.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nyt</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opinion</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Revenge of the Bureaucrats</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Honesty is the best foreign policy.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Elizabeth Drew</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ms. Drew is a journalist based in Washington who covered Watergate.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nov. 16, 2019, 2:30 p.m. ET</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The opening hearings on the Ukraine scandal demonstrated that mundane government processes and seemingly colorless bureaucrats are what keep our country going. It was these sorts of unknown public servants who maintained the executive branch functioning during Watergate — and are doing so now while our distracted president and his acolytes try to circumvent the rules.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The witnesses in the first week of open hearings were three lifelong career diplomats — on Wednesday, William Taylor, currently the chargé d’affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the senior State Department official on Ukraine; and on Friday, Marie Yovanovitch, the career diplomat whom President Trump fired as ambassador to Ukraine because she got in the way of his private schemes.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the three witnesses came across as unusually admirable, they’re not atypical of their breed. They will endure only so much abuse or see only so much scandal around them before rising up in some way. All three testified in defiance of the president.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Trump cannot fathom such people, because they’re not interested in big money or fame. The “bureaucracy” may seem sluggish, stubborn and unimaginative at times, but it also can stand as a bulwark against assaults on the laws and the Constitution by the passers-through who inhabit the administration of the moment. Mr. Trump made a big mistake by demeaning civil servants from the outset (his awkward, self-reverential speech to the C.I.A. on his first full day in office was an embarrassment and also an omen) and then setting about trying to make them irrelevant.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The problem for presidents who, in their frustration over the limits on their power, empower extragovernmental groups to carry out their extragovernmental policies, is that it usually comes a cropper. If Richard Nixon’s “plumbers” hadn’t been such stumblebums, botching every wayward project they took on, the Nixon presidency just might have survived its attempts to determine the opposition party’s candidate for the next election.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the case of the current scandal, the “<b>three amigos” — Kurt Volker, a foreign policy expert who signed on as a special envoy to Ukraine; Rick Perry, the departing energy secretary who has close ties to the energy industry; and Gordon Sondland, a hotel magnate whose donations to the Trump inaugural committee helped him secure his job as ambassador to the European Union — usurped Ukraine policy from normal State Department channels</b>, setting Mr. Trump’s private whims against the stated policies of his government. Mr. Sondland appears to have known even less about Ukraine than he did about Europe before taking that job.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The three men seem to have reported to Rudolph Giuliani,</b>&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">the president’s personal lawyer and a freelance provocateur. Mr. Giuliani, now under federal investigation in New York, has had his own business interests in Ukraine’s natural gas industry. Under arrest are a couple of his sidekicks, Soviet-born Americans known by their first names, Lev and Igor, with substantial Ukraine interests.</span></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Giuliani and the three amigos were reportedly part of the president’s scheme to hold up $391 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine in order to wring from the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, a public announcement that he would order an investigation of Joe Biden and Mr. Biden’s surviving son, Hunter, who took an ill-advised membership on the board of one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies while his father was managing Ukraine policy for the Obama administration. (Numerous press investigations have turned up no actual misbehavior on the Bidens’ part.) The fragile Hunter, who lost his brother, to whom he was very close, to brain cancer and has struggled with addiction, remains a Republican political target.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Mr. Sondland inadvertently provided the only real news on the first day of the hearings, when Mr. Taylor testified that a member of his staff overheard the president talking to Mr. Sondland when the latter called him on his cellphone from a restaurant in Kiev</b>. Mr. Trump volubly asked how things were going in getting President Zelensky to announce an investigation of the Bidens. This linked Mr. Trump directly to the pressure on Ukraine. Later, it was learned that a second person also overheard the call. Mr. Trump’s allies have also pushed Mr. Zelensky to look into the fantasy that the foreign interference in the 2016 election involved Ukraine, and not Russia.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the hearings are less about big disclosures than about building the case, brick by brick, of why the president should be impeached. The Democrats have suggested various terms on which to charge him, and they’re not yet united on that. Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested on Thursday that the charge should be bribery, since that’s a constitutionally stated reason for impeachment, and it's a crime that people can understand. But this is a disheartening choice, because a more significant ground for impeachment is abuse of power, which isn’t in the statute books, and it would apply to Mr. Trump’s holding up the arms aid, among other offenses in this instance.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet, just a few days ago, Ms. Pelosi and others were talking abuses of power. A House Democrat advised me not to take too seriously the flurry of competing rationales: The Democrats haven’t actually met to decide on a unified position, he said; that may wait until the Judiciary Committee draws up the actual articles of impeachment.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican strategy of the moment is apparently to seal off Mr. Trump from Mr. Giuliani and the amigos’ activities. Their attempts to engage in their specialty of disrupting hearings was swiftly shut down by the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, who was firm but fair, leaving them little to dispute. They’ve found it awkward to defend Mr. Trump since they know that squeezing the Ukrainians for desperately needed military aid in their war against Russia for his own political purpose is indefensible. Moreover, Mr. Trump has complained about their focus on process issues, continuing to insist, ridiculously, that his infamous July 25 phone call to Mr. Zelensky was “perfect.” Regrettably, he may actually think it was.</font></font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trump inc pod</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-ukraine-scandal-follow-the-money"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-ukraine-scandal-follow-the-money</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="1.0" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Ukraine scandal is mostly viewed through the prism of politics — an attempt by President Donald Trump to gain an advantage over a political opponent. But, as most things are, it’s also about money — and we found lots of it flowing between key players in the scandal.</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="1.1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On this week’s episode of “Trump, Inc.,” we follow the money.</font></font></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2.125rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, Let’s Meet Our Cast of Ukraine Players</font></font></h3><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="1.2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Richest among them is Dmitry Firtash</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, an oligarch who has been battling to avoid an extradition flight to Chicago, where he faces federal charges of bribery. The Department of Justice has&nbsp;</span><a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/10/31/justice.department.filing.on.firtash.pdf" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">described</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Firtash as an “upper-echelon” associate “of Russian organized crime.” (He denies the charges and says the prosecution is politically motivated.)</span></font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="1.2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Firtash made his fortune as a behind-the-scenes middleman selling heavily marked-up Russian gas to Europe. So he wasn’t happy when Vice President Joe Biden pushed Ukraine to roll back corruption. After Biden gave a speech in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2015 saying the energy sector “needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles — not sweetheart deals,” Firtash called it “repulsive.”</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="3.1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Firtash hired attorneys Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, who frequently appear on TV defending Trump over Ukraine. The two also represent journalist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-a-veteran-reporter-worked-with-giuliani-associates-to-launch-the-ukraine-conspiracy" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">John Solomon</a>, whose stories ended up spreading Ukraine disinformation.</font></font></p><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="5.0" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And then there’s Lev Parnas, who translated for Firtash’s legal team and is an associate of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. “I’m the best-paid interpreter in the world,” Parnas reportedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/01/politics/parnas-firtash-giuliani-ties/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNN&utm_content=2019-11-01T22%3A52%3A40" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">said</a>.</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="5.1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas and his partner Igor Fruman were indicted in October over allegedly funneling foreign money into U.S. elections. (They deny the charges.)</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="5.2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Firtash and the rest of the Ukraine players have all been busy with a flurry of intertwined business ventures. Let’s take a look:</font></font></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2.125rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Business Venture No. 1: Natural Gas and the Firing of an Ambassador</font></font></h3><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="5.3" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the same time Parnas and Fruman were suddenly becoming big Republican donors, they were trying to leverage those new political connections to advance their needs in the natural gas industry in Ukraine. Their goals would have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/ukrainian-oligarch-firtash-linked-giuliani-pals-gas-deals-biden-dirt-n1067516" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">very profitable</a>&nbsp;for Firtash.</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="5.4" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It didn’t work. But they did get something else they were pushing for, specifically, the firing of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. “They were interested in having a different ambassador at post, I guess for — because they wanted to have business dealings in Ukraine, or additional business dealings,” Yovanovitch testified. “I didn’t understand that, because nobody at the embassy had ever met those two individuals."</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="5.4" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Business Venture No. 2: Submarines, Yachts, Real Estate and Other Things Rich People Like</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="7.0" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fruman, we’ve learned, has an interesting company,&nbsp;<a href="http://otrada-luxury.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Otrada Luxury Group</a>, that appears to be catering to those with lots of disposable income. A partial list of goods, according to the company’s brochure: jewelry and expensive watches, yachts, speedboats, private planes, high-end real estate and, of course, submarines and amphibious vehicles.</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="7.1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We went to the U.S. address listed on a brochure. It’s a rent-by-the-hour office. No one there seemed to know of Fruman or Otrada.</font></font></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2.125rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Business Venture No. 3: Cybersecurity Consulting Starring Giuliani</font></font></h3><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="7.2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An intriguingly named company owned by Parnas, Fraud Guarantee, paid Giuliani $500,000 for consulting.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/giuliani-associate-left-trail-of-troubled-businesses-before-ukraine-probe-push-11572527608" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">The Wall Street Journal dug</a>&nbsp;into the company and could find no actual business or customers. Giuliani said the money came from a domestic source, but he declined to say from whom.</font></font></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2.125rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Business Ventures No. 4 and No. 5: Giuliani’s Podcasts</font></font></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="9.0" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
Although nothing came of that effort, Giuliani is still apparently looking to get into the podcast game. He was overheard during a recent lunch discussing a potential podcast focused on the impeachment. “He is considering several options,” a Giuliani spokeswoman&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/11/politics/rudy-giuliani-impeachment-podcast/index.html" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">told CNN</a>. “Many Americans want to hear directly from Rudy Giuliani.”As ProPublica has reported, Giuliani was also working on a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/giuliani-was-close-to-a-podcast-deal-with-the-news-outlet-that-spread-his-ukraine-conspiracies" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">podcast with The Hill</a>, the publication that ended up passing along Ukraine disinformation. Giuliani said he was “never paid” for the work and said it was a “perfectly legitimate situation.” The Hill said it had been planning a “podcast network with a multitude of political voices from all sides.”</font></font></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2.125rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Then There Is the Jewish Refugee Charity</font></font></h3><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="9.2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fruman is also at the helm of a U.S.-based nonprofit that raises money for a Jewish refugee settlement outside Kyiv. The nonprofit, American Friends of Anatevka,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/meet-the-florida-duo-helping-giuliani-dig-dirt-for-trump-in-ukraine" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">sponsored</a>&nbsp;a trip Giuliani was planning to take to Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump’s opponents. Giuliani is also the settlement’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/fiddlers-on-the-roof-ukraine-impeachment" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">honorary mayor</a>. American Friends of Anatevka is currently advertising a million-dollar match for donations. Its tax returns show it had less than $1,500 in income in 2017.</font></font></p><p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="9.3" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.625; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/trumpinc/episodes/trump-inc-diplomat-machers-oligarch" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 142, 217); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Listen to it all unfold here.</font></a></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1119 pro pub</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">g<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://go.propublica.org/e/125411/l-utm-campaign-dailynewsletter/747882i/447906103?h=meXXafVascQRpXu7MoxMTovDbYoAf-z10P-PKi96Qw8" style="text-decoration-line: none;">iuliani Was Close to a Podcast Deal With the News Outlet That Spread His Ukraine Conspiracies</a></font></font></div><p style="line-height: 1.375; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The president’s lawyer was negotiating a possible deal to co-produce a podcast with the publication — and The Hill’s John Solomon helped with the talks even as his articles were used in a disinformation campaign.</font></font></p><div class="yiv5682495353byline" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0.25em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0.25em 0em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Mike Spies, Jake Pearson and J. David McSwane</font></font></div><div class="yiv5682495353button-holder" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a rel="nofollow" class="yiv5682495353button" target="blank" href="https://go.propublica.org/e/125411/l-utm-campaign-dailynewsletter/747882i/447906103?h=meXXafVascQRpXu7MoxMTovDbYoAf-z10P-PKi96Qw8" style="text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; border: 1px solid rgb(33, 124, 227); font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 40px; padding: 10px 20px; margin-top: 15px; border-radius: 3px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">View Story</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/-he-s-gonna-sing-giuliani-hires-3-lawyers-amid-ukraine-scandal-73089605883"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/-he-s-gonna-sing-giuliani-hires-3-lawyers-amid-ukraine-scandal-73089605883</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump’s lawyer Giuliani hires his own lawyers, as investigations mount</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By&nbsp;</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rosalind S. Helderman&nbsp;</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">November 6, 2019 at 6:29 PM EST</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has hired lawyers of his own to represent him, as federal prosecutors in New York probe his interactions with two men charged with campaign finance violations.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani announced the hires on Twitter on Wednesday, indicating that he will be represented by New York lawyers Robert Costello, Eric Creizman and Melissa Madrigal.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The hires marked a shift for the former New York mayor, who had until recently insisted he did not need a defense lawyer, even as scrutiny of his interactions with the men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, has mounted.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas and Fruman connected Giuliani to current and former Ukrainian officials as Giuliani sought damaging information about Democrats in Ukraine.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That project is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry into Trump, after the president pressed Ukraine’s president to work with Giuliani and launch investigations involving the 2016 election and former vice president Joe Biden.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas and Fruman were arrested last month at Dulles International Airport and charged with conspiring to violate campaign finance laws by funneling foreign money to various state and federal candidates. They have pleaded not guilty.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani’s interactions with the two men are being investigated by federal prosecutors in New York, according to people familiar with the matter.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani’s decision to hire defense attorneys comes as a new lawyer for Parnas indicated earlier this week that the former Giuliani associate may be willing to cooperate with Congress’s impeachment inquiry.</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Transcripts from closed-door depositions with diplomats conducted as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry and released publicly this week show that Giuliani’s name has been mentioned hundreds of times in the sessions.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Talk to Rudy’: Testimony from diplomats highlights Giuliani’s central role in driving Ukraine policy</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The diplomats have testified that they came to understand over the summer that Giuliani was telling Ukrainian officials that they needed to release a public statement promising to investigate the unsubstantiated theory that their country interfered in the 2016 election, as well as a company whose board included Biden’s son. The diplomats have described Giuliani’s efforts as a shadow diplomacy conducted outside the normal channels of U.S. policymaking.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A transcript released Wednesday shows that William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine, told lawmakers that it was his “clear understanding” that U.S. military aid would not be sent to Ukraine until the Ukrainians committed to initiating the investigations that Giuliani sought.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani had said that in addition to working with Parnas and Fruman on his Ukraine research, he had also been offering paid advice to a company co-founded by Parnas. Giuliani said he was paid $500,000 for the advice he provided to the company, the Florida-based Fraud Guarantee.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the weeks after a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s Ukraine policy became public and the impeachment inquiry began, Giuliani had been given multiple daily interviews to reporters about his activities in Ukraine and his interactions with Parnas and Fruman.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Why do I need a lawyer? I haven’t done anything wrong,” Giuliani said in an October interview with The Washington Post, after he dismissed his first lawyer.</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent days, he had ended his round-the-clock interviews and cut down significantly on his media contacts.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>However, in a series of tweets on Wednesday, he insisted that his work on Ukraine was conducted “solely as a defense attorney to defend my client” — Trump — “against false charges, that kept changing as one after another were disproven.”</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He continued that he was confident that the evidence “when revealed fully, will show that this present farce is as much a frame-up and hoax as Russian collusion, maybe worse, and will prove the president is innocent.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He then announced the hiring of his legal team. None of the three lawyers named by Giuliani responded to requests for comment Wednesday.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>One of the three, Costello, was at the center an episode involving Giuliani and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, </b>that was documented in the report released in April by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">During the special counsel’s investigation, as Cohen faced possible indictment in New York for financial crimes, he alleged that allies of Trump dangled the possibility that he could be pardoned if he remained loyal to the president.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to the Mueller report, Costello wrote in an April 2018 email to Cohen that he had spoken to Giuliani and that Cohen could “sleep well tonight” because he had “friends in high places.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen ultimately cooperated with prosecutors and pleaded guilty, including to campaign finance violations he said were undertaken at Trump’s direction.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Federal prosecutors in New York requested documents from Costello over his emails to Cohen, though Costello denied that there was any “hidden message” in his communications to Cohen.</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Josh Dawsey and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.</font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">under investigation 10/17/19?</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">lev and igor PAID RUDY $500K , tho he spin as his employees thus covered by exec priv /atty client priv?</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">rudy met w/ poro, nixed manafort prosecution?</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">kilimnik investigated but allowed to flee to russia</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">javelin missles</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omg this could finish djt? 10/18/19</font></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/how-conservative-writer-john-solomon-served-conduit-rudy-giulianis-ukraine-conspiracy"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/how-conservative-writer-john-solomon-served-conduit-rudy-giulianis-ukraine-conspiracy</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the center of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump lies a disinformation campaign led by his personal attorney</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Rudy Giuliani</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> that was aided and abetted by conservative writer John Solomon. Through Solomon, Giuliani injected his disinformation campaign straight into the heart of conservative media -- Fox News -- with seemingly full knowledge of at least some at Fox. And eventually, Solomon&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/john-solomon-to-join-fox-news-as-contributor" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">landed</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;a job at the network.</span></font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is now known that Trump&nbsp;<a href="https://www.axios.com/timeline-trump-ukraine-investigation-2e91c79c-d33e-45c4-b78f-6b34bf597e5d.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">blessed</a>&nbsp;Giuliani to run a shadow foreign policy campaign in Ukraine, in which he sought information that would undermine the intelligence community's findings that Russia interfered in our 2016 election to benefit Trump. Giuliani was also trying to dig up dirt to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, a front-runner to challenge Trump in the 2020 election.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much attention has focused on Giuliani’s actions and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-associates.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">shady cast of characters</a>&nbsp;he worked with, but less has been paid to the right-wing media figures who colluded with the president’s lawyer to make his smear campaign public -- a plan that came dangerously close to succeeding.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What follows is a case study in how&nbsp;right-wing media work hand in hand with Trump cronies to smear his enemies, undermine democracy, and defend the president at all costs.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s how it went down.</font></font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Key Takeaways</font></font></h2></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;" /><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; clear: both; list-style: none; padding: 0px;"><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani, working with con men and Trump cronies, pursued an “investigation” in Ukraine that he claimed showed both Ukrainian collusion with Democrats in 2016 and evidence that then-Vice President Joe Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine to benefit his son.</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In March, Giuliani sent the results of his investigation to the State Department to be investigated and to conservative columnist John Solomon.&nbsp;</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The same month, Solomon began publishing a series of columns that mirrored the sourcing and claims Giuliani made in his State Department dossier.</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the next six months, Solomon published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which focused primarily on Ukraine.&nbsp;</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During that same time period, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times.&nbsp;</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fifty-one of those appearances were on&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hannity</em>, whose host dutifully promoted Solomon’s scoops and wove them into his ever-evolving conspiracy theory that deep state elements in the government have been plotting to overthrow Trump.</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On October 5, John Solomon landed a job at Fox.</font></font></p></li></ul></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Key players</font></font></h2></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Rudy Giuliani</strong>&nbsp;-- the president’s personal attorney who has traveled around the globe attempting to dig up dirt on Democrats and discredit the Russia investigation on Trump’s behalf.</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Lev Parnas</strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Igor Fruman</strong>&nbsp;-- two Soviet-born&nbsp;<a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article235626327.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">con men</a>&nbsp;with ties to Ukraine who worked with Giuliani to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mikesallah/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-trump-parnas-fruman" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">concoct</a>&nbsp;the disinformation campaign and to get the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-lev-parnas-worked-for-rudy-giuliani-and-donald-trump" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">fired</a>, reportedly in the hopes of advancing their business interests in the country. The two have since been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-foreign-born-men-who-helped-giuliani-on-ukraine-arrested-on-campaign-finance-charges-11570714188" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">arrested</a>&nbsp;for campaign finance violations related to making allegedly illegal campaign donations to Republican candidates and committees, as well as a pro-Trump super PAC. They also reportedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower-firtash/indicted-giuliani-associate-worked-on-behalf-of-ukrainian-oligarch-firtash-idUSKBN1WQ2H5" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">worked</a>&nbsp;for Dmitry Firtash.</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b id="docs-internal-guid-6be9c6ab-7fff-c298-54ef-65a76d55d209" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Dmitry Firtash</b>&nbsp;-- a Ukrainian pro-Russian oligarch and former&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/doj-ex-manafort-associate-firtash-top-tier-comrade-russian-mobsters-n786806" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">business&nbsp;</a>associate of Paul Manafort who is in Austria fighting extradition to the United States to face charges&nbsp;<a href="https://abc7chicago.com/politics/giuliani-aide-linked-to-rich-ukrainian-fighting-extradition-to-chicago-/5612232/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">related</a>&nbsp;to a bribery conspiracy. At the same time Parnas and Fruman were working with Giuliani, the two were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/ukrainian-oligarch-firtash-linked-giuliani-pals-gas-deals-biden-dirt-n1067516" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reportedly</a>&nbsp;also working on Firtash’s behalf to push for the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine as part of a plan to install new leadership at Ukraine’s Naftogaz gas company. Part of this plan reportedly would have included <b>Naftogaz paying “Firtash a debt of more than $200 million that Firtash believes he is owed by the company</b>.” NBC reported that while this was happening, Firtash “was playing a key role in the effort by Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani to hunt for dirt on Donald Trump's political opponents in Ukraine.”</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Victoria Toensing</strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Joe diGenova</strong></span>&nbsp;--<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;two attorneys closely tied to Trump who also worked with Giuliani to support his efforts in Ukraine. The duo are known for their role in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/donald-trumps-new-legal-team-comes-straight-sean-hannitys-greenroom" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">bolstering conspiracy theories</a>&nbsp;about the Russia investigation and at one point were considered to join Trump’s personal legal team. The two quietly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-23/trump-friendly-lawyers-join-legal-team-of-ukraine-s-firtash" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">represent</a>&nbsp;Dmitry Firtash in fighting his extradition to the United States. They&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-foreign-born-men-who-helped-giuliani-on-ukraine-arrested-on-campaign-finance-charges-11570714188" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">hired</a>&nbsp;Parnas as an “interpreter” to work with them on the Firtash case while Parnas was also working with Giuliani.</span></font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">John Solomon</strong>&nbsp;-- a conservative columnist who until recently was the executive vice president of The Hill. Solomon was the conduit through which Giuliani, Parnas, Toensing and diGenova planted their stories in order to spread their coordinated disinformation campaign through the media.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Sean Hannity</strong>&nbsp;-- Fox News host who is close to Trump and worked with Giuliani to make his show an integral part of their media strategy, providing a place where they could sow the seeds of the smear campaign against Biden. Giuliani and Hannity discussed this strategy in January, and Solomon became a staple on Hannity’s prime-time programming.</font></font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The plan</font></font></h2></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>According to Parnas, his friendship with Giuliani&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whqr.org/post/meet-businessman-helping-giuliani-find-dirt-democrats-ukraine#stream/0" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">began</a>&nbsp;two years ago as they were running in similar political circles and attending the same events. In late 2018, Parnas and Fruman began connecting Giuliani to a network of disgraced former and current Ukrainian officials and prosecutors to dig up dirt on Biden and the 2016 election.</b>&nbsp;</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The conspiracy theory they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudys-big-plan-to-defend-trump-on-ukraine-play-the-george-soros-card?ref=author" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">concocted</a>&nbsp;went like this: Ukrainian officials worked with Democrats to find dirt on Trump’s one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort in order to damage Trump. They did so, Giuliani claimed, by fabricating the “black ledger” that showed that Manafort had received millions of dollars from the former pro-Russia Ukrainian ruling party that had been recently overthrown. The revelation of this ledger helped&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/us/politics/paul-manafort-resigns-donald-trump.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">force</a>&nbsp;Manafort’s resignation from Trump’s campaign, and Manafort was eventually&nbsp;<a href="https://www.apnews.com/7f967313552c4f7fb56c9c1a1cfbb97a" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">prosecuted and convicted</a>&nbsp;of a wide range of crimes as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian electoral interference in the 2016 election.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In addition, according to Giuliani’s&nbsp;<a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1909/19/CPT.01.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">conspiracy theory</a>, the Ukrainian Embassy was working with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and in return, the American Embassy and the Obama administration actively blocked investigations in&nbsp;Ukraine that Giuliani claims targeted Democrats’ political allies. <b>As with most conspiracy theories on the right, George Soros is involved in this one too.</b> The theory posits that a Ukrainian good governance, anti-corruption group -- the Anticorruption Action Centre (AntAC) -- was involved in framing Manafort and was corruptly tied to an FBI agent who was investigating Manafort. Giuliani also claims that an investigation into the group was shut down due to U.S. pressure and that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-state-department-official-expected-to-face-questions-about-ukraine-and-giuliani/2019/10/14/8ba23d18-eeca-11e9-b2da-606ba1ef30e3_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">provided</a>&nbsp;Ukrainian officials with a “do not prosecute” list that included people linked to AntAC. As a bonus, through the “investigation,” Giuliani claims to have been presented with evidence that then-Vice President Biden acted corruptly by withholding U.S. aid to force the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son.</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Nothing about this conspiracy theory is true.</b>&nbsp;First, there’s no evidence that the infamous “black ledger” was fraudulent, and several payments listed in the document have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/meet-the-florida-duo-helping-giuliani-dig-dirt-for-trump-in-ukraine" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">confirmed</a>&nbsp;to be accurate. The Intercept&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/22/reporters-stop-helping-donald-trump-spread-lies-joe-biden-ukraine/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a>: “Sergii Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist and reformist member of parliament who helped publicize the off-the-books payments” said that “Giuliani ‘is a liar’ for saying that the black ledger was a forgery. ‘It is a real document, with real signatures,’ Leshchenko said in a telephone interview, explaining that it had been examined by Ukrainian law enforcement experts.” Giuliani seems to have adopted the false claim about the ledger from Manafort, whose legal team has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/giuliani-consulted-on-ukraine-with-imprisoned-paul-manafort-via-a-lawyer/2019/10/02/7a6dc542-e486-11e9-b7da-053c79b03db8_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">embraced</a>&nbsp;it since 2017 and whom Guiliani has been meeting with to discuss the materials.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for Giuliani’s claims that investigations into AntAC were dropped due to political pressure,&nbsp; the State Department has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/giuliani-says-state-dept-vowed-investigate-after-he-gave-ukraine-n1061931" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">called</a>&nbsp;claims of a so-called “do not prosecute” list “complete poppycock.” And an investigation into the group’s handling of foreign aid money was widely believed to be&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/22/reporters-stop-helping-donald-trump-spread-lies-joe-biden-ukraine/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">politically motivated</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudys-big-plan-to-defend-trump-on-ukraine-play-the-george-soros-card?ref=author" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">retaliation</a>&nbsp;for the group’s anti-corruption work. Finally, while Biden did pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was roundly criticized for blocking corruption investigations, there’s no evidence that he did so to benefit his son. In reality, the push to get the prosecutor in question, Viktor Shokin, fired was a part of an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/66101/trump-and-giulianis-quest-for-fake-ukraine-dirt-on-biden-an-explainer/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">anti-corruption effort</a>&nbsp;by advocates and international supporters of Ukraine. The United States’ well-established position was that ousting Shokin was a critical aspect of anti-corruption measures. The investigation into the energy company whose board included Hunter Biden was long dormant, and Hunter Biden was never the subject of the investigation.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nonetheless, Giuliani&nbsp;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/giuliani-ukrainians-brought-me-substantial-evidence-of-collusion-with-hillary-clinton-other-top-democrats" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">says</a>&nbsp;he completed his “investigation” in March and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/giuliani-says-state-dept-vowed-investigate-after-he-gave-ukraine-n1061931" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">sent</a>&nbsp;his findings to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/02/politics/state-department-inspector-general-briefing-congress/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">understanding</a>&nbsp;that Pompeo would investigate. (NBCNews.com, however,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/giuliani-says-state-dept-vowed-investigate-after-he-gave-ukraine-n1061931" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a>: “A source with knowledge of the events said ...&nbsp;that Pompeo never promised Rudy Giuliani that he would investigate the contents of the envelope or anything related to Ukraine.”) Giuliani also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-investigation.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">sent</a>&nbsp;the materials to Solomon.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>NBCNews.com&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/giuliani-says-state-dept-vowed-investigate-after-he-gave-ukraine-n1061931" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">obtained</a>&nbsp;a copy of the documents that Giuliani sent to the State Department in March and reported that they contained “a glimpse of an intricate media strategy to spread the story including segments being placed on Fox News.</b>”<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;NBC said the “documents also show that Giuliani, through conservative writer John&nbsp;<b>Solomon’s columns in The Hill, attempted to tie former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to the liberal donor George Soros</b>&nbsp;as part of a massive conspiracy to take down Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.” The materials Giuliani sent included interview notes from interviews he conducted with then-current and former Ukrainian prosecutors that “paint the picture of the narrative that Giuliani has been pushing involving the Bidens.”</span></font></font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The media strategy</font></font></h2></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani and associates feed story to Solomon</font></font></h4></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Around the same time Giuliani sent his packet of materials to the State Department, he also sent the materials to Solomon, who began reporting on its contents through the opinion pages of The Hill without identifying the materials as having originated with Giuliani</span>. Solomon’s writing for some time&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-memo-colleagues-unload-on-john-solomon-the-reporter-who-kicked-off-trumps-ukraine-conspiracy" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">had focused</a>&nbsp;heavily around trying to discredit the Mueller investigation and the notion that Russia meddled into the 2016 elections to help Trump. On March 20, he&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435029-as-russia-collusion-fades-ukrainian-plot-to-help-clinton-emerges" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">published</a>&nbsp;the first of many scoops specifically related to Ukraine’s involvement in this effort. Over the next six months, Solomon published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which primarily focused on Ukraine.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In his reporting, Solomon spelled out Giuliani’s conspiracy theory in detail. For instance:</b></font></font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; clear: both; list-style: none; padding: 0px;"><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He reported that Ukrainian officials&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/437719-ukrainian-to-us-prosecutors-why-dont-you-want-our-evidence-on-democrats" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">claimed</a>&nbsp;to have “evidence of wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes,” at least some of it&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">related</a>&nbsp;to Biden.&nbsp;</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Solomon&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/437719-ukrainian-to-us-prosecutors-why-dont-you-want-our-evidence-on-democrats" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a>&nbsp;that these officials tried to “deliver their evidence to Washington” but were unable because the American ambassador (Yovanovitch) “blocked” them “from obtaining a visa” to the U.S.&nbsp;</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He weaved an elaborate story about Americans working with Ukrainians to dig up dirt on Trump’s one-time 2016 campaign manager Manafort, in order to damage Trump.&nbsp;</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/449206-fbi-warned-early-and-often-that-manafort-file-might-be-fake-used-it-anyway" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">claimed</a>&nbsp;that the infamous “black ledger” that showed Manafort had received millions in undisclosed payments from Ukrainian officials was fabricated and<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/440730-how-the-obama-white-house-engaged-ukraine-to-give-russia-collusion" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">&nbsp;released</a>&nbsp;to damage Trump. He also&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/440730-how-the-obama-white-house-engaged-ukraine-to-give-russia-collusion" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">suggested</a>&nbsp;that in January 2016, Obama’s Department of Justice pressured Ukraine to help the department investigate Manafort in response to Trump’s rise in popularity in the Republican primary race (Manafort did not join the Trump campaign until March 2016).&nbsp;</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/456619-george-soross-secret-2016-access-to-state-exposes-big-money-hypocrisy-of-democrats" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">strongly suggested</a>&nbsp;that the Obama State Department pressured Ukrainian officials to drop an investigation into a Ukrainian good governance group linked to Soros because Soros backed Clinton.&nbsp;</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He also&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435906-us-embassy-pressed-ukraine-to-drop-probe-of-george-soros-group-during-2016" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">claimed</a>&nbsp;the U.S. ambassador’s “do not prosecute” list included people related to this organization, and he strained to&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435906-us-embassy-pressed-ukraine-to-drop-probe-of-george-soros-group-during-2016" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">link</a>&nbsp;the group to the Manafort investigation by claiming that an FBI agent involved in the investigation is tied to the same group.</font></font></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding-left: 2.4rem; position: relative;"><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, of course, he&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">claimed&nbsp;</a>that Biden withheld a billion dollars worth of U.S. aid to shut down an investigation into Burisma Holdings and Biden’s son Hunter through his position on the company’s board.</font></font></p></li></ul></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Solomon’s reporting relies heavily on the sources <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Giuliani</span> fed him.</b>&nbsp;In an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-gambit-for-trump-giuliani-engaged-parade-of-ukrainian-prosecutors/2019/09/26/4d3dc72e-e072-11e9-8fd3-d943b4ed57e0_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">interview</a>&nbsp;with The Washington Post, Giuliani named three current and former Ukrainian prosecutors as persons he interviewed, specifically <b>former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin</b>, then-Ukrainian <b>Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko,</b> and Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of Ukraine’s Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.<b> </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Giuliani is also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-meets-with-former-diplomat-as-he-continues-to-press-ukraine-inquiries/2019/05/24/faf59e0c-7e64-11e9-a66c-d36e482aa873_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">known</a>&nbsp;to have met with a former Ukrainian diplomat named Andrii Telizhenko and is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/world/europe/ukraine-prosecutor-biden-trump.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">linked</a>&nbsp;to Kostiantyn Kulyk -- Lutsenko’s deputy who was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/09/27/giuliani-trump-ukraine-005098" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">indicted</a>&nbsp;on corruption charges in 2016.</b> Eight of the twelve columns Solomon wrote on the topic featured at least one of these five sources.</span></font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At least three of Solomon’s columns feature information meant to undermine the validity of the Russia investigation that may have been leaked from the Ukrainian pro-Russia oligarch Dmitry Firtash’s legal team, which included&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">diGenova and Toensing.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Toensing and diGenova</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/03/ukraine-scandal-digenova-toensing-022049" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">have been working</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;with Firtash since at least July -- and indeed Solomon published an&nbsp;</span><a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/454185-how-mueller-deputy-andrew-weissmanns-offer-to-an-oligarch-could-boomerang" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: border-box; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">entire column</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;in July based exclusively off material and anonymous sources from Firtash’s legal team. They appear to have been involved with his case much earlier than July, though.&nbsp;</span></font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Included in the material Giuliani sent to the State Department is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-ukraine-dirt-file-has-private-email-between-john-solomon-and-rudy-allies" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">a March 26 email</a>&nbsp;from Solomon -- titled “Fwd: Outline of&nbsp;<b>Soros</b>&nbsp;reporting, including embedded documents” -- in which&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Solomon forwarded a draft of his article before it was published to the same three people working with Giuliani who are also known to have been working with Firtash -- Parnas, Toensing, and diGenova</span>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;The&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435906-us-embassy-pressed-ukraine-to-drop-probe-of-george-soros-group-during-2016" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">column</a>&nbsp;was the first of three that mentioned Firtash, and it attempted to tie AntAC -- and through it Soros -- “to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort.” Solomon repeated the suggestion in his August 7&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/456619-george-soross-secret-2016-access-to-state-exposes-big-money-hypocrisy-of-democrats" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">column</a>&nbsp;on Soros’ “secret 2016 access” to State Department officials. In a fourth&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/463307-solomon-these-once-secret-memos-cast-doubt-on-joe-bidens-ukraine-story" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">column</a>, Solomon reported on an affidavit of a former Ukrainian prosecutor that he exclusively received. The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/427618359/Shokin-Statement" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">affidavit</a>&nbsp;was prepared “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash … for use in legal proceedings in Austria.”</span></font></font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Solomon brings the conspiracy theory to Fox</font></font></h4></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The next stage in the plan involved Solomon taking his “scoop” to Fox News, specifically to Sean</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Hannity. From March 20 -- when Solomon published his first story on the Ukraine conspiracy theory -- through October 2, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Fifty-one of those appearances were on&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hannity</em>, whose host dutifully promoted Solomon’s scoops and wove them into his ever-evolving conspiracy theory that “deep state” elements in the government have been plotting to overthrow Trump. Giuliani also appeared on those networks frequently, clocking in at least 64 appearances on Fox News and Fox Business during that time period.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Toensing and diGenova appeared over 75 times on the two networks during this period.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;</span></font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The fact that they were working together on these stories, or -- in the case of Toensing and diGenova -- that they were legally representing Firtash, was certainly not transparent to viewers. In perhaps the most egregious example, on the September 26&nbsp;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/nunes-compares-ukraine-call-hysteria-to-russia-hoax" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">episode</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hannity</em>, Hannity hosted Solomon to report on an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/427618359/Shokin-Statement" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">affidavit</a>&nbsp;he obtained from the disgraced prosecutor Shokin, who claimed he was forced to resign to stop the investigation into the company connected to&nbsp; Hunter Biden. Hannity then hosted diGenova and Toensing to discuss it, and the two hailed the affidavit as proof of their conspiracy theory and declared it would “shoot a hole in” Biden’s defense.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">However, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/427618359/Shokin-Statement" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">affidavit</a>&nbsp;states that it was prepared “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash … for use in legal proceedings in Austria.” In other words, diGenova and Toensing were part of the legal team that&nbsp;produced the affidavit that Solomon later exclusively obtained, wrote up, and then took to Hannity -- a fact not mentioned by any of them. Giuliani has since repeatedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-rudy-giuliani-on-face-the-nation-september-29-2019/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">referenced</a>&nbsp;this affidavit in numerous media appearances to support his claims about Biden’s alleged corruption.&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Hannity repeatedly gave clues suggesting he knew the full range of stories Solomon would be reporting.</b>&nbsp;For instance, despite the fact that Solomon’s March 20 column did not mention Biden or corruption, Hannity teased on his radio show that day that “I just happen to have a little birdie telling me in my ear that, well, Joe Biden may have an issue here that is bigger than anything ever alleged about Donald Trump.” On September 23, Hannity and Giuliani&nbsp;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/pence-calls-out-the-assume-the-worst-media-after-whistleblower-complaint" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">admitted</a>&nbsp;to having talked about the Biden Ukraine story as early as January.</font></font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The payoff</font></font></h2></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Giuliani repeatedly touted and praised Solomon’s “blockbuster” reporting.</b> He has at least twice opined that Solomon should “get a Pulitzer Prize” and has taken to Twitter to sing Solomon’s praises:</font></font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--twitter-tweet paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="field field--name-field-twitter-tweet field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field__item" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hannity, too, repeatedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/sen-graham-on-democrats-calls-for-trumps-impeachment" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">praised</a>&nbsp;Solomon’s “great reporting” as he hyped Solomon’s columns. He regularly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/philadelphia-residents-taunt-police-officers-during-standoff" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">described</a>&nbsp;Solomon as a “friend” of the program and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/lara-trump-biden-has-realized-he-needs-to-move-farther-left-to-fit-in-with-new-democrats" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">declared</a>&nbsp;that mainstream news outlets, like The New York Times, “peddled lies, conspiracy theories and hoax[es]” about the Russia investigation whereas Solomon “was right” all along. On April 25, Hannity asked Trump about Solomon’s and others' reporting around the Russia investigation, and the president&nbsp;<a href="https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-interview-sean-hannity-fox-telephone-april-25-2019" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">replied</a>: “These are great reporters. … These are people that should be getting Pulitzers.” Trump added, “These are the ones that should be winning. It sounds like big stuff. It sounds very interesting with Ukraine.”&nbsp;</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Solomon’s efforts paid off. On October 5, Fox News&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/john-solomon-to-join-fox-news-as-contributor" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">confirmed</a>&nbsp;that John Solomon had joined the network as a contributor.</b>&nbsp;During his first appearance on Hannity as an official Fox News employee, Hannity&nbsp;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/lara-trump-donald-trump-will-win-in-2020-because-american-people-are-winning" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">said</a>: “John Solomon, welcome to the family. It’s been a long time coming, sir.”</font></font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/inside-the-jaw-dropping-connection-between-trump-ousting-ukraine-ambassador-and-guilianis-busted-henchmen/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/inside-the-jaw-dropping-connection-between-trump-ousting-ukraine-ambassador-and-guilianis-busted-henchmen/</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Inside the jaw-dropping connection between Trump ousting Ukraine ambassador and Guiliani’s busted henchmen</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story October 11, 2019</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">10</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trying to wrap their arms around the flood of information that has come out in the past 24 hours about two close associates of Rudy Giuliani who attempted to flee the country before being arrested for campaign finance violations, a CNN panel drew a direct line between their actions at the behest of the former New York City mayor and President Donald Trump firing the ambassador to Ukraine.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speaking with hosts Alisyn Camerota and John Berman, New Yorker journalist Susan Glassner explained that ousted Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch — who is expected to testify before House members on Friday — may have been a victim of the machinations of not only Giuliani but also his arrested associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After host Berman noted there was still a question over whether the White House would attempt to stop Yovanovitch from testifying, Glassner pointed out some curious connections to the Parnas and Fruman.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I think it’s very significant that you put Ambassador Yovanovitch up there in that graphic and the reason why is that, to me, it’s a breathtaking aspect of this unfolding scandal,” she began. ” And we still don’t know a lot of information that Giuliani teamed up with this pair, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, acting on the behest of Ukrainian officials from the former government of [Ukraine President Petor] Poroshenko.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Their agenda was to get this pesky U.S. ambassador who was bothering them about too much corruption in the Ukrainian government to get her out, and they tried. they went to a congressman,” she continued. “I believe that was former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions in the summer of 2018. He then produced a letter complaining about Ambassador Yovanovitch.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Then they teamed up with Giuliani, and who executed their plan but the president of the United States,” she added. “We know that President Trump is the one who ordered Ambassador Yovanovitch to be forced out of her position, so he is carrying out their mission essentially of getting rid of the U.S. ambassador. I find that to be an extraordinary aspect of this unfolding story and very significant.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch below:</font></font></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/tip-of-the-iceberg-prosecutors-allege-vast-criminal-conspiracy-by-giuliani-associates-to-funnel-foreign-cash-to-trump-and-gop-2/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/tip-of-the-iceberg-prosecutors-allege-vast-criminal-conspiracy-by-giuliani-associates-to-funnel-foreign-cash-to-trump-and-gop-2/</font></a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sum</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/the-people-rudy-giuliani-pals-around-with/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/the-people-rudy-giuliani-pals-around-with/</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The people Rudy Giuliani pals around with</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani, Fox News</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly October 11, 2019</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">16</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When we left this story, I had explained that two men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were conduits for the conspiracy theories Rudy Giuliani has been spreading about Joe Biden and his son Hunter. On Thursday, we learned that both men were arrested at Dulles airport while trying to flee the country. Here’s the report from the Washington Post.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the indictment unsealed in New York, Parnas, Fruman and other defendants “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with the candidates, campaigns, and the candidates’ governments.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I previously noted that a company owned by Parnas and Fruman had received a payment of $1.26 million from the client trust account of a lawyer specializing in real estate and foreign investments. Two days later, they donated $325,000 to a Trump super PAC. Perhaps the pending charges will motivate these two men to spill the beans on the source of those funds.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, Giuliani is getting ready to shift gears by suggesting that we should keep an eye on Romania.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TPM Livewire</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@TPMLiveWire</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy GIuliani to Sean Hannity: "I want you to keep your eye on Romania. Just watch Romania."</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">What we’ll be hearing soon from Giuliani is that Hunter Biden advised a Romanian businessman, Gabriel “Puiu” Popoviciu, who was sentenced to seven years in jail for fraud and corruption. But what Giuliani won’t tell us is that he used his position as Trump’s personal lawyer to lobby the Romanian government on Popoviciu’s behalf.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Back in July of 2016, Popoviciu hired the law firm of former FBI Director Louis Freeh to represent him</b>. Then in August 2018, Politico reported that Giuliani had written a letter to the Romanian government criticizing their anti-corruption efforts.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani’s letter to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis appears to take sides in a fight at the top of the Romanian government over how to rein in high-level corruption.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The former New York mayor’s letter criticizes the “excesses” of Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), contrary to U.S. State Department policy, which has been supportive of the agency’s efforts.</span> Although the missive does not claim to have been sent on President Trump’s authority, Romanian politicians seeking to blunt the power of the DNA have already used it to sow doubt about the U.S. government’s position…</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani calls for an amnesty to be extended “to those who have been prosecuted and convicted through the excesses of the DNA.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the letter, Giuliani failed to disclose that he was acting on behalf of a client. But in an attempt to combat the charges that he was using his position as Trump’s lawyer to lobby the Romanian government, he said that he was working for the very law firm that had been hired by Popoviciu.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani — who regularly appears in the media as a public representative of Trump — told POLITICO Tuesday that his letter “was based on a report I reviewed” by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who runs a global consulting firm called Freeh Group International Solutions. “They are paying my fee,” Giuliani said of the Freeh Group.</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A sane person would know that pointing the finger at Hunter Biden’s work for Popoviciu would open up this whole can of worms for Giuliani, adding to the story of how he pals around with some pretty nefarious characters and completely undermining Trump’s talking point about working against government corruption. That’s why it is tempting to question the man’s sanity. But Giuliani’s apparent obsession with the former vice president might have sprung from that moment in the 2008 Democratic primary debate when Biden cleaned his clock.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Regardless of what is motivating Giuliani, it is clear that he continues to bury Trump by doing more harm than good to the president’s case. To borrow Obama’s best debate put-down of Mitt Romney, all I can say is, “Please proceed, Mayor.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.</font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">crimes?!</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/former-trump-attorney-reveals-men-arrested-on-campaign-finance-charges-assisted-giuliani-in-his-work-representing-trump/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/former-trump-attorney-reveals-men-arrested-on-campaign-finance-charges-assisted-giuliani-in-his-work-representing-trump/</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Trump attorney John Dowd reveals men arrested on campaign finance charges ‘assisted’ Giuliani in his work representing the president</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement October 10, 2019</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">19</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The former lead lawyer for President Donald Trump, representing him during the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia and Trump, John Dowd, is now representing the two Ukrainian-born men arrested overnight attempting to leave the country. The two men were arrested in relation to a campaign finance investigation on charges that include conspiracy, falsifying records, and falsifying records to the FEC.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The men also worked with Giuliani to help him try to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The former lead lawyer for President Donald Trump, representing him during the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia and Trump, John Dowd, is now representing the two Ukrainian-born men arrested overnight attempting to leave the country. The two men were arrested in relation to a campaign finance investigation on charges that include conspiracy, falsifying records, and falsifying records to the FEC.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The men also worked with Giuliani to help him try to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dowd in a statement says his clients, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, “assisted Mr. Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s huge, given the charges against them.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. Parnas and Mr. Furman,” Dowd continues, “have also been represented by Mr. Giuliani in connection with their personal and business affairs.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They also assisted Joseph DiGenova [sic] and Victoria Toensing in their law practice.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both diGenova and Toensing are Fox News regulars who defend Trump on-air. They were rumored to have been hired by the White House to assist Trump with his defense during the Mueller investigation but that appeared to have been thwarted by Trump himself.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politico congressional reporter Kyle Cheney makes this important – and damning – observation:</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@kyledcheney</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;· 2h</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">IMPORTANT: Fruman and Parnas' lawyer (former Trump lawyer John Dowd) just laid out all of their connections to Trump world (in his famous Comic Sans letter).</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's not just Giuliani but DiGenova, Toensing -- and they even helped with Trump-related legal work. >>></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">View image on Twitter</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kyle Cheney</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@kyledcheney</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If prosecutors are correct, this means two people who worked on legal matters for Trump were simultaneously running a straw donor scheme on behalf of foreign interests.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2,419</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8:04 AM - Oct 10, 2019</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1,055 people are talking about this</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That, too, is huge.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s Dowd’s statement, which was in the form of a letter sent to the House Intelligence Committee:</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kyle Cheney</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@kyledcheney</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">IMPORTANT: Fruman and Parnas' lawyer (former Trump lawyer John Dowd) just laid out all of their connections to Trump world (in his famous Comic Sans letter).</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's not just Giuliani but DiGenova, Toensing -- and they even helped with Trump-related legal work. >>></font></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/understanding-trumps-whackiest-conspiracy-theory-to-date/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/understanding-trumps-whackiest-conspiracy-theory-to-date/</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Understanding Trump’s whackiest conspiracy theory to date</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Written by Heather Digby Parton</b>&nbsp;/ Salon October 7, 2019</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s what’s OK: If we feel there’s corruption, like I feel there was in the 2016 campaign — there was tremendous corruption against me — if we feel there’s corruption, we have a right to go to a foreign country. And just so you know — just so you know, I was investigated. I was investigated. Okay? Me. Me. In my campaign — I ran, I won. I was invest- — you won’t say that, will you? I was investigated. I was investigated. And they think it could have been by U.K. They think it could have been by Australia. They think it could have been by Italy. So when you get down to it, I was investigated by the Obama administration. By the Obama administration I was investigated.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Donald Trump, Oct. 4, 2019</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last Friday I wrote about the origins of the Joe Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory, when the same professional hitmen who pushed the “crooked Hillary” story about alleged influence-peddling with the Clinton Foundation produced a book alleging that Biden had leveraged his power as vice president to help his son’s business. (The evidence shows that not only did Biden not do that, the actions he took were actually detrimental to his son’s case.)</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">All that is almost hilarious in light of this AP report that broke late on Sunday night in which it was revealed that<b>&nbsp; close associates of Trump’s fixer Rudy Giuliani and Energy Secretary Rick Perry have been doing some lucrative influence-peddling of their own, trying to leverage their relationships for shares in a natural gas company in Ukraine.</b>&nbsp;<b>Trump is now trying to blame Perry for that misguided phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky</b>&nbsp;that led to the impeachment inquiry. It’s never a dull moment in this Ukraine scandal.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It’s clear, however, as the quote above shows, that while Trump was happy to tar his political rival Joe Biden, his true interest in Ukraine lies in his ongoing obsession with a daft conspiracy theory that he and Russia were both set up by the FBI, the CIA and the foreign services of several key U.S. allies, along with Ukraine, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. The ostensible goal was to destroy his campaign and if that didn’t work, his presidency. Trump seems to have convinced Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and at least a few U.S. senators that this is a legitimate line of inquiry.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Barr</b>&nbsp;has been running around the world, accompanied at times by the special prosecutor he assigned to investigate the matter, interviewing the heads of the intelligence services of various allies. He asked the president himself to intervene with certain heads of state to get their cooperation with the probe.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The specific aspect of the conspiracy theory that took Barr to Italy this past week was laid out in detail by Lucian K. Truscott IV in Salon on Sunday.&nbsp; In a nutshell, it all revolves around onetime Trump “coffee boy” George Papadopoulos and Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious “professor” who told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton — which Papadopoulos in turn drunkenly shared with the Australian high commissioner to the U.K. in a pub a few weeks later. That led to the Aussies sounding the alarm to the U.S., which led to the FBI taking a look to see whether Russians were trying to interfere in the presidential election.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani has been running his mouth about this for months calling Mifsud a “counterintelligence operative, either Maltese or Italian” and Papadapoulos has been tweeting as if he’s a high level investigator for the Department of Justice:</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George Papadopoulos</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@GeorgePapa19</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AG Barr has been on official travel in Italy for the past two days. As I explained months ago, on Fox and in my book, Mifsud was an Italian operative handled by the CIA. Italy holds the keys to the kingdom. Right government, right time. ????????</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He’s quite the super-sleuth. It’s his wild imagination that has fueled this particular conspiracy theory, along with the bizarre 4chan storyline that suggests the security firm CrowdStrike framed Russia on behalf of the DNC. Trump mentioned that in the phone call with Zelensky, but seems to have embellished the conspiracy theory even beyond the ludicrous narrative right-wingers had previously laid out. According to NBC News, when the president said&nbsp; “I guess you have one of your wealthy people. … The server, they say Ukraine has it,” people who knew the context thought that “Trump’s call felt detached from any sense of logic.” How unusual.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., seems to think this whole thing makes sense, however.</b>&nbsp;He appeared on “Meet the Press” on Sunday and shared his thoughts on the matter:</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@MeetThePress</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WATCH: @SenRonJohnson is asked why he winced & brings up a "conspiracy theory."@chucktodd: "I have no idea why we're going here. ... Can we please answer the question I asked you instead of trying to make Donald Trump feel better here that you're not criticizing him?" #MTP</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If that sounded a bit scattered, here’s Pompeo pretending that everyone in the administration is just doing their jobs:</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It is not only appropriate, but it is our duty to investigate if we think there was interference in the election of 2016,” Mr. Pompeo said in Athens. “I think everyone recognizes that governments have an obligation — indeed, a duty — to ensure that elections happen with integrity, without interference from any government, whether that’s the Ukrainian government or any other. And so inquiries with respect to that are completely important.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He added: “There’s been some suggestion somehow that it would be inappropriate for the United States government to engage in that activity, and I see it just precisely the opposite. I see our duty to engage in activity that ensures that we have fair, free elections.”</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Keep in mind that Pompeo was first appointed as Trump’s CIA director, and led his own investigation which found no wrongdoing by the agency.</b>&nbsp; Yet he came out and gave that sanctimonious little speech legitimizing this loony conspiracy theory. Even he has to pay homage to Trump and his consigliere Giuliani’s febrile fantasies. Frankly, he doesn’t seem to mind.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. allies are becoming increasingly irritated by this ridiculous crusade. Barr is going outside the normal channels, riling up internal politics in their countries and<b>&nbsp;basically making a hash of America’s foreign policy.&nbsp;</b>He and Pompeo may just be trying to soothe Trump’s massive ego — or maybe they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid too. In the end, that doesn’t much matter. The most powerful nation on earth is clearly being run by a bunch of kooks. It’s hard to see why anyone else would ever trust us again.</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.</font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref 4 digby</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/new-york-times-battered-on-msnbc-for-pushing-smear-of-hunter-biden-in-order-to-maintain-access-to-trump/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/new-york-times-battered-on-msnbc-for-pushing-smear-of-hunter-biden-in-order-to-maintain-access-to-trump/</font></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">n “AM Joy” panel jumped all over the New York Times for pushing a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/us/politics/trump-whistleblower-complaint.html" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; opacity: 1; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; box-shadow: rgb(221, 175, 175) 0px -4px 0px inset;">widely debunked smear</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">of Hunter Biden promoted by Donald Trump, saying the newspaper is more interested in maintaining their access to the Oval Office than debunking the lie.</span></b></font></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 86px 20px 60px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.55; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speaking with host Joy Reid — who noted that her producers asked for comment from the Times but were rebuffed — MSNBC regular Maria Teresa Kumar scorched the Times, as well as reporter Ken Vogel, for the uncritical parroting of the president’s smear.

Pointing to Vogel’s story and noting his source was a Breitbart writer, Kumar explained, “The biggest challenge, Ken Vogel does not declare the source , that Peter Schweizer,&nbsp; is underwritten by the Mercer family — the Mercer family is a neo-facist family that underwrites Steve Bannon and the Breitbart Report so it is not credible.”</font></font></p><div class="story_page_incontent_instagram_container story_page_incontent_ig" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="lightbox-inline-form-a13a9d6b-00ab-49e8-b894-42274ad0c613" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="margin: 0px 86px 20px 60px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.55; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 86px 20px 60px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.55; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What they had done so stealthily, so well, is that they know that if they can have any type of story in an established newspaper, as is the New York Times, that it any breeds a sense of legitimacy,” she continued. “Fox News takes it and Breitbart takes it, all the ultra-rightwings take it and say, ‘Look, the New York Times is saying it, so it must be true.’ That’s a lack of due diligence.”

“It’s disappointing in the New York Times, quite frankly,” she further explained. “When they try to equate something with Biden and Trump, they’re trying to make sure they continue having access to the president and that’s not the way to do it.”</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 86px 20px 60px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.55; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With host Reid noting Vogel’s desire to not appear on her show, AM Joy regular Eric Boehlert called the Times reporting, including previous stories about Democrats and Hillary Clinton, “Timidity access journalism.”</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 86px 20px 60px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.55; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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Both Armenia and&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kazakhstan</span>&nbsp;were once part of the Soviet Union, and ... to the Pro-<span style="font-weight: bold;">Putin</span>&nbsp;regime of former&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ukrainian</span>&nbsp;President Viktor Yanukovych.</font></span></a></font></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; width: 600px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 28px;"><div class="rc" data-hveid="CAQQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFSgAMAF6BAgEEAA" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjABegQIBBAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a></font><h3 class="LC20lb DKV0Md" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjABegQIBBAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Giuliani cancels paid appearance next week at Kremlin ...</font></a></font></h3><div class="TbwUpd NJjxre" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; 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-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" /></li></ol></div></div></div></div><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0cOLKKu4bYgJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:0cOLKKu4bYgJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html%2B%26cd%3D2%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QIDABegQIBBAG" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><span class="st" style="line-height: 1.58; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="f" style="line-height: 1.58;">Sep 27, 2019 -&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Rudy Giuliani</span>&nbsp;can't stop talking&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ukraine</span>&nbsp;on TV ... “I didn't know&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Putin</span>&nbsp;was going,” he said in a brief interview, adding in a text: “Discretion is ... union whose members are Armenia, Belarus,&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kazakhstan</span>, Kyrgyzstan and&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russia</span>.</font></span></a></font></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; width: 600px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 28px;"><div class="rc" data-hveid="CAIQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFSgAMAJ6BAgCEAA" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-inquiry-puts-new-focus-on-giulianis-work-for-prominent-figures-in-ukraine/2019/10/01/b3c6d08c-e089-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-inquiry-puts-new-focus-on-giulianis-work-for-prominent-figures-in-ukraine/2019/10/01/b3c6d08c-e089-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjACegQIAhAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a></font><h3 class="LC20lb DKV0Md" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-inquiry-puts-new-focus-on-giulianis-work-for-prominent-figures-in-ukraine/2019/10/01/b3c6d08c-e089-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-inquiry-puts-new-focus-on-giulianis-work-for-prominent-figures-in-ukraine/2019/10/01/b3c6d08c-e089-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjACegQIAhAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Rudy Giuliani's work for prominent figures in Ukraine comes ...</font></a></font></h3><div class="TbwUpd NJjxre" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;">www.washingtonpost.com<span class="eipWBe" style="">&nbsp;› politics › 2019/10/01</span></cite></div><div class="B6fmyf" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; height: 0px; visibility: hidden; white-space: nowrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div class="TbwUpd" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;"><span class="eipWBe" style="" /></cite></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div class="eFM0qc" style="display: inline-block; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; padding-left: 2px; visibility: visible;"><div class="action-menu" style="display: inline; margin: 1px 3px 0px; position: relative; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=rudy+giuliani+russia+putin+ukraine+khazakstan&oq=rudy+giuliani+russia+putin+ukraine+khazakstan&aqs=chrome..69i57.19160j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b2" aria-label="Result Options" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8Q7B0wAnoECAIQBA" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); display: inline-block; height: 12px; margin-top: 1px; user-select: none; width: 13px; cursor: pointer;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(112, 117, 122) transparent; 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cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><span class="st" style="line-height: 1.58; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="f" style="line-height: 1.58;">Oct 2, 2019 -&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Rudy Giuliani</span>&nbsp;subpoenaed by House Democrats ... in Armenia, hours before appearances there by&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russian</span>&nbsp;President Vladimir&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Putin</span>&nbsp;and ... In March, a&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russian</span>&nbsp;American energy executive who used to run a&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kazakh</span>&nbsp;mining&nbsp;...</font></span></a></font></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; width: 600px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 28px;"><div class="rc" data-hveid="CAMQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFSgAMAN6BAgDEAA" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/what-does-giuliani-s-longtime-fixer-know-about-rudy-s-n1086231" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/what-does-giuliani-s-longtime-fixer-know-about-rudy-s-n1086231&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjADegQIAxAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a></font><h3 class="LC20lb DKV0Md" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/what-does-giuliani-s-longtime-fixer-know-about-rudy-s-n1086231" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/what-does-giuliani-s-longtime-fixer-know-about-rudy-s-n1086231&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjADegQIAxAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">What does Giuliani's longtime go-between know about Rudy's ...</font></a></font></h3><div class="TbwUpd NJjxre" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;">www.nbcnews.com<span class="eipWBe" style="">&nbsp;› trump-impeachment-inquiry › wh...</span></cite></div><div class="B6fmyf" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; height: 0px; visibility: hidden; white-space: nowrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div class="TbwUpd" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;"><span class="eipWBe" style="" /></cite></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div class="eFM0qc" style="display: inline-block; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; padding-left: 2px; visibility: visible;"><div class="action-menu" style="display: inline; margin: 1px 3px 0px; position: relative; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=rudy+giuliani+russia+putin+ukraine+khazakstan&oq=rudy+giuliani+russia+putin+ukraine+khazakstan&aqs=chrome..69i57.19160j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b3" aria-label="Result Options" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8Q7B0wA3oECAMQBA" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); display: inline-block; height: 12px; margin-top: 1px; user-select: none; width: 13px; cursor: pointer;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(112, 117, 122) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -3px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><ol class="action-menu-panel" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QqR8wA3oECAMQBQ" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 12px; visibility: hidden; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s ease 0s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px;"><li class="action-menu-item" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; cursor: pointer; user-select: none;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t1CWiEyh3mkJ:https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/what-does-giuliani-s-longtime-fixer-know-about-rudy-s-n1086231+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:t1CWiEyh3mkJ:https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/what-does-giuliani-s-longtime-fixer-know-about-rudy-s-n1086231%2B%26cd%3D4%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QIDADegQIAxAG" style="text-decoration-line: none; 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overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="f" style="line-height: 1.58;">Nov 21, 2019 -&nbsp;</span>WASHINGTON — In July,&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Rudy Giuliani</span>&nbsp;was desperate for more ... in American nursing homes from&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ukraine</span>,&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russia</span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kazakhstan</span>. ...&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russian</span>&nbsp;President Vladimir&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Putin</span>&nbsp;are inaccurate and concerns about it overblown.</font></span></a></font></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; width: 600px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 28px;"><div class="rc" data-hveid="CAUQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFSgAMAR6BAgFEAA" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/giuliani-withdraws-kremlin-forum-yerevan-armenia-trump-lawyer/30187793.html" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.rferl.org/a/giuliani-withdraws-kremlin-forum-yerevan-armenia-trump-lawyer/30187793.html&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAEegQIBRAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; 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</font></a></font><h3 class="LC20lb DKV0Md" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/giuliani-withdraws-kremlin-forum-yerevan-armenia-trump-lawyer/30187793.html" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.rferl.org/a/giuliani-withdraws-kremlin-forum-yerevan-armenia-trump-lawyer/30187793.html&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAEegQIBRAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Rudy Giuliani, Trump's Personal Lawyer, Pulls Out Of Kremlin ...</font></a></font></h3><div class="TbwUpd NJjxre" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; 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U.S. and European Union sanctions since&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russia's</span>&nbsp;invasion of&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ukraine</span>&nbsp;in 2014.</font></span></a></font></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; width: 600px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 28px;"><div class="rc" data-hveid="CAYQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFSgAMAV6BAgGEAA" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-is-rudy-giuliani-scheduled-to-speak-alongside-a-sanctioned-russian-official-9133667cabbf/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-is-rudy-giuliani-scheduled-to-speak-alongside-a-sanctioned-russian-official-9133667cabbf/&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAFegQIBhAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a></font><h3 class="LC20lb DKV0Md" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-is-rudy-giuliani-scheduled-to-speak-alongside-a-sanctioned-russian-official-9133667cabbf/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-is-rudy-giuliani-scheduled-to-speak-alongside-a-sanctioned-russian-official-9133667cabbf/&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAFegQIBhAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Why is Rudy Giuliani scheduled to speak alongside a ...</font></a></font></h3><div class="TbwUpd NJjxre" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; 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overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="f" style="line-height: 1.58;">Oct 22, 2018 -&nbsp;</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Rudy Giuliani</span>, Trump's personal lawyer, is scheduled to speak alongside a ... the U.S. sanctioned following&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russia's</span>&nbsp;2014 invasion of&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ukraine</span>. ... who prides himself on his ties to&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russian</span>&nbsp;President Vladimir&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Putin</span>. ... Formally founded in 2015, the group comprises&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russia</span>, Belarus, Armenia,&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kazakhstan</span>, and&nbsp;...</font></span></a></font></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; width: 600px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 28px;"><div class="rc" data-hveid="CAcQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFSgAMAZ6BAgHEAA" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://archive.thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAGegQIBxAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a></font><h3 class="LC20lb DKV0Md" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://archive.thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAGegQIBxAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Rudy Giuliani's speech with a sanctioned Russian official was ...</font></a></font></h3><div class="TbwUpd NJjxre" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;">archive.thinkprogress.org<span class="eipWBe" style="">&nbsp;› rudy-giuliani-armenia-spee...</span></cite></div><div class="B6fmyf" style="position: absolute; 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padding: 0px; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 12px; visibility: hidden; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s ease 0s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px;"><li class="action-menu-item" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; cursor: pointer; user-select: none;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A7qQovGR2F0J:https://archive.thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:A7qQovGR2F0J:https://archive.thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/%2B%26cd%3D7%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QIDAGegQIBxAG" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" /></li></ol></div></div></div></div><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A7qQovGR2F0J:https://archive.thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:A7qQovGR2F0J:https://archive.thinkprogress.org/rudy-giuliani-armenia-speech-russia-3ef1a9cdff8e/%2B%26cd%3D7%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QIDAGegQIBxAG" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><span class="st" style="line-height: 1.58; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="f" style="line-height: 1.58;">Oct 24, 2018 -&nbsp;</span>Trump adviser&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Rudy Giuliani's</span>&nbsp;speech in Armenia left heads scratching ... includes&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russia</span>,&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kazakhstan</span>, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarus. ... geopolitical project following Vladimir&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Putin's</span>&nbsp;return to the presidency in 2012 — although that project eventually faltered following&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russia's</span>&nbsp;2014 invasion of&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ukraine</span>.</font></span></a></font></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; width: 600px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 28px;"><div class="rc" data-hveid="CAgQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFSgAMAd6BAgIEAA" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAHegQICBAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a></font><h3 class="LC20lb DKV0Md" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAHegQICBAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Rudy Giuliani's Mystery Trips to Russia, Armenia and Ukraine ...</font></a></font></h3><div class="TbwUpd NJjxre" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;">www.propublica.org<span class="eipWBe" style="">&nbsp;› article › trump-inc-podcast-rudy...</span></cite></div><div class="B6fmyf" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; height: 0px; visibility: hidden; white-space: nowrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div class="TbwUpd" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;"><span class="eipWBe" style="" /></cite></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div class="eFM0qc" style="display: inline-block; 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-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" /></li></ol></div></div></div></div><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7zyGEvFFiiEJ:https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:7zyGEvFFiiEJ:https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine%2B%26cd%3D8%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QIDAHegQICBAI" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><span class="st" style="line-height: 1.58; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="f" style="line-height: 1.58;">Oct 31, 2018 -&nbsp;</span>Abramyan once helped reconstruct the Kremlin and also received a medal for “<wbr />merit to the fatherland” from President Vladimir&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Putin</span>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russia</span>.</font></span></a></font><div class="TXwUJf" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7zyGEvFFiiEJ:https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:7zyGEvFFiiEJ:https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine%2B%26cd%3D8%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QIDAHegQICBAI" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Missing:&nbsp;<s>kazakhstan</s>&nbsp;‎| Must include:&nbsp;</font></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=rudy+giuliani+russia+putin+ukraine+%22kazakhstan%22&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8Q5t4CMAd6BAgIEAs" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;">kazakhstan</a></font></font></div></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; width: 600px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 28px;"><div class="rc" data-hveid="CAoQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFSgAMAh6BAgKEAA" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAIegQIChAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; 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</font></a></font><h3 class="LC20lb DKV0Md" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAIegQIChAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Russian Trolls Hype Coronavirus and Giuliani Conspiracies</font></a></font></h3><div class="TbwUpd NJjxre" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;">www.thedailybeast.com<span class="eipWBe" style="">&nbsp;› russian-trolls-hype-coronavir...</span></cite></div><div class="B6fmyf" style="position: absolute; 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line-height: 1.58;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAJegQICRAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a></font><h3 class="LC20lb DKV0Md" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QFjAJegQICRAB" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Will Giuliani be the Manafort of 2020? — Gaslit Nation</font></a></font></h3><div class="TbwUpd NJjxre" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;">www.gaslitnationpod.com<span class="eipWBe" style="">&nbsp;› episodes-transcripts-20 › w...</span></cite></div><div class="B6fmyf" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; height: 0px; visibility: hidden; white-space: nowrap;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div class="TbwUpd" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.58; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-size-adjust: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><cite class="iUh30 gBIQub bc tjvcx" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.3;"><span class="eipWBe" style="" /></cite></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div class="eFM0qc" style="display: inline-block; 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Trump, House of&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Putin</span>: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russian</span>&nbsp;Mafia. ... Andrea Chalupa: Or Kherson,&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ukraine's</span>&nbsp;mayor, because he worked with ... by millions of&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russian</span>&nbsp;speakers in&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Russia</span>,&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kazakhstan</span>, and Belarus.</font></span></a></font></div></div></div><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 86px 20px 60px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.55; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JcBM4NvSd3gJ:https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:JcBM4NvSd3gJ:https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020%2B%26cd%3D10%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QIDAJegQICRAG" style="text-decoration-line: none; 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-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2015 story ps</font></a></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JcBM4NvSd3gJ:https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:JcBM4NvSd3gJ:https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020%2B%26cd%3D10%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QIDAJegQICRAG" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></a></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JcBM4NvSd3gJ:https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:JcBM4NvSd3gJ:https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2019/6/12/will-giuliani-be-the-manafort-of-2020%2B%26cd%3D10%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjNrdb0_uHrAhVGKKwKHZdbBr8QIDAJegQICRAG" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/04/21/inside_the_rights_new_clinton_cash_obsession_the_sketchy_new_hillary_expose_that_hooked_the_new_york_times/">https://www.salon.com/2015/04/21/inside_the_rights_new_clinton_cash_obsession_the_sketchy_new_hillary_expose_that_hooked_the_new_york_times/</a></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/the-web-of-crazy-that-may-bring-down-a-president/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/the-web-of-crazy-that-may-bring-down-a-president/</font></a></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The web of crazy that may bring down a president</b></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon October 4, 2019</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last weekend, for the first time, one of Donald Trump’s former insiders appeared on television and openly discussed the metastasizing Ukraine scandal in clear and concise terms. Former homeland security adviser Tom Bossert appeared on ABC’s “This Week”:</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@ThisWeekABC</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert on impeachment inquiry against Pres. Trump: "It is a bad day and a bad week for the president and for this country if he is asking for political dirt on an opponent." https://abcn.ws/2mhOgOy&nbsp;</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@ThisWeekABC</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tom Bossert says Pres. Trump needs to "move forward" from focus on 2016 collusion allegations: "If he continues to focus on that white whale, it's going to bring him down. Enough." https://abcn.ws/2ojcGb3&nbsp;</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bossert was talking about two of the strands of what turns out to be a convoluted set of interlocking conspiracy theories, all of which involve Rudy Giuliani and all of which are, quite frankly, completely nuts.</b></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There’s the one about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and the “Black Ledger,” which forms one strand of the ludicrous “Ukraine framed Russia to help Hillary Clinton” 2016 collusion theory</span>. Manafort knows his way around Ukraine and Giuliani has reportedly been consulting with him in prison, where Manafort is serving time for various felonies he committed during his work there.</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The “CrowdStrike scandal” mentioned by Bossert intersects with the “Black Ledger” theory.</span> This one holds that the security firm that first identified the Russians as being behind the Democratic National Committee hack was actually owned by a Ukrainian (it isn’t and never has been) and was in on the plot — as were the FBI and the DNC, <b>including murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich, who supposedly did the actual hacking as an “inside job.”</b> All of it is utter nonsense. (The New York Times’ Scott Shane did a nice report on how Trump got hooked on this stuff.)</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There’s also Attorney General William Barr’s “investigation of the investigation” which has him gallivanting all over the globe trying to prove that the CIA had it in for Trump and set up the bogus Russia investigation to trap him. This must also means that Robert Mueller was in on the scheme, since his team indicted a whole bunch of Russians.</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As I said, Rudy Giuliani is at the center of all of these conspiracy theories, working under the influence of a couple of Ukrainian conmen in Florida with the full participation of his client, the president of the United States</b>. They are both wallowing in the right-wing fever swamps and it’s as fetid and poisonous as Chernobyl during the meltdown.</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Of course, there is also the other big Ukraine scandal that has gotten Trump into such hot water: the alleged influence-peddling extravaganza around Joe and Hunter Biden.</b> As is his wont, Trump has blurted out a confession of wrongdoing, admitting that he asked the Ukrainian president to gather some dirt on his potential political rival as Trump was inexplicably holding up promised military aid. On Thursday, he said it again, adding that he thinks China should investigate the Bidens as well — in the same breath that he made new threats about the ongoing trade war.&nbsp; He just can’t quit self-impeaching.</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Later on Thursday evening, the House Intelligence Committee released transcripts of Trump’s Ukraine and EU ambassadors and envoys texting back and forth about Trump’s “crazy” quid pro quo, which makes clear that they were all aware of what was going on and were either trying to document their displeasure or cover the whole business up. They worked very hard to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a statement saying his government was taking up the investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden. in exchange for a visit to the White House and the release of nearly $400 million in military aid. To his credit, Zelensky didn’t do it, perhaps understanding that he was dealing with people who were unreliable.[now is 10/4/19]</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Unlike all the other Ukraine scandals, this Biden conspiracy didn’t spring from the right-wing fever swamps, nor did Rudy Giuliani “uncover it” as he likes to brag he did. This one was a professional hit job carried out by the same team that brought you “Clinton Cash,” the book about the Clinton Foundation that formed the basis of the “Crooked Hillary” campaign.</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This time it was a book called “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” by “Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer, who is now an editor at Breitbart News and president of the Government Accountability Institute,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> a nonprofit he founded with Steve Bannon and right-wing billionaire Rebekah Mercer. Its purpose is clear enough: To launder far-right smears and dirty tricks.</span></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">I wrote about this gang back in 2015 for Salon when Schweizer gulled the New York Times and the Washington Post into partnering with him on the Clinton story,</span> apparently convincing them that the man who wrote “Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Ruined the Global Economy and Will Do It Again if We Don’t Stop Them” was a straight journalist just looking for a little accountability.&nbsp; The book was a huge success at what it set out to do: Tar Hillary Clinton as a corrupt criminal. Why not do it again with Joe Biden, who everyone knew was likely to run against Trump in 2020?</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This time, with the notable exception of a couple of dubious stories in the New York Times, the media didn’t bite on the Biden story with quite the same eagerness. Bloomberg’s Joshua Green points out in this article on the subject that while it didn’t catch on in the mainstream press, it was huge in the conservative media, which apparently bothered Bannon a great deal. After all, the GAI was formed to push its smears into the mainstream.&nbsp; Stories that exist only in the conservative bubble simply don’t have the same power to move the broader electorate.</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Green notes that because Trump mainlines conservative media, he saw the story as very beneficial to his cause, adding that “what differentiates Trump from other power-consumers of conservative media is that he’s the president and was willing to use his governmental powers to attack a political rival.” Indeed he was. And it was a big mistake — it finally got the Democrats off the dime on impeachment.</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schweizer denies working with Giuliani or the White House. But then, he didn’t have to. He planted the seeds and then Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and the Trump and Rudy show made it grow. Green writes:</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[T]here’s no question the anti-Biden effort has boomeranged on Trump, who is suddenly under siege from the Democrats’ fast-moving impeachment inquiry. … At this point, no one can say what effect all this will have on the 2020 election. But it looks increasingly like it won’t be the one that Biden’s antagonists, from Trump to Schweizer, were aiming for.</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s possible this will end up hurting Joe Biden, as these smears almost always do. But it’s hurting Trump even more. And to be honest, I’m not sure that Schweizer and company care that much. If a pain in the neck like Donald Trump gets caught in the crossfire I doubt they’ll lose any sleep over it. Political hitmen aren’t sentimental. They just move on to their next assignment.</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.</font></font></font></font></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref 3</font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/giuliani-consulted-on-ukraine-with-imprisoned-paul-manafort-via-a-lawyer/2019/10/02/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/giuliani-consulted-on-ukraine-with-imprisoned-paul-manafort-via-a-lawyer/2019/10/02/</font></a></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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Security</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Giuliani consulted on Ukraine with imprisoned Paul Manafort via a lawyer</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">By Josh Dawsey ,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tom Hamburger ,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Paul Sonne and</div><div style="text-align: left;">Rosalind S. Helderman October 2 at 8:41 PM</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">In his quest to rewrite the history of the 2016 election, President Trump’s personal attorney has turned to an unusual source of information: Trump’s imprisoned former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rudolph W. Giuliani in recent months has consulted several times with Manafort through the federal prisoner’s lawyer in pursuit of information about a disputed ledger that would bolster his theory that the real story of 2016 is not Russian interference to elect Trump, but Ukrainian efforts to support Hillary Clinton.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The relationship, which Giuliani acknowledged in an interview this week with The Washington Post, stems from a shared interest in a narrative that undermines the rationale for the special counsel investigation. That inquiry led to Manafort’s imprisonment on tax and financial fraud allegations related to his work in Kiev for the political party of former president Viktor Yanukovych.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>
</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Giuliani’s effort is gaining traction on Capitol Hill. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee</b>, have announced their renewal of an inquiry into any coordination between Ukraine and Democratic Party officials.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Manafort, who is serving a 7½ -year term in a federal prison in Pennsylvania, has continued to express support for Trump, and Trump has never ruled out giving him a pardon.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Trump’s push on a July 25 call to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the matter, and also probe former vice president Joe Biden, triggered an impeachment inquiry in the House. Many of the accusations Giuliani has been making about Ukraine recycle those that Manafort’s team first promulgated.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team in April 2018 to help defend the president against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe, and the former mayor said he launched his own investigation into Ukraine late last year, which led him to consult with Manafort. He said he has not spoken directly to Manafort in two years.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It was that I believed there was a lot of evidence that the [Democratic National Committee] and the Clinton campaign had a close connection to Ukrainian officials,” Giuliani said, noting that he was never advocating for a pardon of Manafort. “It was all about Trump. I don’t think I could exonerate Manafort.”</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, did not respond to a request for comment.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">[Impeachment inquiry puts new focus on Giuliani’s work for prominent figures in Ukraine]</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani said his consultation with Manafort centered on trying to ascertain the veracity of a secret black ledger obtained by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which the New York Times revealed in an August 2016 story. The Times said the ledger recorded $12.7 million in cash payments from Yanukovych’s political party to Manafort. The revelation led Manafort to resign from the campaign.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>
</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Giuliani’s narrative recasts Ukrainian accusations in 2016 against Manafort and efforts by Democratic operatives to gather research on Manafort after he took a leading role in Trump’s campaign as a conspiracy involving both Ukrainian and American officials to swing the election for Clinton.&nbsp;</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As part of that, Giuliani has focused on a theory that Manafort’s team was promoting as early as 2017: that the Ukrainian government separately interfered in the 2016 campaign on behalf of Clinton through the activities of a Ukrainian American contract worker for the DNC, Alexandra Chalupa.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Chalupa confirmed she worked part-time as an outreach worker for the DNC to Ukrainian Americans and others, and met with Ukrainian officials from the embassy in Washington during that time. She said she “sounded the alarm” on Manafort outside her duties for the DNC, and sought to circulate that information, because she said she was concerned about Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych, who was backed by Russian President Vladi­mir Putin. She said the Ukrainian Embassy stayed clear of U.S. election matters, even with regard to Manafort.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The White House has been pushing this narrative to distract from Donald Trump’s gross abuse of power in pressuring a foreign country to interfere in our elections,” DNC press secretary Adrienne Watson said in a statement.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There were Ukrainian Americans and people in the Ukrainian anti-corruption movement who were motivated to “shine a light” on Manafort’s activities in Ukraine during 2016, and some Ukrainian Americans were active on behalf of Clinton, said Jeffrey Mankoff, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, but he said those activities aren’t equivalent to Russia’s state-sponsored intervention, which included the release of stolen emails and an extensive online disinformation campaign.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“One theory has been documented with extensive detail in the Mueller Report,” Mankoff said. “The other is something that Rudy Giuliani and people in his orbit have conjured up as a way to cast aspersions and confuse the story.”</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Giuliani said he needed to consult with Manafort through the latter’s lawyer this spring to ask whether a black ledger ever existed.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>“I said, ‘Was there really a black book? If there wasn’t, I really need to know. Please tell him I’ve got to know,’” Giuliani recalled asking Manafort’s lawyer. “He came back and said there wasn’t a black book.”</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Giuliani said he was interested in the matter to prove his theory that the ledger’s release, which he has claimed was done in conjunction with U.S. officials, was part of a falsified pretext for U.S. authorities to reopen a case against Manafort.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>
</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The FBI, however, already had a case open against Manafort before the 2016 campaign, having interviewed him twice about his work in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014.&nbsp;</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The special counsel’s office did not introduce the “black ledger” at Manafort’s trial in Virginia in August 2018, nor did Manafort's defense team mention the document during his trial on tax and financial fraud charges, or try to show that it had been forged.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After a jury convicted Manafort of eight felonies, the former Trump campaign chairman pleaded guilty in Washington to avoid a second trial. As part of his plea, Manafort acknowledged that he made more than $60 million in Ukraine, laundering more than $30 million of it through foreign companies and bank accounts to hide it from the IRS and cheating the government out of $15 million in taxes. He also agreed that he had lobbied in the United States on behalf of Ukrainian officials without registering and that he conspired to tamper with witnesses in his case.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian journalist, anti-corruption campaigner and former member of parliament, said the ledger “was obtained by an anonymous source in the burned-out ruins of the headquarters of Yanukovych’s party.” His involvement in the release of part of its contents at a news conference, he said, was motivated by a desire that Manafort be brought to justice for his activities in Ukraine.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Giuliani’s entire approach is built on disinformation and the manipulation of facts,” Leshchenko said in an op-ed in The Post. “Giuliani has developed a conspiracy theory in which he depicts my revelations about Manafort as an intervention in the 2016 U.S. election in favor of the Democratic Party.”</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In a text conversation with Manafort from August 2017 released by prosecutors, <b>Fox News host Sean Hannity mentions “Ukraine interference”</b> as one of the issues he was highlighting to attack Mueller. On his show that year, Hannity repeatedly claimed Ukraine had intervened in the 2016 election by sharing information on Manafort with a DNC contractor. Manafort did not respond directly to those claims but frequently encouraged and praised Hannity throughout the summer.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The White House also promoted the allegation.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“If you’re looking for an example of a campaign coordinating with a foreign country or a foreign source, look no further than the DNC, who actually coordinated opposition research with the Ukrainian Embassy,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in July 2017.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>
</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Grassley and Johnson, writing this week in a letter to Attorney General William P. Barr, again mentioned the allegations as a matter they intend to investigate.&nbsp;</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Ukrainian efforts, abetted by a U.S. political party, to interfere in the 2016 election should not be ignored,” the senators wrote. “Such allegations of corruption deserve due scrutiny, and the American people have a right to know when foreign forces attempt to undermine our democratic processes,” the senators wrote in the letter.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Correction:An earlier version of this story misidentified Sen. Charles Grassley’s committee chairmanship. The story has been corrected.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Josh Dawsey</div><div style="text-align: left;">Josh Dawsey is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017. He previously covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal. Follow&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tom Hamburger</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tom Hamburger is an investigative reporter on the national desk of The Washington Post. He has covered the White House, Congress and regulatory agencies, with a focus on money and politics. Follow&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Paul Sonne</div><div style="text-align: left;">Paul Sonne covers the U.S. military and national security. He previously reported for the Wall Street Journal from Moscow, London and Washington. Follow&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Rosalind S. Helderman</div><div style="text-align: left;">Rosalind Helderman is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2001. Follow&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">We dig deeper.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref 2</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article235501772.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article235501772.html</font></a></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Two South Florida businessmen from the former Soviet Union could find themselves dragged into an impeachment inquiry targeting President Donald Trump over their political activities in Ukraine.</b></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were cited — although not by name — in a government whistleblower complaint&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20190812-whistleblower_complaint_unclass.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">released</a>&nbsp;Thursday alleging improper behavior by the president. Parnas and Fruman helped introduce Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, into top Ukrainian political circles, according to widespread media accounts.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/official-readout-president-trump-s-july-25-phone-call-with-ukraine-s-volodymyr-zelensky/4b228f51-17e7-45bc-b16c-3b2643f3fbe0/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">July 25 telephone call</a>&nbsp;between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to announce an impeachment inquiry earlier this week. During the call, Trump pressured his counterpart to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, sparking the whistleblower complaint and widespread public concern&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/09/26/republican-senators-romney-sasse-thune-raise-concerns-trump-ukraine-call-ebof-vpx.cnn" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">even from the administration’s Republican allies in Congress</a>.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The connections and associates which Giuliani had on President Trump’s behalf in Ukraine ... those really should be the heart of the investigative process,” said Kenneth F. McCallion, a former federal prosecutor and attorney for former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko in the United States.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reached on his cellphone Thursday, Parnas called the impeachment inquiry a “soap opera” and defended Trump.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[Personally], it’s a headache. It’s upsetting, being dragged into something like this,” he said.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas said Ukraine’s government has access to information on alleged wrongdoing by the Bidens and U.S. officials overseas — but that the U.S. government proved indifferent to receiving it through official channels. Thanks to his friendship with Giuliani, he said, he and Fruman became the best people to get it into the Trump administration’s hands. The information could affect the 2020 election.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I got certain information and I thought it was my duty to hand it over,” he said. He declined to comment on the details of his relationship with Giuliani, although he said the former New York City mayor was his lawyer as well as friend.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Giuliani hoped to gather information damaging to Trump’s rivals, experts have largely dismissed claims that a conspiracy was afoot. Joe and Hunter Biden have denied wrongdoing.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Parnas’ and Fruman’s newfound political prominence, including major donations to GOP candidates, belies a history of financial troubles.</b></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Parnas is a former stockbroker who was threatened last year with eviction from a $5,500-per-month home in Boca Raton, court records show. His company was evicted in 2015 for failing to pay rent. The Ukrainian-American businessman is also at the center of a $325,000 donation to a pro-Trump super PAC that is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-26/pro-trump-super-pac-got-illegal-contributions-complaint-alleges" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">under scrutiny from federal regulators</a>. Details about that contribution were revealed only when an investor sued Parnas over a loan made for an unmade film Parnas was promoting called “Anatomy of an Assassin.”</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Fruman, a real estate investor who also runs a New York import-export business dealing in coffee, baby food, ketchup and dairy products, and Parnas also allegedly bragged about their alliances with Republican power brokers like Giuliani and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in order to procure a six-figure loan from an investor for a natural gas business they run. But the men struggled to pay the investor back on time, leading to a lawsuit.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Their political efforts have met with some success.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> A month after meeting with Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman earlier this year,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Ukrainian prosecutors announced an investigation into whether officials had attempted to swing the election in favor of Hillary Clinton, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/meet-the-florida-duo-helping-giuliani-dig-dirt-for-trump-in-ukraine" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">detailed profile</a>&nbsp;of Parnas and Fruman’s activities by Buzzfeed News and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Trump called the allegations “big” and “incredible” on Fox News.</span></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The whistleblower complaint expressed concern that Trump is “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” It repeatedly mentioned the role of Giuliani in Ukraine. And in three footnotes, the whistleblower cites media reports revealing how Parnas and Fruman were instrumental. The complaint refers to the men as “two associates of Mr. Giuliani.”</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Giuliani has&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/rudygiuliani/status/1129761193755910144" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">confirmed</a>&nbsp;Parnas and Fruman are his legal clients.</b> Fruman could not be reached Thursday. Attorneys who have represented him did not respond to requests for comment. Giuliani has said his efforts in Ukraine had the full support of the president.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Reuters reporter last week&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/AramRoston/status/1175156459140722688?s=20" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">saw</a>&nbsp;Giuliani and Parnas sitting at a table together at Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Parnas, Fruman and their natural-gas company, Global Energy Producers, have given more than $400,000 to Republican candidates and committees supporting them in federal elections</b>. The vast majority of that money has gone to committees supporting Trump, but Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott is the next biggest beneficiary. In 2018, Fruman gave $15,000 to a joint-fundraising committee backing Scott’s Senate race. They also gave $50,000 to the campaign of DeSantis, a Trump ally, in June 2018 and $35,000 combined to a committee supporting failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Together, Parnas and Fruman joined Donald Trump Jr. for breakfast in Beverly Hills last year, a deleted social media post obtained by BuzzFeed/OCCRP shows.<b> Both men have been spotted at Trump properties, including Mar-a-Lago</b>, according to published reports. Another photo shows Parnas at the White House with Trump earlier this year.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the website of his current company, Fraud Guarantee, Parnas lists one of his early business ventures as “shipping the first containers of freight between the United States and the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s.” Fraud Guarantee, where he is co-founder and CEO, protects investors “from losses due to fraud,” according to the website. Parnas has been repeatedly sued over alleged unpaid debts and rents in Palm Beach County courts. (“I don’t know anybody that has only good in their business,” Parnas said Thursday. “I’ve never done anything illegal, I’ve never been charged, I’ve never been near anything like that.”)</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition to his interests in real estate and shipping, Fruman is the president of the Ukrainian-based Otrada Luxury Group, which sells cars, jewelry, boats, food and alcohol, according to a&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.otrada-luxury.com/files/PRESENTATION_OTRADA_FINAL.pdf" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">company pamphlet</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. He lives in Sunny Isles Beach, public records show, which is also the location of Seafront Properties, LLC, for which he is the registered agent. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He has “personal ties” to a powerful businessman in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa called “the Grey Cardinal” who is believed to associate with organized crime figures,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/meet-the-florida-duo-helping-giuliani-dig-dirt-for-trump-in-ukraine" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">according to OCCRP</a>, an international consortium of investigative journalists.</span></font></font></p><h3 style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box;" mcclatchy="McClatchy" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-weight="font-weight" var="var" hw="hw" text-transform="text-transform" ht="ht" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" px="px" max-width="max-width" padding="padding" margin-right="margin-right" auto="auto" margin-left="margin-left" clear="clear" both="both" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE EASTERN FRONT</font></font></h3><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On May 17, 2018, a Delaware shell company called Global Energy Producers contributed $325,000 t<b>o America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC, </b>according to federal campaign finance records. Parnas was described as the CEO of the firm and Fruman as the president in unrelated documents.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was their big introduction into GOP politics and a world of international intrigue.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The next year, Parnas would prove crucial in setting up meetings between Giuliani and former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko</b>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/politics/giuliani-ukraine-trump.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">according to the New York Times</a>.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani was said to be primarily seeking two things: Information about how material damaging to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was publicly leaked in Ukraine. And an agreement from Ukraine’s government to investigate the involvement of Biden’s son in a Ukrainian energy company, which could hinder Biden’s campaign against Trump in the 2020 presidential election.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thanks to Parnas, Giuliani spoke on the phone with Lutsenko and met with him for several hours in New York City in January, the Times reported. They reportedly met again in Warsaw in February.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[Lutsenko] brought documentation, verification. It opened Giuliani’s eyes,” Parnas told reporters at Buzzfeed and OCCRP, saying the i<b>nformation could aid Attorney General William Barr’s inquiry into the origins of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, as well as the 2020 election.</b></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s all going to come out,” Parnas added. “Something terrible happened and we’re finally going to get to the bottom of it.”</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><figure class="photo-inline-horizontal" style="box-sizing: content-box; margin: 30px 0px; flex: 0 0 auto; position: relative; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; clear: both;" mcclatchy="McClatchy" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="img-container picture " style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><picture style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/estados-unidos/n33icd/picture224671275/alternates/FREE_1140/AFP_1CB49R" media="(min-width: 992px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/estados-unidos/n33icd/picture224671275/alternates/FREE_960/AFP_1CB49R" media="(min-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/estados-unidos/n33icd/picture224671275/alternates/FREE_768/AFP_1CB49R" media="(min-width: 601px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/estados-unidos/n33icd/picture224671275/alternates/FREE_640/AFP_1CB49R" media="(min-width: 441px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/estados-unidos/n33icd/picture224671275/alternates/FREE_480/AFP_1CB49R" media="(min-width: 320px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></source></source></source></source></font></picture><figcaption style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; padding: 10px 0px 0px; max-width: 1140px; margin: 0px auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in the East Room of the White House in July 2018]</font></figcaption></font></div></figure><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p style="box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">All told, Parnas and Fruman introduced Giuliani to three current and former Ukrainian prosecutors, according to OCCRP.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Although both men have claimed to open doors in Ukraine for Giuliani, neither is registered as a foreign agent with the U.S. Justice Department. Whether they need to is murky, in part, because of Giuliani’s unusual status as someone doing the bidding of the U.S. president while not actually an appointed official.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After the Times story in May, Giuliani canceled his planned visit to Ukraine.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He did however meet with an adviser to Ukraine’s president in Madrid in August, according to the whistleblower complaint.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The $325,000 donation to the Trump super PAC was the subject of a&nbsp;<a href="https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/SIGNED%2007-25-18%20GEP%20LLC%20Straw%20Donor%20Complaint.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">complaint</a>&nbsp;by a nonpartisan watchdog group to the Federal Election Commission last year. The<b style=""> Campaign Legal Center </b>said Global Energy Partners did not have assets required to make such a hefty donation and that the funds had in fact come from an unknown source.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We’ve seen that these two shady characters managed to buy their way into Trump world with a $325,000 super PAC contribution and then leveraged the access the contribution afforded to push this highly dubious scheme in Ukraine,” Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center said in an interview Thursday.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More details about the source of the money have been revealed in a civil lawsuit filed in federal court.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the lawsuit, an investor in a movie-deal-gone-bad won a judgment worth more than $500,000 plus interest against Parnas. Wire transfers unveiled in the lawsuit showed that the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">money had not been donated to the Trump super PAC by Global Energy Partners but by another company managed by Parnas, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://campaignlegal.org/update/new-wire-transfer-records-reveal-shady-foreign-ties-pro-trump-super-pac" target="blank" rel="Follow" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">supplemental complaint</a>&nbsp;lodged by the CLC in June.</span></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“America First Action violated the law by filing this false report, which has kept the public in the dark about the true sources of its support. Parnas, Fruman, or others who engineered this scheme also violated the law by laundering the contribution through LLCs,” the complaint stated. “But we still don’t know where the money actually came from. The FEC should find out.”</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America First Action said it could not comment on “ongoing legal matters.”</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We take our legal obligations seriously and scrupulously<b> comply with the law,</b>” the group said in a statement.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Parnas said Thursday the money came from the sale of a Miami-area condo and that the donation was legitimate. On Thursday, the Daily Beast&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-giulianis-ukraine-henchmen-made-big-donation-to-pro-trump-pac" target="blank" rel="Follow" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">published</a>&nbsp;a story confirming that a company linked to Fruman had sold a Bal Harbour condo for $4.1 million.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tony Andre, a South Florida attorney helping the jilted movie investor recover the judgment, said his research has found Parnas’ finances to be opaque.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“His financial dealings seem questionable when you consider his history of non-payments of debts,” Andre said Thursday.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><figure class="photo-inline-horizontal" style="box-sizing: content-box; margin: 30px 0px; flex: 0 0 auto; position: relative; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; clear: both;" mcclatchy="McClatchy" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="img-container picture " style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><picture style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/opinion-es/vfzmp2/picture235474917/alternates/FREE_1140/Trump%20Ucrania%20opinion.JPG" media="(min-width: 992px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/opinion-es/vfzmp2/picture235474917/alternates/FREE_960/Trump%20Ucrania%20opinion.JPG" media="(min-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/opinion-es/vfzmp2/picture235474917/alternates/FREE_768/Trump%20Ucrania%20opinion.JPG" media="(min-width: 601px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/opinion-es/vfzmp2/picture235474917/alternates/FREE_640/Trump%20Ucrania%20opinion.JPG" media="(min-width: 441px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/opinion-es/vfzmp2/picture235474917/alternates/FREE_480/Trump%20Ucrania%20opinion.JPG" media="(min-width: 320px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></source></source></source></source></font></picture><figcaption style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; padding: 10px 0px 0px; max-width: 1140px; margin: 0px auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix President Donald Trump meets with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the United Nations on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019.&nbsp;</font></figcaption></font></div></figure><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p style="box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><h3 style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box;" mcclatchy="McClatchy" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-weight="font-weight" var="var" hw="hw" text-transform="text-transform" ht="ht" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" px="px" max-width="max-width" padding="padding" margin-right="margin-right" auto="auto" margin-left="margin-left" clear="clear" both="both" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MYSTERY MEN</font></font></h3><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not clear how Parnas, Fruman and New York’s former mayor got to know each other.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Giuliani has been mixed into the complicated Ukrainian political scene for more than a decade. A confidential State Department cable, sent from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev back to headquarters and published by Wikileaks, described how Giuliani was seeking to help former heavyweight boxing champion Vitaliy Klitschko in his bid to enter the political ring there.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/meet-the-florida-duo-helping-giuliani-dig-dirt-for-trump-in-ukraine" target="self" rel="Follow" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">BuzzFeed/OCCRP</a>, Parnas came to the United States in 1976 when he was 4.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A check of Parnas on the website&nbsp;<a href="https://brokercheck.finra.org/individual/summary/2418073" target="blank" rel="Follow" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: var(--ld);">BrokerCheck</a>, operated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), shows him associated with three companies that have been expelled from the industry’s self-regulating body</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Parnas worked in the securities business since 1994, sometimes using the name Larry Parnell, but has not been a registered broker since 2009, when the North Miami Beach company he worked for, Basis Financial, LLC, was expelled.</span></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a settlement with the body, Basis Financial’s owners admitted to a range of misrepresentations and misconduct and FINRA determined the company <b>failed to establish anti-money-laundering policies.</b></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, another Parnas-associated company, Program Trading Corp., in Boca Raton, was expelled from FINRA. Parnas had a stake of 25-to-50 percent in the company, through his Florida company Aaron Investment Group, according to documents. FINRA expelled the company after it refused to pay fines and settle with the National Association of Securities Dealers, which accused Program Trading of malfeasance.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parnas was also a broker in the mid 1990s with Euro-Atlantic Securities, Inc. That firm was at the center of a <b>stock fraud prosecution in New York in 2001</b> involving several alleged organized crime figures. Parnas had left the company by the time indictments were brought for stock-price manipulation.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He has never been personally charged.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><figure class="photo-inline-square mugshot" style="box-sizing: content-box; margin: 30px 0px; flex: 0 0 auto; position: relative; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; clear: right; width: 390px; float: right;" mcclatchy="McClatchy" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="img-container picture " style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><picture style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><source srcset="https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/kz6qya/picture235502987/alternates/FREE_1140/Fruman_2016.jpg" media="(min-width: 992px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/kz6qya/picture235502987/alternates/FREE_960/Fruman_2016.jpg" media="(min-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/kz6qya/picture235502987/alternates/FREE_768/Fruman_2016.jpg" media="(min-width: 601px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/kz6qya/picture235502987/alternates/FREE_640/Fruman_2016.jpg" media="(min-width: 441px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/kz6qya/picture235502987/alternates/FREE_480/Fruman_2016.jpg" media="(min-width: 320px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></source></source></source></source></font></picture><figcaption style="text-align: left; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; padding: 10px 0px 0px; max-width: 1140px; margin: 0px auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Igor Fruman with President Donald Trump. Fruman is referenced — but not by name — in the whistleblower complaint pertaining to Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president.</font></figcaption></font></div></figure><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p /><p style="box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Born in Belarus, Fruman spent years in Ukraine before migrating to Miami where, in 2005, he married Yelyzaveta Naumova, also a Ukrainian national. Naumova filed for divorce in 2017, records show.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fruman ran an import/export business and owned a boutique hotel in Odessa, Ukraine, according to BuzzFeed/OCCRP. A milk canning plant he invested in went bankrupt after going nearly $25 million in debt, the news organizations reported.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In March, Russian-born businessman Felix Vulis sued Fruman and Parnas after Global Energy Producers failed to pay back a $100,000 loan from Vulis last September. The two parties agreed to a settlement for an undisclosed amount last month.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In order to procure the loan, Fruman and his associates at GEP bragged about his connections to Giuliani, the complaint said. In March of 2018, Fruman and Parnas attended a Trump donor meeting at Mar-a-Lago as a kickoff event for Trump’s 2020 campaign, according to OCCRP. Their biggest donation came two months later.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paperwork for the $325,000 contribution to the Trump super PAC lists a home in Boca Raton as an address for Global Energy Partners. Parnas confirmed it was his residence.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reached Thursday, Victor Imber, the man who owns that home, said “Who is Lev Parnas?” and hung up the phone.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></p><div class="ng_endnote_contact" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: content-box; max-width: 720px; padding: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; clear: both;" mcclatchy="McClatchy" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Miami Herald staff writer David Smiley and Miami Herald researcher Monika Leal contributed to this report.</font></font></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref 1 jg bloombrg</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-02/trump-s-impeachment-saga-stems-from-a-political-hit-job-gone-bad"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-02/trump-s-impeachment-saga-stems-from-a-political-hit-job-gone-bad</font></a></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">th<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-indent: 30px;">e irony of President Trump’s sudden impeachment peril is that it’s the unintended result of an effort to help him: a political hit job aimed at a likely opponent (Joe Biden) and funded by a major right-wing donor (Rebekah Mercer) that Trump and his lawyer&nbsp;(Rudy Giuliani)&nbsp;impatiently hijacked, with consequences that could turn out to be&nbsp;disastrous for them.</span></font></font></div><div class="hardwall" data-position="1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="softwall" data-position="1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To understand how Trump wound up the target of a House impeachment inquiry, it’s first necessary to understand why he was so obsessed with finding dirt on Biden that he pressured Ukraine’s president in a July 25th phone call to “do us a favor” and investigate Biden and his son, Hunter. The notion that Hunter Biden and his father could be complicit in Ukrainian corruption was first aired in a 2018 book,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Empires-American-Political-Corruption/dp/0062569368" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends</span></a>,&nbsp;by conservative author Peter Schweizer. The book and its author had a purpose and a lineage.&nbsp;</font></font></p><div class="hardwall" data-position="2" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="softwall" data-position="2" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="outstream-video-1-PYRHHA6S972901" class="outstream-ad" data-position="outstream-video" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="outstream-video-ad-dummy" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><div id="outstream-video-2-PYRHHA6S972901" class="outstream-ad" data-position="outstream-video" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="outstream-video-ad-dummy" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schweizer, an editor at Breitbart News, is the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), a nonprofit group whose board chairwoman and major donor is Rebekah Mercer, a prominent Trump supporter and benefactor of right-wing causes.</font></font></p><div class="hardwall" data-position="3" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="softwall" data-position="3" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Bargain-Bannon-Storming-Presidency/dp/0735225028/" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">a book I wrote</a>&nbsp;about Trump and Steve Bannon,&nbsp;I described how Schweizer and Bannon, GAI’s founding chairman,&nbsp;deployed a staff of lawyers, investigators, and forensic data scientists to scour public records, corporate filings, and the dark web to compile damning evidence that Hillary and Bill Clinton behaved unethically by associating with unsavory, favor-seeking foreign donors through their work with the Clinton Foundation. Bannon, the project’s mastermind, had a specific goal in mind. He wasn’t interested in firing up conservatives, who already despised the Clintons. He wanted GAI’s findings presented in non-partisan fashion to independents and Democrats who were considering supporting Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid. In May 2015, on the eve of her campaign launch, Schweizer published GAI’s findings in a book,&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Clinton Cash:&nbsp;The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Clinton Cash:&nbsp;The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich</a></span>.&nbsp;It instantly became a&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</span>&nbsp;bestseller.&nbsp;</font></font></p><div class="hardwall" data-position="4" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="softwall" data-position="4" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><figure align="left" data-align="left" data-id="346290398" data-image-size="column" data-type="image" class="figure-expandable" style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 9px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 255px; float: left; clear: left; max-width: 255px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="image" tabindex="0" role="button" aria-label="Open image in viewer" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative;"><div id="lazy-img-346290398" class="lazy-img" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; overflow: hidden;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><img alt="relates to Trump’s Impeachment Saga Stems From a Political Hit Job Gone Bad" src="https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iS18A7hPawcI/v1/400x-1.jpg" data-native-src="https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iS18A7hPawcI/v1/-1x-1.jpg" class="lazy-imgimage loaded" data-img-type="image" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; width: 255px; filter: none; display: block;" /></font></div></div></figure><p style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because the book documented a series of ethically dubious actions—<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-foundation/clintons-charity-confirms-qatars-1-million-gift-while-she-was-at-state-dept-idUSKBN12Z2SL" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Clinton's charity confirms Qatar's $1 million gift while she was at State Dept: Reuters" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">unreported foreign gifts</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton: The New York Times" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Bill’s dinner with Kazakhstan’s autocratic president on behalf of a donor seeking lucrative mining rights</a>—the mainstream media took up and amplified its investigations into the Clintons. As Bannon had intended, the whiff of corruption attached itself to Hillary and became a major theme of the media’s coverage, poisoning her image. “They’ve enriched themselves while playing up the worst cast of characters in the world,” Bannon&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-steve-bannon/" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="This Man Is the Most Dangerous Political Operative in America" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">argued of the Clintons at the time</a>. Material from GAI even showed up&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal: The New York Times" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">on the front page</a>&nbsp;of the&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</span>. “Looking at it from their point of view,” the liberal strategist David Brock told me of Schweizer and GAI, “the&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Times</span>&nbsp;is the perfect host body for the virus.”</font></font></p><p style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clinton’s subsequent loss in the 2016 election was proof of concept: You could spot a Democratic frontrunner years out and tarnish that person badly enough to ruin their candidacy.</font></span></font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="" /></font><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font 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</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><span style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">So Schweizer and GAI sought to repeat the trick. Looking ahead to 2020, it wasn’t hard to foresee that a moderate, two-term vice president like Joe Biden, popular across the party, was likely to run for president and be a good bet to win. Nor was it difficult for GAI to turn up examples of ethically questionable behavior by Biden’s family members and publish the information in&nbsp;</span><span style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Secret Empires</span><span style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">.</span></div></span><p style="text-align: left; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;In 2014, while his father was vice president, Hunter became a highly paid director of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company, despite lacking expertise in resource extraction, Eastern European energy concerns, or Ukrainian regulatory affairs. The year before, after flying to China with his father aboard Air Force Two, Hunter Biden joined the board of an investment fund, BHR Partners, co-founded by a Chinese private-equity investor trying to raise $1.5 billion. To all appearances, Hunter Biden was cashing in on the family name in way that’s common among political families in both parties. (In&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2014-12-11/jeb-bush-has-a-mitt-romney-problem" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Jeb Bush Has a Mitt Romney Problem" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">this 2015&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Bloomberg Businessweek</span>&nbsp;piece</a>, for example, I explained how Jeb Bush leveraged his famous surname to fund private equity deals with Chinese investors.)</font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As with&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Clinton Cash</span>,&nbsp;Schweizer didn’t allege in his book on the Bidens that any laws were broken. Instead, his reporting laid out a suggestive timeline that led readers to the inescapable conclusion that what had transpired reeked of influence-peddling and moral, if not legal, corruption—the sort of self-dealing voters despise. While Ukraine’s prosecutor general&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-16/ukraine-prosecutor-says-no-evidence-of-wrongdoing-by-bidens" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Ukraine Prosecutor Says No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Bidens" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">told Bloomberg News</a>&nbsp;he found no evidence of wrongdoing, the facts surrounding Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings prompted the mainstream media,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies: The New York Times" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">including the&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</span></a>, to take notice.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Secret Empires</span>&nbsp;didn’t have anything like the effect on Biden that Schweizer’s last book had on Clinton—it pretty much came and went. When I spoke to Schweizer last week, he offered several reasons why the book&nbsp;kind of came and went: one, it didn’t focus solely on Biden, but included other politicians. “That probably affected the vectoring of the narrative,” he speculated. It also appeared well before Biden entered the race, he noted, depriving it of&nbsp;“the urgency of the campaign” to drive it into the news cycle. Another factor, which he didn’t mention, is that the primary bad actor in Schweizer’s tale isn’t Joe Biden, but his son, who isn’t running for president.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rather than the wall-to-wall cable news coverage his Clinton book produced, the impact of&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Secret Empires</span>&nbsp;landed almost exclusively in&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">conservative</span>&nbsp;media, much to the frustration of Bannon, who griped about it at the time.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is important for two reasons. First, the political effectiveness of projects like&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Clinton Cash</span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Secret Empires</span>&nbsp;rests on their ability to enter the public’s consciousness as something other than “conservative attacks.” The information needs to be legitimized—or “weaponized,” to use Bannon’s term—through the mainstream press. This requires patience, restraint, and enough sophistication to understand why a damaging story published on the front page of the&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</span>&nbsp;has infinitely more political utility for conservative partisans than the same story appearing on Breitbart.com. As a GAI staffer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-steve-bannon/" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="This Man Is the Most Dangerous Political Operative in America" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">explained to me</a>&nbsp;in 2015, “We don’t look at the mainstream media as enemies because we don’t want our work to be trapped in the conservative ecosystem.”&nbsp;</font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By this past spring, it was clear the Biden attack was stuck in the conservative ecosystem. And here’s&nbsp;where Trump enters the story—and inadvertently kicks off the whole impeachment saga:&nbsp;Trump may be the single most devoted consumer of conservative media, absorbing hours of it each day. He&nbsp;was mainlining the Biden coverage as part of his daily media diet.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We know from his Twitter feed and frequent outbursts that Trump isn’t patient, doesn’t restrain himself from&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1178671715624394757" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Donald Trump tweet: Sept. 30, 2019" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">trying to dictate press coverage</a>, and repeats—and often exaggerates—what he hears in right-wing media. (Helpfully, he also name-checks his sources,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1175766528743968769" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Donald Trump tweet: Sept. 22, 2019" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">including Schweizer</a>.)&nbsp;His former Homeland Security adviser&nbsp;Thomas Bossert&nbsp;<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-trumps-national-security-advisor-deeply-disturbed-ukraine/story?id=65925477" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="President Trump's former national security advisor 'deeply disturbed' by Ukraine scandal: 'Whole world is watching': ABC News" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">confessed over the weekend</a>&nbsp;to being “deeply disturbed” that Trump couldn’t distinguish truth from fiction, choosing to believe a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What differentiates Trump from other power-consumers of conservative media is that he’s the president&nbsp;and was willing to use his governmental powers to attack a political rival. Impatient to advance a story he believed would damage Biden, Trump tapped Giuliani, who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/politics/giuliani-ukraine-trump.html" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump: The New York Times" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">told the&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</span></a>&nbsp;in May that he was going to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, to push the new government to investigate the Bidens. “That information will be very, very helpful to my client,” he said. (He later canceled the trip.) He&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/09/politics/giuliani-goes-on-offense-biden-ukraine/index.html" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Giuliani previews potential 2020 attack dog role with Biden-Ukraine story: CNN" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">told CNN</a>&nbsp;that “a well-regarded investigator” had brought Hunter Biden’s story to his attention.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schweizer says it wasn’t him.&nbsp;“I don’t know Rudy and I’ve had no contact with Trump or the White House,” he told me. “I know there was a lot swirling around Ukraine, but I was as surprised as everyone” to learn that Trump delayed&nbsp;military aid to Ukraine and called&nbsp;Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy about Biden.</font></p><aside class="inline-newsletter" data-state="ready" style="font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; margin: 0px 40px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 270px; float: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last week, the White House released&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-trump-ukraine-call-annotated-rough-transcript/" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="The Annotated Rough Transcript of Trump’s Call With Ukraine’s President" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">a rough transcript of the call</a>, along with a whistleblower’s report, confirming that Trump pressured a foreign government to help him discredit his rival. On the same day the transcript became public—even as Republicans began to recognize the danger it poses to his presidency—Trump was still trying to force the Biden story into the news by misconstruing and exaggerating one of Schweizer’s central claims in&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Secret Empires</span>.&nbsp;Trump told reporters:&nbsp;“When Biden’s son walks out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund and the biggest funds in the world can’t get money out of China and he’s there with one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two,&nbsp;I think that’s a horrible thing.”&nbsp;(In a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-hunter-biden-walks-out-of-china-with-15-billion-a-lawyer-says-thats-not-true/2019/09/25/26b89e7e-dfcf-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="Trump says Hunter Biden ‘walks out of China with $1.5 billion.’ Biden’s lawyer said that’s not true.: The Washington Post" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">statement</a>, a lawyer for Biden called this a “gross misrepresentation” and said “Mr. Biden has not received any return or compensation on account of this investment or his position on the board of directors.”)</font></p><p style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The collective effort to impugn Biden doesn’t appear to have sent him into a tailspin, at least not yet. A new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000016d-893a-d30b-a1ff-ddfedc7c0000" itemprop="StoryLink" itemscope="itemscope" target="blank" title="National Tracking Poll: Politico/Morning Consult" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(60, 60, 60); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">Politico/Morning Consult poll</a>&nbsp;this morning finds that 40% of likely Democratic voters think Biden has the best shot of beating Trump, up one point from the last poll.</font></p><p style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there’s no question the anti-Biden effort has boomeranged on Trump, who is suddenly under siege from the Democrats’ fast-moving impeachment inquiry. Giuliani has been subpoenaed by House investigators. So has Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who admitted this morning he was on Trump’s call with Zelenskiy. Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine who quit on Friday, will testify in the House impeachment inquiry on Thursday, while&nbsp;Marie Yovanovitch, the&nbsp;former&nbsp;U.S. ambassador to Ukraine&nbsp;who was abruptly ousted in May, will sit for a joint House deposition next week.</font></p><p style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 0px 285px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 33px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 546px; text-indent: 30px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At this point, no one can say what effect all this will have on the 2020 election. But it looks increasingly like it won’t be the one that Biden’s antagonists, from Trump to Schweizer, were aiming for.</font></p><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight">=</span></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/fox-news-outs-two-network-analysts-for-working-off-the-books-with-trump-and-giuliani-to-find-biden-dirt/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/fox-news-outs-two-network-analysts-for-working-off-the-books-with-trump-and-giuliani-to-find-biden-dirt/</font></a></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kos</font></div><div style="text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight">Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace broke a bit of genuine news on Sunday morning when he reported that two of Fox News’ own frequent guests and Trump supporters may themselves be enmeshed in the Trump-Ukraine scandal.</span></div><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing have been working with Rudy Giuliani in his attempts to conduct opposition research on former Vice President Joe Biden,</span>&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/joe-digenova-and-victoria-toensing-worked-with-rudy-giuliani-to-dig-up-ukraine-dirt-on-joe-biden-report?ref=scroll&via=twitter_page" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said Wallace</a>. “According to a top U.S. official, all three were working off the books apart from the administration. The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump.” This is a significant nugget for several reasons. First, Rudy Giuliani is still flatly denying he worked with other lawyers to collect Biden “dirt”; the Fox News anchor is therefore calling Giuliani a liar. Well, even more of a liar.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>And second, the top-of-the-program callout of two of the network’s own frequent guests and analysts for undisclosed, “off the books” involvement in one of the scandals the network has been hosting them to opine on is, regardless of the obvious conflict of interest, nearly unheard of.</b>&nbsp;From Lou Dobbs to Sean Hannity, the network has taken a notably lax attitude when it comes to network mouths splitting their time between the network and the needs of the Trump administration. They normally wouldn’t so much as peep about overtly conflicted guests!</font></p><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-4" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div id="lightbox-inline-form-b00052c7-64de-4049-944f-8160479112fb" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whatever’s going on, diGenova and Toensing seem to have peeved someone in the network off mightily.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That’s not quite the idle speculation it would appear to be. DiGenova appeared recently on Tucker Carlson’s show to defend Trump in the Ukraine scandal—an appearance that&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-attacks-fox-colleague-shep-smith-says-smiths-program-partisan-opinion" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">led to Carlson directly attacking “straight news” anchor Shepard Smith’s credibility</a>. But Fox News as an entity relies on maintaining a largely fictional separation between the loud-mouthed opinion hosts and the self-described “trustworthy” news side of the business; if Tucker is going to threaten that separation by suggesting that the news side is itself biased, it’s going to threaten the paychecks of everyone in the building.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wallace’s high-profile knifing of Tucker’s recent guest diGenova might signify, then, that the “straight news” producers have had just about enough lip from the likes of Tucker and his guests. Fox has been doing&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/revisiting-fox-straight-news-sides-big-whistleblower-exclusive" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">next to no original reporting</a>&nbsp;on the Ukrainian scandal; suddenly, though,&nbsp;it has a line on new scandal participants that just happen to be two of its own network’s favorite guests?</font></p><div><p style="text-align: left; margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div></div></div></div></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 919</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Who fed Donald Trump his bogus Ukraine conspiracy theories?</b></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by David Atkins / Washington Monthly September 30, 2019</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the more bizarre elements of Donald Trump’s self-inflicted Ukraine scandal is his seemingly genuine belief that some nefarious Democratic scheme is hidden on Ukrainian computers. And one of the most important questions we should be asking is where he got that information.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, some context: while most of attention has focused on the White House’s hamfisted attempt to gather dirt on the Biden family and its apparently widespread (and illegal) misuse of classification to hide politically damaging and legally incriminating information, there is also<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;another sideplot: his conspiracy theory that Clinton’s missing emails, and perhaps other nefarious things, are somehow being stored on Ukrainian servers. This is a reference to what is known as the “Crowdstrike” conspiracy theory, a very fringe right-wing conspiracy theory so bizarre it barely makes it way onto onto Fox News.&nbsp;</span>Rachel Sandler breaks it down at Forbes thus:</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Silicon Valley-based CrowdStrike was hired in 2016 by the DNC to investigate the origins of the hack. The company didn’t give the DNC’s physical server to the FBI, which has been seized on by conspiracy theorists as evidence of a cover up.</b></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to the theory, which has been prominent on right-wing blogs and news websites and repeated by Trump and former campaign consultant<b>&nbsp;Roger Stone,</b>Democrats and CrowdStrike concocted evidence to frame Russia for the hack in order to discredit Trump’s win in 2016.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The supposed evidence of Russia’s innocence relies on the belief that a DNC server has been hidden in Ukraine, possibly by CrowdStrike’s cofounder Dmitri Alperovitch.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That belief may stem from a statement by President Trump in a 2017 interview with the Associated Press, in which he questioned why the FBI didn’t look at the DNC server, that CrowdStrike is owned by “a very rich Ukrainian.”&nbsp;<b>Alperovitch is actually a Russian-born American citizen.</b></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The theory is, of course, totally bogus. It’s also an attempt to absolve Russia of its culpability in the hacking of the DNC:</b></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ultimately, the president seems to be alluding to an idea that alt-right commentators and pro-Russia sympathizers have pushed for years: that CrowdStrike was wrong about Russia hacking the DNC—and, moreover, that CrowdStrike intentionally blamed Russia for political reasons. CrowdStrike’s findings have, of course, been repeatedly affirmed by the intelligence community, the Justice Department, members of Congress, and the office of Robert Mueller. Last year the government indicted a dozen Russian intelligence officers for their role in the hacking plot…</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>These straw-grasping claims and distortions of fact are fuel for the fire of disinformation.</b>&nbsp;Further, the notion that there is some missing “server,” and that the server might exist somewhere—like in Ukraine—has no basis in reality. The DNC’s network consisted of many servers and computers which either had be put out to pasture, rebooted, or rebuilt to rid them of malware and intruders.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As the DNC explained in a 2018 lawsuit filed against the Russian government, it had to “decommission more than 140 servers, remove and reinstall all software, including the operating systems, for more than 180 computers, and rebuild at least 11 servers” as a result of the hacking.</span></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The unanswered question in all this is how Donald Trump came to believe in this nonsense, and why he continues to believe it. His own employees and administration official tried again and again to disabuse him of these notions, but he refused to give them up:</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump was repeatedly warned by his own staff that the Ukraine conspiracy theory that he and his lawyer were pursuing was “completely debunked” long before the president pressed Ukraine this summer to investigate his Democratic rivals, a former top adviser said on Sunday.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Thomas P. Bossert, who served as Mr. Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said he told the president there was no basis to the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the 2016 election</b>&nbsp;and did so on behalf of the Democrats. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Bossert said he was “deeply disturbed” that Mr. Trump nonetheless tried to get Ukraine’s president to produce damaging information about Democrats.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rudy Giuliani has been significantly involved in the obsession over Ukraine, as his bizarre spiels on cable news networks have amply demonstrated.&nbsp;</b>Most recently he claimed to have been attempting to prove that Donald Trump (and, by extension, the Russians) was “framed by the Democrats”–a notion that Trump recently promoted on twitter.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it seems unlikely Giuliani has been Donald Trump’s primary conspiracy theory conduit. Rather, he seems to have been roped into it by Trump, and enjoys the cable news limelight.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One might think that Trump got the information from random corners of the internet. But the problem there is that the president barely knows how to use a computer, and has to have articles printed out for him and put on his desk.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So who was feeding him these conspiracies? Why did he continue to believe them even as his own intelligence services and White House staff were attempting to disabuse him of them?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We still don’t know. But we deserve to find out.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Atkins is a writer, activist and research professional living in Santa Barbara. He is a contributor to the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal and president of The Pollux Group, a qualitative research firm.</font></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">romanian prosectutor?</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">selected stories</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/state-department-throws-rudy-giuliani-under-the-bus-after-he-says-he-was-on-a-mission-from-the-u-s-government/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/state-department-throws-rudy-giuliani-under-the-bus-after-he-says-he-was-on-a-mission-from-the-u-s-government/</font></a></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">R<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">udy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on Monday to try to spin away from the growing scandal enveloping the White House. Giuliani told Hannity someone from the State Department rang him up and asked him to meet with a senior aide to&nbsp;President-elect Zelensky of Ukraine. Giuliani neglected to mention, and Hannity neglected to follow-up, on reporting from the&nbsp;</span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-defends-conversation-with-ukraine-leader-11568993176" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Wall Street Journal</a></em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;that Donald Trump asked President-elect Zelensky&nbsp;</span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">eight times</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;to meet with Rudy Giuliani, a private citizen who has not been elected nor confirmed for any role representing the United States.</span></font></div><p style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the clip below, Giuliani basically paints himself as a patriot, saying the State Department called to ask for his help and he gave it. But, the&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/462761-giuliani-says-state-department-asked-him-to-take-call-from-ukrainian-official" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">State Department had a little teeny bit of a different take</a>&nbsp;on the situation than Giuliani, one that should be causing Rudy Giuliani to start losing a whole lot of sleep. When reached for comment, a State Department spokesperson said, “Mr. Giuliani is a private citizen and acts in a personal capacity as a lawyer for President Trump. He does not speak on behalf of the U.S. Government.”</font></p><p style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Folks, that is the sound of a bus the size of Ukraine driving right over Rudy Giuliani. You are on your own, Rudy. And when push comes to shove, just wait’ll you see the bus Donald Trump throws you under.</font></p><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-4" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="lightbox-inline-form-b00052c7-64de-4049-944f-8160479112fb" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-error" data-twitter-extracted-i1569424668805760316="true" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani just said the State Department asked him to “go on a mission” AND WHY IN THE HELL IS STATE DEPT ASKING THE PRESIDENTS PERSONAL LAWYER TO GO TO UKRAINE WTF IS HAPPENING&nbsp;<a href="https://t.co/i4OK9myriJ" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">pic.twitter.com/i4OK9myriJ</a></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence)&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1176308689504022529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">September 24, 2019</a></font></font></p></blockquote><p style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;" /><p style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;" /><p style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For the record, the statement from a State Department spokesperson is quite different than Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s comments on Sunday talk shows. In this clip from CBS’s&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Face the Nation</em>, Pompeo refused to get into the details of Giuliani’s involvement and tried to spin this back to being about Biden.</font></p><p style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Mike Pompeo was involved in setting up the&nbsp;meeting for Rudy Giuliani and the Ukrainian official, which took place away from cameras in the Spanish countryside, he’s likely going to have to answer to Congress as well.</font></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-error" data-twitter-extracted-i1569424668805760316="true" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.S. Secretary of State endorses Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to seek help from a foreign government to investigate President Trump’s political opponent&nbsp;<a href="https://t.co/hE8jHum8ib" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">pic.twitter.com/hE8jHum8ib</a></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell)&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1175771817602093056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">September 22, 2019</a></font></font></p></blockquote><div style=""><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cf trms on odd russia timeline, myst phone call promise</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/impeachment-resignation-treason-federal-charges-reaction-to-the-stunning-trump-ukraine-news/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/impeachment-resignation-treason-federal-charges-reaction-to-the-stunning-trump-ukraine-news/</font></a></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...Thursday ended with the absolutely bombshell news that Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani allegedly schemed to withhold military and financial aid to Ukraine—unless the newly elected prime minister found some kind of dirt on Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who has done work in Ukraine. You could and should read more about this scandal from my colleague, Mark Sumner, who<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/19/1886645/-Trump-has-been-extorting-U-S-ally-Ukraine-and-we-ve-known-it-for-months" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">&nbsp;</a></strong><a title="" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/19/1886645/-Trump-has-been-extorting-U-S-ally-Ukraine-and-we-ve-known-it-for-months" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">has a great summary of the situation and a complete timeline of the scandal.&nbsp;</a></font></font></div><div class="p1_46" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For what it’s worth, we aren’t talking small funds here. We are talking $250 million in aid that the&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/09/19/ukraine-military-aid-extension-passes-us-house-after-white-house-delay/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">White House blocked this summer</a>, which was, coincidentally, released&nbsp;<a href="https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/09/19/ukraine-military-aid-extension-passes-us-house-after-white-house-delay/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">on Thursday</a>.</font></p><div class="p2_46" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teads-adCall" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div id="story_page_incontent_p2_target" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; height: 15px;"><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Almost immediately after the news skyrocketed to the top trending topic on social media,<b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Rudy Giuliani appeared on CNN where he&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/19/1886646/-Rudy-Giuliani-lost-his-mind-on-CNN-and-admitted-he-was-a-co-conspirator-in-Ukraine-deal" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">lost his mind and admitted he was a co-conspirator in a&nbsp;Ukraine deal</a>. More incredibly, Giuliani then ran to Twitter to not just affirm his role; he also directly implicated Donald Trump.</b></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/deranged-police-state-fever-dream-internet-explodes-over-rudy-giulianis-incredibly-fascist-video-for-9-11/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/deranged-police-state-fever-dream-internet-explodes-over-rudy-giulianis-incredibly-fascist-video-for-9-11/</font></a></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>‘Deranged police state fever dream’: Internet explodes over Rudy Giuliani’s ‘incredibly fascist’ video for 9/11</b></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>September 11, 2019</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Former New York City mayor, now President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani observed the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks by posting a chilling, creepy, and many are saying “fascist” video in the early morning, tweeting “GOD BLESS AMERICA!” in all-caps.</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The highly-edited video opens with staged images of people protesting fascism, as a young child slowly sings “America the Beautiful.”</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The camera closes in on a lone police officer starting at the protestors, who are exercising their First Amendment rights.</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In an apparent flashback the officer seems to be remembering his life: a police badge is pinned on his shirt, a flag-draped coffin of a U.S. service member is carried past him, and a young boy sits in front of a television set watching footage reminiscent of fire fighters raising a flag in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He then flips down the clear shield on his helmet, and the camera shows him whipping out a club – just as the protestors jump the barricade.</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The words “This We’ll Defend” flash on the screen.</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@RudyGiuliani</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;GOD BLESS AMERICA!</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Embedded video</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</b></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The video is looped, repeating until the user stops it.</b></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NBC News’ Ben Collins explains the video is “a ‘banned from the Super Bowl’ ad that skirted the rules and got conservative media attention.”</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ben Collins</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@oneunderscore</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;· 2h</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Jesus. https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@RudyGiuliani</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOD BLESS AMERICA!</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Embedded video</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ben Collins</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@oneunderscore</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is not the start of a dystopian David Fincher movie about a cop who lost his mind (good guess!).</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's a "banned from the Super Bowl" ad that skirted the rules and got conservative media attention. He cut off the logo of the t-shirt company at the endhttps://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@RudyGiuliani</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOD BLESS AMERICA!</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Embedded video</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Response to the disturbing clip was astonishment, confusion, anger, and outrage – and with many decrying it as clear fascism.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Take a look:</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">southpaw</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@nycsouthpaw</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;This video from Rudy honors the Republican tradition of using the memory of 9/11 to attack people who had absolutely nothing to do with it, and it’s incredibly fascist to boot. https://twitter.com/rudygiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">??? ???????? ?????????</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@JewishWorker</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Rudy Giuliani was always a fascist. Now he's just more comfortable being open about it. https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anthony L. Fisher</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@anthonyLfisher</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Rudy Giuliani was never more popular than the 3 months after 9/11/01. It was because he displayed empathy, compassion, and stoicism — not this deranged police state fever dream. https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michelangelo Signorile</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@MSignorile</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Wtf, Giuliani?&nbsp; On 9/11.&nbsp;</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The theme moving forward — we’ll defend our minority rule, via all means necessary.&nbsp;</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Frightening. https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@longwall26</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Rudy's been an out-fascist for a long, long time https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bad Fox Graphics</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@BadFoxGraphics</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Once upon a time, Rudy Giuliani was an attorney who understood the First Amendment. https://twitter.com/rudygiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex Griswold</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@HashtagGriswold</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Well... Rudy is certainly on brand</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tom Tomorrow</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@tomtomorrow</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;welp it's just Mayor 9/11 celebrating fascism on 9/11 day https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@RudyGiuliani</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOD BLESS AMERICA!</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Embedded video</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">346</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7:04 AM - Sep 11, 2019</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">105 people are talking about this</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bobby Lewis</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@revrrlewis</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;nothing says "i remember 9/11 and respect the freedoms that were attacked" more than a video comparing social justice protesters to terrorists https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">283</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7:09 AM - Sep 11, 2019</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">61 people are talking about this</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patrick Blanchfield</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@PatBlanchfield</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;not sure what's more risible here: Giuliani's slobbering fascism, or the fact that he has to use an unattributed commercial for a shitty clothing brand to do it https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Regular UltraDavid</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@ultradavid</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;This is an ad for fascism, holy shit. I think Giuliani sucks, I've been worried about the right's nationalism, etc, but I'm still floored at how explicitly pro-fascist this is. These protesters are protesting fascism, it's on their sign, & this cop is gonna maul them for it. Wtf! https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@jessesingal</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;I'm sorry but this is deranged https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cass OMalley ??????</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@CassOMalley1</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Gaslighting America on 9/11? Now this is DEPLORABLE https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1171663086178185217 …</font></div></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[bunch more twts]</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OMG</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mirror/whataboutism?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-and-his-henchmen-have-eagerly-dug-for-a-biden-scandal-in-ukraine-now-its-coming-back-to-bite-them"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-and-his-henchmen-have-eagerly-dug-for-a-biden-scandal-in-ukraine-now-its-coming-back-to-bite-them</font></a></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his henchmen have eagerly dug for a Biden scandal in Ukraine. Now it’s coming back to bite them</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Bob Cesca / Salon September 10, 2019</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Donald Trump grows noticeably more desperate, he’s blundering his way into more unforced errors, metaphorically stepping on a series of rakes scattered on the White House lawn. With each careless step onto another rake, he keeps clobbering himself in the face again and again. In particular, Trump appears to be setting a trap for Joe Biden, should the former vice president win the Democratic nomination next year. But it’s a plot that’s already backfiring. After all, my rule remains: Trump always makes things worse for Trump.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before we dig into the latest harrowing developments on this front, let’s review. Back in May, I wrote about a story originally reported by the New York Times involving Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden and Ukraine.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Late in the Obama administration, Joe Biden was dispatched to Kiev, armed with a relatively severe ultimatum. While there, the Times reported, Biden threatened to withhold a billion dollars in government loans unless the then-prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was fired. Shortly thereafter, Shokin was indeed fired and replaced by Yuriy Lutsenko. The cash was released.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Here’s where it gets hinky — but not really. Prior to Biden arriving in Kiev, an investigation had been underway by prosecutor Shokin into a natural gas company called Burisma Holdings. One of the corporation’s board members was Hunter Biden, the vice president’s son and a New York lawyer who apparently pulled down a salary of $50,000 per month for his position with the company.</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While it may look as if Biden exploited the loan money as leverage in order to kill an investigation into a corporation that employed his son, Bloomberg learned that the Burisma investigation had been shuttled to the back burner in 2015 before Biden’s trip and, the report added, the Obama administration’s intention was to convince the Ukrainian government to crack down on corruption in general.</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A former Ukrainian official, Vitaliy Kasko, told Bloomberg, “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against [Mykola] Zlochevsky.” Zlochevsky is the founder and owner of Burisma.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Fast forward to 2019. Somewhere around the time Rudy Giuliani held meetings with prosecutor Lutsenko in New York, Ukraine reopened the case against Burisma in March of this year (although Bloomberg disputes this detail as well). The Times also reported that Lutsenko took up the case again in order “to curry favor from the Trump administration for his boss and ally.”</b></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bloomberg and the New York Times agree in their reporting that Burisma was a topic of conversation between Giuliani and Lutsenko in Manhattan.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">However, since Ukraine elected a new president, 41-year-old Volodymyr Zelensky, a reformer who’s not beholden to the Kremlin, prosecutor Lutsenko was replaced by Ruslan Riaboshapka in late August. So this means the Trumpers have to start from scratch, trying to convince the new Ukrainian government to keep digging into Hunter and Joe Biden. Naturally, Rudy answered the call, meeting with officials from the Zelensky administration in Madrid, according to the Times and confirmed by Giuliani, where Trump’s TV lawyer tried once again to convince Ukraine to focus on the Bidens.</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The meeting must’ve gone badly because Trump has decided Prime Minister Zelensky isn’t an ally, and it probably doesn’t help that Zelensky isn’t a Putin disciple. Consequently, Trump has withheld $250 million in promised military aid to Ukraine, all while Ukraine continues to fight off Putin’s loyalists in that region. Trump also refuses to invite Zelensky to the White House.</b></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yes, it’s another gigantic, sloppy tongue-kiss for Putin from the president, further confirming Trump’s ongoing status as Putin’s puppet, endangering U.S. national security and undermining democracy here and elsewhere. And that’s not all …</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It’s also collusion in plain sight</b>.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump and Giuliani are busily blackmailing Ukraine, leaving it vulnerable to Putin’s aggression, in order to strong-arm Zelensky into helping the Trump campaign defeat Joe Biden by manufacturing the whopper Democratic scandal of the 2020 election cycle.</span></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As the Washington Post editorial board observed last week, “Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using U.S. military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.”</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Fortunately, the House Intelligence Committee, along with both the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, will launch simultaneous investigations into Trump’s and Giuliani’s attempted collusion with Ukraine. Intelligence Committee chair&nbsp;<b>Adam Schiff, D-Calif.,</b>&nbsp;said in a statement:</font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A growing public record indicates that, for nearly two years, the President and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, appear to have acted outside legitimate law enforcement and diplomatic channels to coerce the Ukrainian government into pursuing two politically-motivated investigations under the guise of anti-corruption activity. As the 2020 election draws closer, President Trump and his personal attorney appear to have increased pressure on the Ukrainian government and its justice system in service of President Trump’s reelection campaign, and the White House and the State Department may be abetting this scheme.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What separates this investigation from the ongoing 2016 Trump-Russia collusion probe is the clear-as-crystal fact that Giuliani confessed to meeting with Andrii Telizhenko in May, and with Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak in August to try to make it all happen. The Trumpers stupidly wanted everyone to know what they were doing in order to hamfistedly inject the Biden story into the conservative-entertainment complex.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ever the impulsive, erratic doofuses, the Trump team badly botched the story and instead of keeping their powder dry, they circled back for more. I guess William Barr’s factually inaccurate summary of the Mueller report convinced Trump that he could get away with anything, no matter how obviously corrupt it was. As a result, we’re looking at yet another impeachment article added to the conga-line of high crimes committed by this White House.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, none of this will keep Trump from amplifying the Biden story when the time comes. Regardless of the facts and irrespective of further revelations from the congressional committees, Trump will frame the story as Biden colluding with Ukraine. The Republicans are never afraid of projection, that’s for sure. Worse, Trump will accuse the House committees of also colluding with Ukraine if and when documents are requested from Kiev, including a transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The good news is that the story is complicated and therefore not easily summarized by a Trump tweet or with a rally zinger for Trump’s Red Hats to repeat like the dutiful fanboys they are. Democrats will have plenty of time to prepare a defense, knowing exactly where Trump is headed with this non-scandal. There’s also the distinct possibility this will all end up as another rake handle to Trump’s face, magnifying the fact that he’s not just grossly unfit for re-election, but grossly unfit to continue serving his first term as well.</font></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-friends-rudy-giuliani-links-911-terrorism-venezuela"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-friends-rudy-giuliani-links-911-terrorism-venezuela</font></a></span></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">video:</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><h1 class="editorial-fulltitle page-title" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 0.45455em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Fox & Friends, Rudy Giuliani links 9/11 terrorism to Venezuela</font></h1><p class="subtitle" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani: “We have to get rid of Maduro”</font></p></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><p class="yiv0560478744headline3" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">T<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/zwsdlgfvftzkzlqqkbpffkfqqbkqvswcdtfzprgsbpb_izghyczcwymmcgngdmh.html?a=&b=248&c=21989&d=2">rump’s Roy Cohns: William Barr has the power, but Rudy Giuliani slings the mud</a></font></font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding" style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While he was in Japan, Donald Trump demanded that the…</font></p></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 519</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><p class="yiv6050557005headline3" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">T<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/cdgqlkmvmnhfhlzzfgpmmfmzzgfzvcjsqnmhptkccml_rvnrclwlpcgglcnltkn.html?a=&b=262&c=21989&d=2">his one act by Giuliani and his friends in the FBI could have been responsible for Trump’s win</a></font></font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding" style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Rudy Giuliani engineered the infamous "Comey letter" of October…</font></p></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/world/rudy-giuliani-lobbyists-joseph-kabila-democratic-republic-congo">https://www.alternet.org/world/rudy-giuliani-lobbyists-joseph-kabila-democratic-republic-congo</a></font></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Tuesday,&nbsp;<u>The Independent&nbsp;</u><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/rudy-giuliani-congo-sanctions-trump-us-joseph-kabila-lobbying-human-rights-corruption-a8677376.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a>&nbsp;that President Donald Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, met with lobbyists from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for a reception at a D.C. hotel in July:</font></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An invitation for the reception billed it as an opportunity to learn about "the role Africa plays in gaining access to critical minerals, such as cobalt" and to discuss "the strategic relationship" between the United States and the nations of Africa.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, the reception was part of an aggressive $8 million lobbying and public relations campaign that used lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration to try to ease concerns about Congolese President Joseph Kabila, whose government was facing threats of additional sanctions from the Trump administration for human rights abuses and corruption.</font></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.unwatch.org/dr-congo-elected-top-u-n-rights-body-despite-widespread-human-rights-violations/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Joseph Kabila</a>&nbsp;became leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo following the assassination of his father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila. His second term was supposed to end in 2016 and he is constitutionally barred from running again, but he has resisted any transition of power or free elections, which were finally scheduled to take place&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1491096/congo-elections-calm-storm" style="text-decoration-line: none;">later this month</a>. Kabila's regime has been accused of extrajudicial arrests and killings, torture, political corruption, use of child soldiers, and persecution of women and LGBTQ persons.</font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><interaction data-token="5b96855f8198b4e625350260" data-context="true" data-tags="" data-fallback="true" /></font><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration has imposed sanctions and tariffs on a number of countries. Some of these, like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-venezuela/u-s-sanctions-venezuela-officials-trump-slams-maduro-idUSKCN1M51WC" style="text-decoration-line: none;">targeted sanctions against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro</a>, arguably serve a purpose, while others, like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/insulting-and-unacceptable-justin-trudeau-delivers-stunning-rebuke-trump-labeling" style="text-decoration-line: none;">tariffs on Canada</a>, make no sense.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Autocratic regimes facing sanctions, however, have stepped up their lobbying efforts to fight back, and per&nbsp;<em>The Independent</em>, they have been spurred "by the willingness projected by Mr Trump and his team to make deals around sanctions and tariffs exemptions."</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The worry is that while previous administrations had career officials following strict guidelines to review foreign lobbying efforts free of political concerns, this president and his officials are uniquely responsive to personal gain. Trump has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/trump-reportedly-skeptical-cia-determination-saudi-crown-prince-ordered-khashoggi-murder" style="text-decoration-line: none;">dragged his feet</a>&nbsp;on condemning the Jamal Khashoggi killing by Saudi Arabia, a country whose royal family is&nbsp;<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4545128/donald-trump-saudi-arabia-business-ties/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">heavily invested</a>&nbsp;in his real estate empire. And it is increasingly looking like one of Trump's motivations for his close ties to Russia was his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/11/30/18119670/michael-cohen-trump-tower-moscow-explained" style="text-decoration-line: none;">desire to build real estate in Moscow</a>.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American people, and the whole international order, deserve assurances that the Trump administration is not going to decide how strongly to pursue human rights issues based on the flattery and perks offered his team by lobbyists.</font></p></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trump inc broadcast, many connections to russia, armenian geoncide and manafort client cty</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/one-biggest-fraud-cases-ever-trump-biographer-david-cay-johnston-uncovers-rudy-giulianis-alleged">https://www.alternet.org/one-biggest-fraud-cases-ever-trump-biographer-david-cay-johnston-uncovers-rudy-giulianis-alleged</a></font></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">human rights organization has asked Dutch prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into multi-billion dollar money laundering schemes that they say were aided by Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his old law firm.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.dcreport.org/2018/10/31/group-calls-investigation-of-guiliani-trump-money-laundering-scheme/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This story first appeared at DC Report.</font></a></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The&nbsp;<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JbYNPb4fusoOnGegmVDh5mcmRtNUROnD/view?usp=sharing" style="text-decoration-line: none;">complaint is clearly aimed at examining how much money stolen from a former Soviet satellite ended up benefitting Trump</a>. He is named 16 times in the complaint’s footnotes.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The complaint describes “one of the biggest fraud cases ever” in which “some of these money flows ultimately ended up in the Netherlands” because “Dutch service providers helped to cover up the money laundering acts."</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The money laundering network started in Kazakhstan, where a figure of up to USD 10 billion was purportedly embezzled,” the complaint asserts. “This money was subsequently circulated by two Kazakh oligarch families via a worldwide network of shell companies. A number of these companies were established in the Netherlands. The money was subsequently invested in real estate projects in the United States and Europe, after which it was paid out as ‘profits’ via – once again – a network of shell companies.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Netherlands banks and other firms play a significant role in illicit flows of cash around the world through sophisticated techniques to hide income and corporate profits. Many of these techniques appear to push the envelope on legal tax avoidance. When money laundering is involved these aggressive techniques could cross a line into aiding and abetting criminal tax evasion.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The complaint asserts that a small slice of the missing billions was run through Dutch shell corporations with help from Rudy Giuliani’s old law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani. Until 2016, Giuliani was a partner in the 470-lawyer firm.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neither Giuliani nor anyone at his firm&nbsp;<a href="https://www.giulianisecurity.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Giuliani Security & Safety LLC</a>&nbsp;responded to requests for his side of the story. Multiple requests for comment prompted no response from Greg M. Bopp, managing partner of&nbsp;<a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/01/19/bracewell-giuliani-is-losing-giuliani/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">what was then Bracewell & Giuliani</a>&nbsp;but is now called only&nbsp;<a href="https://bracewelllaw.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Bracewell</a>.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The complaint was filed by&nbsp;<a href="https://secure.avaaz.org/page/en/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Avaaz</a>, a global human rights organization in Washington which claims 48 million members. It has issued an open call to prosecutors around the world to investigate “the giant web of corruption” that it says propelled Trump’s rise.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Avaaz says it has approximately 290,000 members in the Netherlands. The complaint was filed Oct. 22 with J.J.M. van Dis-Setz of the Dutch Public Prosecution Service by Barbara van Straaten, a lawyer in Amsterdam.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The complaint filed with the Netherlands Public Prosecution Service in Amsterdam relies on court records from several countries that were dug up by investigative journalists, including James S. Henry, the investigative economics editor of DCReport.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Dutch television program Zembla aired an&nbsp;<a href="https://zembla.bnnvara.nl/nieuws/the-dubious-friends-of-donald-trump-the-russians" style="text-decoration-line: none;">investigative piece on Trump and his Russian associates</a>&nbsp;in 2017. It followed up with&nbsp;<a href="https://zembla.bnnvara.nl/nieuws/trump-business-partner-accused-of-involvement-in-dutch-based-money-laundering-scheme" style="text-decoration-line: none;">an expose of a Trump business partner’s role in a Dutch money laundering scheme</a>.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The complaint is aimed at uncovering the full details of Russian money flowing to various Trump projects using so-called anonymous wealth companies. Those are shell companies created to hide the identities of the owners. Trump and his family are known to have received vast sums from shell companies and have bragged about how much of it came from people in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet empire. Trump contends the deals were all lawful and he has no knowledge of any money laundering.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A criminal investigation by Dutch prosecutors could help that country avoid banking sanctions and loss of reputation by showing that Amsterdam enforces its own laws and respects laws on transnational crimes.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roughly $10 billion was stolen from Kazakhstan, a former Soviet satellite located in Central Asia. The current Kazakh government is in court in Switzerland and elsewhere trying to recover the money and prosecute members of two families it says stole the money and laundered it in the West. Other lawsuits connected to the stolen money are being litigated in London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The $10 billion theft was uncovered by PricewaterhouseCoopers during its 2009 audit of BTA Bank, the largest in Kazakhstan. In addition, there is about $300 million missing from Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Court documents identify the suspected thieves as Viktor Khrapunov and Mukhtar Ablyazov, oligarchs whose families are bound not just by extensive business ties, but also by marriage. Khrapunov is the former mayor of Almaty. His son Illyas is married to Ablyazov’s daughter.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There are strong indications that the revenues of these crimes were probably mixed via a complex money-laundering network, and there was a great deal of mutual overlap” between the companies and people suspected of the crimes, the complaint states.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both Khrapunov and Ablyazov are fugitives.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Khrapunov, who was tried in absentia in Kazakhstan, has been convicted of corruption.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ablyazov, who was president of the looted bank, had his worldwide assets with an estimated value of $4.9 billion frozen six years ago by a British High Court.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has done business since 1983 with Russian oligarchs and wealthy former officials and business people in former Soviet satellites, including Kazakhstan, Georgia and Azerbaijan. A number of mobsters – American, Russian and others – live in Trump Tower apartments. The building has long been known to local, federal and international law enforcement as a nest of criminal residences.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1987 the Kremlin, then still a communist state, provided Trump and his first wife Ivana with a luxury trip to Russia.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While a number of journalistic investigations have looked into Trump’s dealings with oligarchs and their money using public records and sources they were limited to public records, which are often scant. Dutch prosecutors, however, have the power to subpoena banking and other records, forcing their disclosure to prosecutors and, potentially, the public.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump is known to have done deals with some of those mentioned in the complaint, including Felix Sater, a violent Long Island felon who was born in Russia. For years Sater traveled extensively with Trump working on deals named in the complaint and handing out his Trump Organization business card. Despite these long ties and both videos and still photos showing the men together, Trump claimed during the presidential campaign that he would not recognize Sater if they were in the same room.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sater is believed to be&nbsp;<a href="https://newrepublic.com/minutes/143736/trump-worry-felix-sater-cooperating-federal-investigators" style="text-decoration-line: none;">cooperating with Robert Mueller</a>, the American special prosecutor investigating Trump.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In one deal involving Sater, millions of dollars from the Trump SoHo hotel and apartment tower disappeared into an Icelandic bank that was under the control of a Russian oligarch. That bank was part of a multi-billion-dollar scheme to defraud Dutch and British pension funds. Trump has testified that he was due 18% of profits from the building.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The faux gold letters bearing the name, under an agreement reached a year ago, have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-name-is-coming-off-his-soho-hotel-as-politics-weigh-on-presidents-brand/2017/11/22/2f179bb2-cfc1-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html?utm_term=.653804bd8249" style="text-decoration-line: none;">pried from the building façade</a>.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just three weeks before the 2016 election, a massive expose of Trump’s role in helping Kazakh oligarchs hide their illicit money appeared in The Financial Times, a British business newspaper.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Dirty Money: Trump and the Kazakh Connection” described “evidence a Trump venture has links to alleged laundering network.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The newspaper said its investigation found that Trump had “assembled an eclectic collection of backers and collaborators. Some had chequered pasts, with links to organized crime or fraud schemes. But perhaps the biggest risk for Mr. Trump’s complex, often opaque, business empire was that it might be used for a purpose US officials fear is rife in the country’s real estate sector: laundering dirty money.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s SoHo project “has multiple ties to an alleged international money laundering network. Title deeds, bank records and correspondence show that a Kazakh family accused of laundering hundreds of millions of stolen dollars bought luxury apartments in a Manhattan tower part-owned by Mr. Trump and embarked on major business ventures with one of the tycoon’s partners,” the British newspaper&nbsp;<i>The Financial Times</i>reported after an extensive investigation.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his partners, the FT asserted, engaged in condo sales that appear to have violated the Patriot Act, the post 9/11 law that requires banks, developers and others to know who their customers are and the sources of their money.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigations to identify anonymous buyers of luxury apartments in New York and Florida to determine the extent of any money laundering were announced in January 2016 by the federal government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three months later the FinCEN director, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, spoke about her years of work on transnational&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fincen.gov/news/speeches/jennifer-shasky-calvery-director-financial-crimes-enforcement-network-6" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Russian organized crime networks</a>. Much of her work involved Russian crime families “laundering their funds through the U.S. financial system. Often, this involved the suspected purchase of personal residences with criminal proceeds.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In July 2016, the month the GOP nominated Trump, FinCen announced it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-expands-reach-real-estate-geographic-targeting-orders-beyond-manhattan" style="text-decoration-line: none;">would be investigating sales of luxury apartments beyond New York</a>&nbsp;and Florida because of its growing concern about flows of illicit cash disguised in real estate deals.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Giuliani calls himself Trump’s personal lawyer, his role is primarily to spread Trumpian disinformation about Special Prosecutor Mueller’s investigations into Russian collusion and related matters concerning Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign. Because Giuliani appears on so many cable and other television shows, but not in court, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell calls the former New York City mayor “Trump’s TV lawyer."</font></p></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/rudy-giulianis-repeated-travel-russia-and-former-soviet-countries-while-serving">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/rudy-giulianis-repeated-travel-russia-and-former-soviet-countries-while-serving</a></font></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani has had many identities in his time on the public stage. A crusading federal prosecutor who struck terror in mobsters and Wall Street titans alike. A sometimes-cantankerous New York City mayor who became a national hero for his stirring leadership after the 9/11 attacks. And, currently, President Donald Trump’s unpaid attorney in the Russia collusion investigation being led by Robert Mueller.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/trump-inc-rudy-inc?" style="text-decoration-line: none;">this week’s episode</a>&nbsp;of “Trump, Inc.,” we’re digging into a part of Giuliani’s work that has occurred largely outside of the spotlight: He has often traveled to Russia or other former Soviet states as guests of powerful players there. And since Trump was elected, he appears to have stepped up the frequency of those trips.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just last week, for example,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Giuliani appeared in the former Soviet republic of Armenia, which has close trade ties with Russia. He was invited, according to local press accounts, by Ara Abramyan, an Armenian businessman who lives in Russia. Abramyan once helped reconstruct the Kremlin and also received a medal for “merit to the fatherland” from President Vladimir Putin of Russia.</span>&nbsp;Giuliani said he was in Armenia as a private citizen, but on a local TV news show, Abramyan implied that he expected Giuliani to carry a message for him to Trump. (The conversation was in Armenian, so it’s not clear whether Giuliani understood what Abramyan was saying.)</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/exclusive-senators-are-demanding-information-about-giulianis-opioid-lobbying/">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/exclusive-senators-are-demanding-information-about-giulianis-opioid-lobbying/</a></font></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">many docs</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">More than a decade ago, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma approached Rudy Giuliani, then fresh off a stint as&nbsp;the lauded mayor of New York City, asking for help:&nbsp;The little-known pharmaceutical company needed a trusted lawyer to help fight growing public relations and legal battles. It was 2002,</span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<b>Purdue was facing its first lawsuits accusing the company of underplaying the addictive effects of its signature drug</b>.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By the time Purdue sought Giuliani’s guidance,&nbsp;he&nbsp;was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/us/politics/28oxycontin.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">reportedly</a>&nbsp;helping raise money for a&nbsp;museum dedicated to the Drug Enforcement Administration and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, was consulting the Justice Department on reorganizing its major drug investigations.</span></font></font></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Recent developments cast a new light on the arrangement: Today, Giuliani serves as President Donald Trump’s lawyer, and Purdue Pharma is largely&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">viewed</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;as responsible for helping&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2017/12/a-brief-blood-boiling-history-of-the-opioid-epidemic/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">sow the seeds</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;of&nbsp;the current overdose epidemic, which killed roughly&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/overdoses-2017-record-high/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">72,000 Americans</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;last year. Purdue employed Giuliani Partners for years, clad with&nbsp;its founder’s shiny post-9/11 reputation and political connections. When a federal investigation in the mid-2000s threatened company executives with the</span><b style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;">&nbsp;prospect of felonies and jail time</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">, the firm helped Purdue’s top brass get off with misdemeanor “misbranding”&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.vawd.uscourts.gov/OPINIONS/JONES/107CR00029.PDF" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">convictions</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">community service</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;in 2007.</span><b style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;</span>Purdue Pharma’s parent company, Purdue Frederick, pleaded&nbsp;<a href="http://www.vawd.uscourts.gov/OPINIONS/JONES/107CR00029.PDF" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">guilty</a>&nbsp;to a misbranding felony that cost it $600 million, but Giuliani helped strike a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/22/rudy-giuliani-opioid-epidemic-oxycontin-purdue-pharma" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">deal</a>&nbsp;that enabled Purdue Pharma to continue&nbsp;selling its blockbuster painkiller OxyContin.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;“Among Mr. Giuliani’s missions was the job of convincing public officials that&nbsp;</span><b style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;">they could trust Purdue because they could trust him</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">,” as the&nbsp;</span><em style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit;">New York Times</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/us/politics/28oxycontin.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">put it</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">&nbsp;that year.&nbsp;</span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><p style="text-align: left; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Wednesday, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sent letters to the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration requesting information on the respective agencies’ contact with Giuliani Partners. The letters, shared with&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Mother Jones</em>,&nbsp;draw heavily on a recent&nbsp;<b><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">New York Times</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">investigation</a>&nbsp;</b>finding that federal prosecutors knew about OxyContin’s widespread abuse and originally recommended that Purdue executives be charged with felonies, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.<b>&nbsp;But top Justice Department officials in the George W. Bush administration pushed back—deciding instead to settle the case in 2007 rather than take it to trial.&nbsp;</b>The letters also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/us/politics/28oxycontin.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">cite</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/05/oxycontin-purdue-pharma-federal-investigation-dopesick-excerpt-219158" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">investigations</a>&nbsp;suggesting that&nbsp;<b>Giuliani used his political connections to influence the relatively lenient outcome of the federal suit,</b>&nbsp;<b>as well as the&nbsp;lax approach the Drug Enforcement Administration took in curbing misuse of the drug.&nbsp;</b></font></span></font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to asking for documentation of communications between the federal agencies and Giuliani Partners, the letters ask pointed questions about Giuliani himself, such as “What steps were taken to ensure that Giuliani’s other relationships with DOJ and its components did not improperly influence plea negotiations?”</font></p><p class="p1" style="text-align: left; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent years, dozens of states and municipalities have filed lawsuits against opioid makers and distributors including Purdue, alleging that the overdose epidemic has caused a strain on public resources. Last week, Trump&nbsp;<a href="http://major%20lawsuit/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">asked</a>&nbsp;Attorney General Jeff Sessions to bring a separate, “major lawsuit” against opioid companies.&nbsp;</font></p><p class="p1" style="text-align: left; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Given that Mr. Giuliani has emerged as one of the President’s closest advisors, it’s important that we determine whether his past work on behalf of Purdue, a company that misled prescribers and patients alike about the addictive nature of its drug OxyContin, will influence this administration’s actions in terms of holding Purdue accountable for the devastating impact of its aggressive marketing of this drug,” wrote Ricki Eshman,</span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;Hassan’s press secretary.</span></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read the full letters below:...</font></p><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">am 1st</font></p><p gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" arial="Arial" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="text-align: left; user-select: text; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">another question from February, as shown in the above screenshot from one of the group's reports, respondents were reminded that&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">large companies had given out employee bonuses before they were asked if they agreed with House Minority Leader&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/nancy-pelosi/" gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" style="user-select: text; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Nancy Pelosi</a>'s comment that worker bonuses were "crumbs" compared with corporate windfalls.</span>&nbsp;The results were surprising: A plurality of voters agreed with Pelosi, despite the lopsided question. This would suggest that for Republicans, using the "crumbs" comment as an attack line against Democrats in 2018 campaigns, which Trump has suggested they do, may not be a good idea.</font></p><p gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" arial="Arial" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="text-align: left; user-select: text; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the past six months,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;CNBC monitored<b>&nbsp;America First Policies</b>' website and found hundreds of pages of polling and research paid for by donors whose names are permitted to be kept secret. Much of this polling has since been removed from the site, but a portion of the removed documents are still available online.</span></font></font></p><p gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" arial="Arial" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="text-align: left; user-select: text; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">America First Policies is not the first nonprofit group created to advance a president's priorities, nor is it the first to conduct intensive polling. Two Obama-linked groups, Priorities USA and Organizing for Action, did the same thing. Priorities USA did not disclose its donors, but OFA did voluntarily, releasing quarterly donor lists.</font></font></p><p gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" arial="Arial" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="text-align: left; user-select: text; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But by hiring the Trump campaign's pollsters to conduct such a large and secretive Trump-focused data operation, and paying for it with dark money, America First Policies is going well beyond what previous outside nonprofit groups have done.</font></font></p><p gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" arial="Arial" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="text-align: left; user-select: text; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While a political committee such as the RNC is designed and expected to collect information that helps to win elections, a nonprofit group such as&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">America First Policies — permitted to operate tax-free and accept unlimited donations from donors whose names can be kept secret — is not.</span></font></font></p><p gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" arial="Arial" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="text-align: left; user-select: text; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"So you have a situation where large donors are contributing to America First Policies with the understanding that their secret donations are going to be seen as valuable by the president, because this group appears to work so closely with the White House,</span>" said Campaign Legal Center's Fischer. "And because these donors are secret, the public and Congress will never know if the White House later took action to advance a donor's interests."</font></p><p gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" arial="Arial" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="text-align: left; user-select: text; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to a slew of senior advisors with ties to Trump, America First Policies has three board members, all of whom are also close to the Trump White House. Its chairman, Tommy Hicks Jr., is the son of a billionaire and a good friend of Donald Trump Jr.&nbsp;<a class="inline_asset" href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/trump-campaign-co-chair-was-part-of-team-pushing-to?utm_term=.guRplmAwN#.tb5M8pwxB" title="https://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/trump-campaign-co-chair-was-part-of-team-pushing-to?utm_term=.guRplmAwN#.tb5M8pwxB" gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" style="user-select: text; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">He has also reportedly brokered White House introductions for companies</a>&nbsp;seeking business with the Trump administration.</font></p><p gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" arial="Arial" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="text-align: left; user-select: text; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another board member<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, Dallas financial executive Roy Bailey, serves as managing director and founding partner of Giuliani Partners LLC,&nbsp;</span>along with former New York City mayor and longtime Trump ally Rudy Giuliani<b>. The newest board member is Harold Hamm, a shale oil billionaire&nbsp;<a class="inline_asset" href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-energy-hamm/oil-mogul-hamm-tops-trump-list-for-u-s-energy-secretary-sources-idUSKBN1392AU" title="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-energy-hamm/oil-mogul-hamm-tops-trump-list-for-u-s-energy-secretary-sources-idUSKBN1392AU" gotham="Gotham" narrow="Narrow" ssm="SSm" r="r" style="user-select: text; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">who was Trump's top pick for energy secretary</a>&nbsp;but reportedly turned down the job.</b></font></font></p></div><div style="text-align: left; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight">=</span></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bunch of stuff i missed?</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">old prutt nom</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Industry representatives expressed satisfaction with the choice Wednesday.&nbsp;</b><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"The office he headed was present and accounted for in the battle to keep EPA faithful to its statutory authority and respectful of the role of the states in our system of cooperative federalism," said</span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">&nbsp;Scott Segal, head of the policy group at the lobbying and legal firm Bracewell</span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">. "Given that we are almost two decades overdue for an overhaul of the Clean Air Act, there is interest on both sides of the aisle to look at that statute."</span></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.gq.com/story/spygate-conspiracy-theory-explained" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.gq.com/story/spygate-conspiracy-theory-explained</a></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Spygate: How Right-Wing Media Creates a Conspiracy Theory Out of Thin Air</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">BY JAY WILLIS</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>This is how conservative media transformed a small news item into a full-blown conspiracy theory that the president (apparently) believes to be true.</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The plot goes like this:</b>&nbsp;During the summer of 2016, on the clandestine orders of then-president Barack Obama, the FBI and CIA hatched an ambitious plan to topple the Trump campaign from the inside. In a scandal of unprecedented scope, Democratic politicians commandeered American counterintelligence resources to spy on their primary political opponent and boost Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the election. The Russia investigation that has dominated headlines for nearly two years is, in fact, a desperate smokescreen conjured up by terrified Deep State actors to conceal evidence of their own wrongdoing, and to frame the president for heinous crimes he didn't commit.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">On May 8, The Washington Post reported on the White House's decision to back the Justice Department's withholding of information from House Intelligence Committee&nbsp;<b>chairman Devin Nunes,</b>&nbsp;on the grounds that disclosure would expose the identity of "a U.S. citizen who has provided information to the FBI and CIA." The authors added, though, that the individual had been a source of information used by the special counsel's office—and that it was unclear whether Trump knew this "key fact" when his administration chose to side with law enforcement.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It didn't take long for him to find out. Almost immediately, the right-wing-media ecosystem began laundering and repackaging this news item, weaving its constituent elements together with Trumpian talking points until a full-blown conspiracy theory worthy of the president's tweets emerged on the other side. This metamorphosis is what would happen if a word cloud sourced from a Trump rally were used in a giant game of telephone—but one in which the gibberish end result were then broadcast as news to hundreds of millions of recipients.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">How did this happen?</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">May 10</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Two days after the initial report, citing "the Washington Post's unnamed law-enforcement leakers," The Wall Street Journal publishes an analysis by conservative commentator Kim Strassel</span>. "[W]e might take this to mean that the FBI secretly had a person on the payroll who used his or her non-FBI credentials to interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign." Such a development, she writes, "would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting." Strassel continues (all emphasis mine):</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">[W]hen precisely was this human source operating? Because if it was prior to that infamous Papadopoulos tip, then the FBI isn’t being straight. It would mean the bureau was spying on the Trump campaign prior to that moment. And that in turn would mean that the FBI had been spurred to act on the basis of something other than a junior campaign aide’s loose lips.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This is at once cautious and bold, introducing the salacious vocabulary of espionage to a detail about an intelligence source—but only, she clarifies, if the allegations are true. Strassel does not offer a reason for entertaining her hypothetical, other than her characterization of the players' accounts of the investigation as "suspiciously vague."<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">She is, in the classic style of&nbsp;<b>well-compensated public intellectuals</b>&nbsp;filling up column inches, just asking question</span>s.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That night, other journalists are happy to offer answers. On&nbsp;<b>Sean Hannity's Fox News show, journalist Sara Carter, citing Strassel,&nbsp;</b>tells listeners of “concern that the FBI actually had a spy within the Trump campaign.” Hannity is dumbfounded: “What? What?” he splutters.&nbsp;</span>"Yes," replies Carter. Blogs like Gateway Pundit kick off the breathless hyperbole category. "Now we know why the Deep State has been working so hard to take down President Trump and the republic," said the post, linking to and block-quoting Strassel. "OBAMA DEEP STATE HAD A SPY INSIDE THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN!"</div><div style="text-align: left;">
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">May 11</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The baton is passed to Fox News, which syndicates Strassel's article and changes the headline from “About that FBI ‘source’” to “Did the FBI place a mole inside the 2016 Trump campaign?” On Fox & Friends, the president's morning program of choice, Pete Hegseth weighs in, hesitantly at first.&nbsp;</span>"Did the FBI have a spy in the Trump campaign? Just asking the question. There’s an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about it." Ainsley Earhardt quotes at length from the column before positing that it means the FBI and DOJ had someone "paid to go and spy on President Trump."</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh picks up the thread,</b>&nbsp;encouraging the conflation of the FBI and President Obama. Strassel's article mentions Obama only once, and only in passing. But this is Rush Limbaugh, not a major newspaper; he can say things like this without fear of repercussions.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When I say “the FBI,” I mean the Obama administration. They infiltrated the Trump campaign with a spy, and while they had that spy implanted, they were unmasking and leaking and obtaining FISA spying warrants and conducting criminal investigations of Trump advisers. This is a big deal...For our purposes, folks, the important thing is that the Obama administration infiltrated the Trump campaign with a spy.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The buzz grows louder online. "Did the FBI have a spy in the Trump campaign?"<b>&nbsp;asks Andrew McCarthy, praising Strassel's column as "essential reporting," in a National Review article t</b>hat published early the next morning.<b>&nbsp;Right-wing blog ZeroHedge makes an affirmative statement</b>—“WSJ: The FBI Hid a Mole in the Trump Campaign”—out of his question.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Also citing Strassel, Tucker Carlson refers to a "government spy" and a "mole" sent by "the Obama administration." His guest, NRATV personality Dan Bongino, reveals that he believes there to have been more than one spy, referring to "reporting." He does not elaborate on-air.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">May 14</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The week begins with lawmakers joining the fray. On Fox & Friends, GOP congressman Ron DeSantis calls for a follow-up investigation into the matter.</b>&nbsp;"I know that we’re actively trying to get the underlying documents that would tell us: Did they spy on the Trump campaign or not?” he asks, implicitly treating the premises of that query as if they were beyond dispute.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;To Lou Dobbs on Fox Business Network, Matt Gaetz expresses unease with "reports" he'd heard "about potential human intelligence being collected on a rival presidential campaign."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>These men are egged on by, among others, Rush Limbaugh,&nbsp;</b>who asserts he knows the identity of the spy that the FBI "put in the Trump campaign," and Hannity, whose radio guest David Limbaugh—Rush's younger brother—opines that "an official policy inserting a confidential source into a presidential campaign" would be "unprecedented" and "worse than Watergate." Like DeSantis, he includes a soft qualifier, though: "If it happened! We have to get to the bottom of it."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">May 15</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Nunes appears on the Fox & Friends set, hinting that the campaign might have been "set up" by the FBI.</b>&nbsp;“I believe they never should have opened a counterintelligence investigation into a political party,” he explains. And although he at first avoids using the word "spy," his hosts are happy to put it in his mouth. Steve Doocy suggests that Nunes's narrative implies that Trump was "framed," while Earhardt adds that "it makes it sound like there was a spy."</div><div style="text-align: left;">
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Some 12 hours later, Hannity is again agape at the "possibility of an FBI mole that was inside the Trump campaign." He runs snippets of the "stunning" Nunes interview, scarcely able to believe his ears. "The powerful tools of intelligence used to spy on an opposition party candidate, and those powerful tools used against Americans?" he muses. "No, that can't happen here.</span>"</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">May 16</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On Laura Ingraham's show, Rudy Giuliani&nbsp;</span>at once broaches the subject of the FBI "possibly placing a spy in the Trump campaign"</b>&nbsp;while admitting that he doesn't know if the gossip is true. The next morning, on Fox & Friends, he’ll again dip his toes in the water before retreating to solid ground. "That would be the biggest scandal in the history of this town—at least, involving law enforcement," Giuliani warns.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He's intrigued by the possibility, though. "Maybe two spies!" he wonders aloud.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Meanwhile, outside the MAGAsphere, a New York Times article helps breathe new life into the conspiracy theory.</b>&nbsp;The authors of that report—an account of the 2016 law-enforcement inquiry into the Trump campaign—note that “at least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos.” Referring to the preceding week of innuendo, they characterize this detail as a “politically contentious point, with Mr. Trump’s allies questioning whether the F.B.I. was spying on the Trump campaign or trying to entrap campaign officials.”</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As noted by USA Today's Brad Heath, FBI guidelines allow agents to use informants, among many other methods of information-gathering, when assessing whether a matter warrants a full criminal investigation. The Bureau's partial reliance on a "source" here isn't especially remarkable.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Furthermore, given their knowledge of the Kremlin's election-meddling efforts, it isn't difficult to understand why the intelligence community might have an interest in a campaign's ties to Russia, regardless of the candidate's political affiliation.&nbsp;<b>Marco Rubio—</b>a man not known for being fond of Hillary Clinton—said as much after reviewing the underlying evidence along with the rest of the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which found no secret political motivation for opening the inquiry. “There was a growing body of evidence that a foreign government was attempting to interfere in both the process and the debate surrounding our elections, and their job is to investigate counterintelligence,” he reasoned in comments cited by the Times. “That’s what they did.”</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It doesn't matter. One little opening is all it takes.&nbsp;<b>Breitbart</b>, mentioning the May 8 Post story and Strassel's follow-up, proclaims that the Times report "confirmed" that the FBI ran a "spy operation on the Trump campaign that involved government informants, secret subpoenas, and possible wiretaps." (The article itself mentions only the FISA warrant on Page, but the headline's<b>&nbsp;plural form—"wiretaps"</b>—does its job of making things sound especially ominous.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">May 17</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Other right-wing outlets aggregating the Times&nbsp;</b>report draw the same conclusions Breitbart did. “FBI officials admit they spied on the Trump campaign,” blares The Federalist, which justifies its assertion with a helpful explanatory aside.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This paragraph [in the Times report] is noteworthy for the way it describes spying on the campaign—“at least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos”—before suggesting that might not be spying. The definition of spying is to secretly collect information, so it’s not really in dispute whether a government informant fits the bill.”</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Note that the write-up does not actually suggest that the FBI "planted" anyone in the campaign. But by setting out an expansive definition of "spying," articles like this one allow other publications—ones that might not so carefully define their terms—to use the word in that more specific (and more nefarious) context.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>It is the National Review's coverage—assisted by cable news—that finally allows this story to reach the hallways of the Executive Residence.&nbsp;</b>"With the blessing of the Obama White House," writes Andrew McCarthy, again attributing the actions of law-enforcement officials to affirmative decisions of the then-president, the FBI "took the powers that enable our government to spy on foreign adversaries and used them to spy on Americans—Americans who just happened to be their political adversaries."</span>He continues:</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Obviously, Russia was trying to meddle in the election, mainly through cyber-espionage—hacking. There would, then, have been nothing inappropriate about the FBI’s opening up a counterintelligence investigation against Russia. Indeed, it would have been irresponsible not to do so. That’s what counterintelligence powers are for.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">But opening up a counterintelligence investigation against Russia is not the same thing as opening up a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is the thrust of his argument, and it is nonsensical. McCarthy seems to assume that counterintelligence investigations "against Russia" and counterintelligence investigations "against the Trump campaign" must be mutually exclusive propositions,</span>&nbsp;and that under no circumstances could a Russia-related intelligence probe look at the activities of Russia-related Trump officials. (His analysis is aided by a gross oversimplification of a key provision of FISA.) It would be "irresponsible," he urges, not to investigate what Russia may have been doing. But by virtue of their affiliation with a politician, everyone on the campaign should be insulated from any attendant scrutiny.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Before his column publishes, McCarthy hops on Fox & Friends to promote it.</b>&nbsp;“There’s probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign,” he says in a strange moment of confidence and timidity. (In a fun, incestuous right-wing-media aside, while listing McCarthy's credentials, F&F co-host Brian Kilmeade adds, "Hopefully a Fox News contributor soon.") Not long afterward, Trump takes to Twitter to express his outrage, shouting out McCarthy by name for a job well done.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Donald J. Trump</div><div style="text-align: left;">?</div><div style="text-align: left;">@realDonaldTrump</div><div style="text-align: left;">&nbsp;Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI “SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT.” Andrew McCarthy says, “There’s probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign.” If so, this is bigger than Watergate!</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">...</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Law-enforcement pushback begins in earnest.&nbsp;</b>Sources tell CNN that, no, the source was not placed within the Trump campaign. The Times provides even more details about the timeline, affirming that the informant spoke to campaign members only after the FBI learned of their dubious contacts with Russia. "No evidence has emerged," it reiterates, "that the informant acted improperly when the F.B.I. asked for help in gathering information on the former campaign advisers, or that agents veered from the F.B.I.’s investigative guidelines and began a politically motivated inquiry, which would be illegal."</div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>It's too late.</b>&nbsp;Because Donald Trump is president of the United States, the content of his tweets becomes breaking news regardless of its accuracy. "Trump: Justice Department planted spy in 2016 campaign," declares an AP headline that runs, among other places, in The Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report. The body text notes that Trump's "own lawyer" has said that the allegation "might not be true."<b>&nbsp;But for readers inclined to believe what Donald Trump says, or for those who only saw the headline as they scrolled through their social feeds, it might as well have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Epilogue: May 18–20</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The next day, the president tweets again, and again, with grateful acknowledgements for the hard work put in by Fox News personalities Lou Dobbs, David Asman, and Gregg Jarrett.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/rudy-giuliani-and-few-hard-questions-james-comey">https://www.alternet.org/rudy-giuliani-and-few-hard-questions-james-comey</a></font></div><div style="text-align: left; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight">=</span></div><div><p style="text-align: left; margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;particulate holocaust:</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The top-billed witness scheduled to provide testimony at the House hearing on Tuesday is a lawyer named&nbsp;<b>Jeffrey Holmstead, who has has worked to block the EPA’s efforts to limit mercury pollution</b>&nbsp;while representing coal companies including Duke Energy, Progress Energy, and Southern Company. Meanwhile,<b>&nbsp;Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican chair of the House Science Committee who has been zealously promoting the“secret science” bill,</b>&nbsp;is also in the pocket of the energy companies. Though he’s also received funding from Koch Industries and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2003/03/17/daily14.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">iHeartMedia</a>&nbsp;(formerly Clear Channel Communications), Smith’s biggest contributors are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2016&cid=N00001811&type=I" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">oil and gas</a>&nbsp;companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Also testifying on Tuesday will be Kimberly White&nbsp;of the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry trade group.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This bald industry bid to subvert public health-based regulations that can cut into profit isn’t new. What’s new is that this upside-down environmental attack, in which those who benefit directly from polluting industries are policing the independent scientists who can show the harms of their products, could now succeed. Although the House passed the secret science bill in 2014 and 2015, it never made it to the Senate floor. After it passed the House in 2015, Barbara Boxer called the bill “<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/240365-senators-vote-to-block-epas-use-of-secret-science" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">insane</a>,” Bernie Sanders called it “laughable,” and President Obama promised to veto it. This time, it’s not a joke. With a Republican majority in both houses and Trump in the White House, the secret science act could easily become law</font></p><div data-reactid=".ti.1.0.1.2.0.0.1.0.4.$p-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The small group of lawyers and PR strategists orchestrating the secret science effort are closely tied to those attacking the EPA from within. All have connections to either big tobacco, oil, or both — and almost all have been affiliated with a small, right-wing group called the&nbsp;<a href="https://eelegal.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;"><b>Energy & Environment Legal Institute</b></a>.</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight">&nbsp;It’s interesting that E&E should fixate on transparency since the group has gone to great lengths to conceal its donors. Nevertheless, public records document some of the group’s&nbsp;ties to big coal companies, including the now bankrupt&nbsp;</span><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/08/25/chris-horner-coal/" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" font-weight="font-weight" bold="bold" outline="outline" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box">Alpha Natural Resources</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight">,&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/06/13114/peabody-coal-bankruptcy-reveals-extensive-funding-climate-denial-network" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" font-weight="font-weight" bold="bold" outline="outline" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box">Peabody Coal</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight">, and&nbsp;</span><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2016/03/11/arch-coal-made-10000-gift-to-energy-environment-legal/" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" font-weight="font-weight" bold="bold" outline="outline" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box">Arch Coal</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight">.</span></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" /><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">E&E senior policy fellow&nbsp;<b>Steve Milloy,</b>&nbsp;a former tobacco industry attorney, has perhaps written the most — at least publicly — about the secret science strategy, both in an&nbsp;<a href="http://junkscience.com/2016/12/new-book-by-steve-milloy-scare-pollution-why-and-how-to-fix-the-epa/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">ebook</a>&nbsp;and for Steve Bannon’s&nbsp;<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/07/14/epas-fraudulent-science/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Breitbart News</a></span>. Milloy calls Myron Ebell, who oversaw Trump’s EPA transition team, his “<a href="https://twitter.com/JunkScience/status/804533797828038656" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">friend and hero</a>.” In the late 1990s, Milloy and Ebell&nbsp;were both members of the American Petroleum Institute’s Global Climate Science Communications Team, which laid out the oil industry’s strategy to undermine the science of global warming.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Meanwhile, three of Milloy’s colleagues from E&E are also members of the EPA landing team. Among them are David Schnare, E&E’s general counsel, who is perhaps best known for harassing Michael Mann and other environmental scientists with FOIA requests, and Amy Oliver Cooke, an energy industry think tanker who created MILF,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq8XaTm6ddA" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Mothers In Love with Fracking</a>.</span></font></p><p class="caption overlayed" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 20px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.27273; letter-spacing: 0.01em; word-spacing: -0.25em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid]:amy Oliver Cooke describes her love for fracking.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Two other E&E associates have been wrapped up in the secret science strategy for years. The first is Christopher Horner,&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">a senior fellow at both E&E and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who is also a member of Trump’s EPA landing team. Back in the 1990s, Horner worked for Bracewell LLP, the law firm (formerly known as Bracewell &&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2016/01/19/mayor-giuliani-to-leave-houston-based-law-firm.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Giuliani)</a>supplying the top witness at Tuesday’s&nbsp;hearing.</span>&nbsp;The dawning awareness of the dangers of second-hand smoke was putting tobacco companies on the defensive, including Horner’s client, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. In a 1996&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3445520-Horner-to-RJR-Reynolds-1996-Bracewell-Giuliani.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">memo</a>,&nbsp;which seems to be the earliest known reference to the secret science strategy, Horner laid out a plan to fight back.</font></p></div><p style="text-align: left; margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s Manhattan properties and business partners, including former Soviet Union-connected oligarchs, were involved in a larger international money-laundering scheme involving upward of $1 billion, according to Dutch filmmakers whose third installment in an investigative series aired on public TV in Holland Wednesday.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We wanted to know in depth how money was transferred from Kazakhstan to the United States and how this could relate to Donald Trump, the Trump Organization and Trump’s real estate,” said Sander Rietveld, director of&nbsp;<em><a href="https://zembla.bnnvara.nl/nieuws/the-controversial-friends-of-donald-trump-part-iii-the-billion-dollar-fraud" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump, Part III: The Multibillion-Dollar Fraud</a></em>, broadcast on Zembla, a program of the VARA Broadcasting Association.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The documentary was produced based on a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/7046-documentary-explores-dodgy-financial-ties-of-trump-associate" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">three-month collaboration</a>between Zembla, The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">OCCRP</a>)—known for the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/panamapapers/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Panama Papers</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">McClatchy</a>&nbsp;newspaper's Washington bureau (including Kevin Hall, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Panama papers). &nbsp;</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We investigated hundreds of company records, court documents in the U.S., Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Belize, etc., and interviewed dozens of sources,” he said. “The result is a follow-the-money documentary revealing the connections between several people in Trump’s orbit and an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud. Also the pivotal role of the Netherlands as an offshore haven gets attention. With Dutch help, Kazakh oligarchs allegedly were able to divert and launder huge amounts of money.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the international financiers profiled went to court in the Netherlands on Tuesday to stop the documentary from airing on public TV, but lost, Rietveld said: “Kazakh multimillion[aire] businessman-oligarch Ilyas Khrapunov tried to block this broadcast in court yesterday (Monday). Judge turned down his request and allowed airing documentary.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid]</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The filmmakers found that money taken out of Kazakhstan by energy oligarchs was used to buy some of Trump’s high-end Manhattan apartments and was also used to create the business partnership, called Bayrock, for Trump’s SoHo Tower project, said James Henry, a financial industry&nbsp;<a href="https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">investigative reporter</a>&nbsp;and editor at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dcreport.org/2017/02/25/another-cabinet-pick-with-secret-ties-to-putin-and-oligarchs/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">DCReport.org</a>&nbsp;who worked with Rietveld’s team and appears in the documentary.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The significant thing is they have got the Kazakh government saying that Bayrock was a money launderer for these guys,” Henry told AlterNet. “What is interesting, if [special counsel Robert] Mueller wants to take a look at this, is we have [Trump’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/election-2016/will-mob-connected-hustler-be-first-person-spill-beans-trump" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">mob-connected business partner</a>] Felix Sater laundering criminal money.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. laws such as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-practices-act" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Foreign Corrupt Practices Act</a>&nbsp;make it a crime to launder money tied to prior illegal acts, Henry said. The documentary, whose reporting was also developed in collaboration with McClatchy News’ Washington office, traces how investing in Trump’s Soho Tower included concealing illegal money-laundering activities. Trump did not tell other investors about any of this, as required under U.S. financial law, he said, “a continuing cover-up of money laundering.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The program is the third installment in the series profiling Trump’s business deals with international investors that appear to have violated U.S. and foreign financial laws. The first installment focused on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bEdMuKq30I" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Trump’s Russian investors</a>. Installment two looked at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvd7PqI_Lx0" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Trump family links to Kremlin-connected diamond dealers</a>. The third installment returns to Trump’s partners in his downtown New York City project, according to its online summary.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Will Donald Trump go down due to his dubious ties to the former Soviet Union?” Zembla's summary says, recapping the filmmakers’ previous findings. “The president seems to be getting in deeper and deeper. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who is investigating if Trump colluded with Russia in order to win the elections, is also digging into Trump’s past as a businessman. In that past, one of Donald Trump’s business partners plays a crucial role: Felix Sater, a convicted felon who has ties with the Russian mafia. Last May, Zembla disclosed how an American real estate company, run by Sater, used Dutch mailbox companies within a network, which has been suspected of laundering money. Allegedly $1.5 million had been diverted. Donald Trump developed&nbsp;hotels and apartment complexes with this suspicious company.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In the last few months Zembla received indications of a greater fraud,” it continued. “A billion-dollar fraud. And here Sater, Trump’s questionable business partner shows up, as well. The money trail leads to Kazakhstan, to real estate projects in New York and again to the Netherlands. Zembla investigates: How compromising is this case for the current president of America?”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Dutch documentary raises questions most American TV networks have not broached, Henry said. For one, what was the role of Trump ally and ex-New York City mayor<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Rudolph Giuliani,</b></span><b>&nbsp;who represented Sater a</b>nd raised money for his presidential campaign in Kazakhstan?</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another intriguing question involved others in Trump’s orbit as a real estate magnate and president. Wilbur Ross, Trump’s commerce secretary, was vice-chairman of a bank based on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus favored by Russian oligarchs, Henry has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dcreport.org/2017/02/25/another-cabinet-pick-with-secret-ties-to-putin-and-oligarchs/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">reported</a>. “I’m saying, ‘Let’s see Mueller do his job,'” he said. “Here’s more leads.” &nbsp;&nbsp;</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump's inner circle has gotten rich, really rich in some cases, thanks to foreign connections. A front-runner for secretary of state, Rudy Giuliani, came under scrutiny when he ran for president over his own foreign entanglements. In a disastrous "Meet the Press" interview, Giuliani squirmed and dodged as the late Tim Russert grilled him on ties to Qatar:</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MR. RUSSERT: And here's an article that was written by The Wall Street Journal. "Giuliani could face questions about his business ties if he wins his party's nomination. The Qatar contract offers a window into the" political "potential complications. While Qatar is a U.S. ally, it has drawn scrutiny for its involvement in the U.S. effort to combat terrorism. In " '96, "<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">the FBI went to Qatar to arrest al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, then under indictment in New York for a plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners. But Mr. Mohammad slipped away, apparently tipped off by an al-Qaeda sympathizer in the Qatari government,</span>&nbsp;U.S. officials told the bipartisan" September 11th "commission. Mr. Mohammad went on to mastermind the September 11th, 2001 attacks."</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Salon.com asked you this question: "Are you aware that the interior minister appointed in 2001 and reappointed this year by the emir of Qatar is Abdullah al-Thani, the former minister of Islamic affairs and a strict Wahhabi Muslim who has been identified in U.S. press and government reports as a protector of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?"</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Are you?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MR. GIULIANI: Am I aware of it?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MR. RUSSERT: Yes.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MR. GIULIANI: I-I'm, I'm aware of it now.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MR. RUSSERT: Why would you do business with people who helped Khalid Sheikh Mohammad?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MR. GIULIANI: The reality is that Qatar is an ally of the United States. There are a significant number of American troops that are stationed in Qatar. What we did for them and do for them is security for their facilities. And this is a country that is an ally of ours in the, in the, in the Middle East to the extent that it has a very significant number of American troops stationed there.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Russert marched Giuliani through the list of shady characters with whom he and/or his law firm had done business — Hugo Chávez, a "Las Vegas developer that you worked with who had a close partnership with Hong Kong billionaire who was close to Kim Jong Il," etc.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps Giuliani, who famously recommended Bernie Kerik for homeland security (Kerik never made it and instead was convicted for corruption) and was ensnared in allegations about misuse of public money (when he was having an affair with his then-mistress, now current wife), makes it through the nomination process. Republicans seem all too ready to roll over for the new administration. But isn't Giuliani precisely the sort of character Trump and Bannon would rail against? Isn't he the model for the American operator who would get rich from dealings with America's foes?</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Add in the crew of advisers who've made money off of Russian ties (e.g. Ret. Gen. Mike Flynn), and you begin to see a pattern among Trump and his closest advisers: While they dabble in conspiracy theories, give comfort to the alt-right and cozy up to the national-front parties in Europe (which are invariably pro-Vladimir Putin), their own portfolios are rife with shady connections and their views run counter to long-standing American interests. Maybe Hillary Clinton should have run against all that.</font></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The documentary shows how Trump not only helped hide the identity of his mobster business partner, prompting an ongoing lawsuit accusing Trump of criminal racketeering, but also how&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump used that internal company crisis to demand more money.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">&nbsp;It goes on to show how Russian oligarchs saw Trump's properties as a way to get their money out of Russia, and describes the international financial networks that are akin to a pyramid scheme for money laundering</span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">. It also notes how the law firm of Trump's political adviser, former New York City mayor&nbsp;<b>Rudy Guiliani</b>, helped set up a money-laundering account in the Netherlands used by Bayrock.&nbsp;</span></span></font></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" inherit="inherit" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8/16</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see main for older and lobby co</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/giuliani-seeks-rescue-irans-money-man">http://www.alternet.org/giuliani-seeks-rescue-irans-money-man</a></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nce upon a time, Rudy Giuiani was tough on Iran.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last August, when the Obama administration returned $440 million from frozen Iranian bank accounts to Iran as part of the international deal to shutter Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Giuliani said, “I call that&nbsp;<a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/rudy-giuliani-iran-money-laundering/2016/08/04/id/742166/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">trading with the enemy</a>."</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Now Guiliani is defending in U.S. federal court a wealthy Turkish businessman who sought to flout U.S. and international sanctions on behalf of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Last month Giuliani joined the legal defense team of Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian dual national who is under indictment for, you guessed it,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/834146/download" style="text-decoration-line: none;">trading with the enemy</a>.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zarrab, who is being held in New York, has pleaded not guilty to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/834146/download" style="text-decoration-line: none;">four counts</a>&nbsp;of conspiring to process hundreds of millions of dollars in financial transactions for Iranian businesses or Iran’s government from 2010 to 2015.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iran's Money Man</font></strong></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the indictment, Zarrab's staff drafted a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei in 2013, praising him for “<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/834146/download" style="text-decoration-line: none;">neutralizing</a>"&nbsp;U.S. sanctions. The letter expressed the hope that “the efforts and cooperation of the zealous children of Islamic Iran will result in an upward increase in the progress of our dear nation in all international and financial arenas.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zarrab and his network of companies sold gold to the Iranians and generated phony invoices for food and medicine. The transactions enabled the Iranians to evade international sanctions and move large amounts of money in and out of the country, ostensibly for its nuclear program, according to a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.588017" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Turkish prosecutor’s brief</a>&nbsp;reviewed by Reuters.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zarrab was first arrested in Turkey in December 2013 and charged with bribing cabinet ministers, triggering a national scandal. Zarrab’s commercial ventures reportedly generate over $11 billion annually.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Turkish president Recep Erdogan denounced the charges as a baseless conspiracy of his rivals. He fired the police and prosecutors who brought the case. Though charges against Zarrab and 13 other defendants were dropped, three ministers in Erdogan’s government had to resign. Erdogan and his family were personally implicated in Zarrab’s operation.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/turkish-referendum-all-you-need-to-know" style="text-decoration-line: none;">national referendum</a>&nbsp;on Erdogan's powers coming up for a vote on April 16, the Zarrab affair remains a vulnerability for the incumbent strongman. Getting the charges against Zarrab dismissed before April 16 would fortify his regime.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani for the Defense</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zarrab thought he was untouchable until his arrest at Miami International Airport on March 19, 2016 as he took his pop star wife and daughter on vacation to Disneyland.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You might think Rudy Giuliani, the Iran hawk, would support U.S. law enforcement efforts to bring Zarrab to justice and expose the mechanism Iran used to evade sanctions on its nuclear program....</font></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">energizer bunny of gop?</font></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/13/headlines/trump_names_rudy_giuliani_to_cybersecurity_post_despite_conflicts">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/13/headlines/trump_names_rudy_giuliani_to_cybersecurity_post_despite_conflicts</a></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump has named former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as his administration’s top cybersecurity adviser. Giuliani said Thursday he will accept the position but won’t step down as CEO of his security consulting firm, Giuliani Partners. He also plans to remain chair of the cybersecurity practice at the law firm Greenberg Traurig. Speaking to Politico on Thursday, Giuliani acknowledged that he will be connecting business associates with President Trump, but denied that presents a conflict of interest. Because Giuliani will serve as a volunteer rather than a federal employee, his position won’t be subject to federal ethics laws.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no link</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-cyber-security-trump.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-cyber-security-trump.html</a></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ASHINGTON — For a brief moment, it looked as if America’s mayor just might become America’s diplomat.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But for Rudolph W. Giuliani, the bombastic former mayor of New York City, a wild year of being one of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s most passionate surrogates did not, in the end, land him the high-profile administration job he has long coveted.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, Mr. Trump announced on Thursday that he would enlist Mr. Giuliani to share his “expertise and insight as a trusted friend” on the issue of cybersecurity. Mr. Giuliani, who has spent the last 16 years as a private security consultant, will “from time to time” assemble meetings between Mr. Trump and corporate executives who face cyberthreats, the transition team said.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We’ve let our defense fall behind,” Mr. Giuliani told reporters on Thursday during a conference call. “Our offense is way ahead of our defense.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Giuliani put on a happy face during the call, declaring it a “great privilege” to be taking on the role.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But the announcement — almost an afterthought, coming the day after lawmakers grilled Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, in his confirmation hearing — reflected how far Mr. Giuliani had fallen in the Trump universe.</b></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He remains a close friend of Mr. Trump’s, according to associates. But he will not be moving to Washington, as he once hoped, and instead of having his political career rejuvenated after his failed run for president in 2008, he will continue to run his consulting firm.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">From the start of Mr. Trump’s campaign, Mr. Giuliani was there: loudly defending the candidate against scandals, attacking Hillary Clinton and President Obama, lashing out at the news media, and boldly asserting that Mr. Trump would be the solution to the nation’s problems on race, terrorism, the economy, gender issues, health care and just about everything else.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the Republican National Convention, where Mr. Trump secured his party’s nomination, Mr. Giuliani waved his arms, shouted, clenched his fists and thundered against Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent. “Hillary Clinton is for open borders,” Mr. Giuliani claimed, warning ominously of “operatives who are terrorists, who are going to come to Western Europe and here and kill us.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was a classic Giuliani performance that lit up the crowd in Cleveland at a high point for Mr. Trump. And months later, when the release of an “Access Hollywood” tape revealed Mr. Trump speaking graphically about assaulting women, Mr. Giuliani was one of the few people to publicly defend the candidate.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Trump rewarded that loyalty by seriously considering Mr. Giuliani for a series of posts in the administration. Transition officials informally discussed with Mr. Giuliani the positions of attorney general, secretary of homeland security, and director of national intelligence. Mr. Giuliani wanted none of them.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What he did want was secretary of state, and his decision to make that plain as day to anyone who asked might have helped scuttle his chances. Some transition officials were also concerned that Mr. Giuliani, 72, might not have the stamina for the globe-trotting job.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the end, Mr. Giuliani removed his name from consideration in mid-December after the drawn-out public audition, shortly before Mr. Trump announced he had chosen Mr. Tillerson.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, the ill-defined cybersecurity post may be Mr. Giuliani’s best hope of adding some Trump administration luster to his private security business. But his previous forays into the national and international security arena have been less than a success.</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>After leaving the mayor’s office, he received a multimillion-dollar signing bonus to join a Houston-based law firm with oil industry connections, but spent a majority of his time working on a fast-growing international security business called Giuliani Partners.</b></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2004, Mr. Giuliani pushed President George W. Bush to choose Bernard Kerik, his former police commissioner and an associate at Giuliani Partners, as homeland security secretary. Mr. Kerik’s nomination was abruptly pulled after it was revealed that he had employed an unauthorized immigrant as a nanny. Mr. Giuliani’s influence with the Bush team evaporated, and Mr. Kerik was later sentenced to four years in prison on federal tax charges.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; line-height: 18.5714px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump&nbsp;<a href="http://nypost.com/2016/05/11/trump-wants-giuliani-to-lead-his-anti-muslim-brigade/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: transparent;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">told</span></a>&nbsp;Fox News that former New York City mayor and failed presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani might be his choice to head up a commission to review his proposal for a temporary Muslim ban.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; line-height: 18.5714px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What You Need To Know</font></em></span></font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; line-height: 18.5714px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani has a long history of anti-Muslim comments and statements. He&nbsp;<a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/05/11/trump-considers-tapping-rudy-giuliani-lead-anti-muslim-commission/210357" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: transparent;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">argued</span></a>&nbsp;in favor of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) idea that one way to fight terrorism is to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods,” said sexual assault in Germany proved that “these [Syrian] refugees are inherently a problem,” and praised Rep. Peter King (R-NY) for holding anti-Muslim hearings in Congress.</font></p><p style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; margin-block-start: 1em; margin-block-end: 1em; line-height: 18.5714px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speaking before Trump at a campaign rally, Giuliani said, “Under those eight years before Obama came along, we didn’t have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States,” omitting the September 11, 2001, attacks. PolitiFact&nbsp;<a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/16/rudy-giuliani/aside-from-911-rudy-giuliani-wrong-about-no-terr/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: transparent;">rated</a>&nbsp;this claim “false.”</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">alec stooge BS</font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President-elect Trump just&nbsp;<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/313932-giuliani-says-hes-forming-cybersecurity-team-for-trump" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline; position: relative; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(42, 83, 193);">named</a>former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as the chair of a White House cybersecurity task force. Given the mayor’s private sector experience as chair of a law firm’s cybersecurity and privacy&nbsp;<a href="http://www.gtlaw.com/Experience/Practices/Cybersecurity-Privacy-and-Crisis-Management" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline; position: relative; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(42, 83, 193);">practice group</a>, along with his experience as a security consultant, his selection by the president-elect is good.</font></p><h1 class="title" id="page-title" style="text-align: left; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani well-equipped to lead the White House on cybersecurity</font></h1><div class="submitted-wrp" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 223, 228);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="submitted-by" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom: none !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY JONATHON HAUENSCHILD, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR -&nbsp;<span class="submitted-date" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; border-bottom: none !important;">01/13/17 01:10 PM EST</span></font></span></font></font></div><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4"><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://gizmodo.com/rudy-giuliani-is-forming-a-cybersecurity-team-for-trump-1791109633">http://gizmodo.com/rudy-giuliani-is-forming-a-cybersecurity-team-for-trump-1791109633</a></font></font></font></font></p></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Noted Tech Genius Rudy Giuliani to Form Trump's Cybersecurity Team</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mo link img</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Novak</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rudy Guiliani on Fox & Friends talking about the plan to form a cybersecurity team of private sector companies for the Trump administration</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Silicon Valley has always had close ties with the US government. But it appears the Trump administration would like to make those ties even more explicit: This morning, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani announced that he’s forming a new cybersecurity team for President-elect Trump, comprised of various private tech companies.</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The team’s precise role in the new administration is still unclear, but the move will reportedly be formally announced later this morning.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The President-elect decided that he wanted to bring in, on a regular basis, the people in the private sector, the corporate leaders in particular, the thought leaders, who were working on security for cyber,” Rudy Giuliani said this morning on Fox & Friends. “Because we’re so far behind.”</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s his belief, which I share, that a lot of the solutions are out there, we’re just not sharing them. It’s like cancer. You know, there’s cancer research going on all over the place—you’d almost wish they’d get together in one room and maybe we’d find a cure,” Giuliani said, with clearly no idea what the hell he’s talking about.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Previously, it had been assumed that Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and a billionaire with some rather strange beliefs about the world, was leading the charge in this area as a member of Trump’s transition team.&nbsp;</b>(Thiel is the founder of his own company that’s deeply enmeshed in government cybersecurity contracts, Palantir.) So it’s a bit odd that Giuliani would be spearheading something like this. And as we’ve noted before, he’s not exactly the best choice.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“So the idea here is to bring together corporate leaders and their technological people. The president will meet with them on an ongoing basis as well as anybody else in the administration,” he said, explaining that he would be coordinating the new initiative.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">From Google to Palantir to Oracle (which started as a CIA project), the private sector has always found deep pockets in Washington to spend on technology. But some high profile members of Silicon Valley have been rather reluctant to work with the incoming administration, given the nouveau fascistic flavor that Trump seems to give everything. This is the guy, after all, who has proposed building a registry for all Muslims.</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But much like Republicans who were skeptical of Trump at first, it wouldn’t be a great shock if Silicon Valley fell in line. The heads of companies like Apple are obliged to care little about anything outside of making money. And the new administration has plenty of cash to throw their way in any number of ways.</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s pretty clear that if the new administration wanted to build a “Muslim registry,” it wouldn’t really need to build anything new at all. They’d just need the cooperation of a few private companies that already know virtually everything about what you watch, what you buy, and where you go.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Update, 9:48am: The Transition team just sent out an official statement on the matter. As it notes, Guiliani is the head of “Greenberg Traurig and the Chairman and CEO of Giuliani Partners, an international security consulting firm.”</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">President-elect Trump is very pleased to announce former Mayor Rudy Giuliani will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cyber security problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector. This is a rapidly evolving field both as to intrusions and solutions and it is critically important to get timely information from all sources.</font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, from time to time because of the changing nature of this problem, it is contemplated that the President-elect will be hosting a series of meetings with senior corporate executives from companies which have faced or are facing challenges similar to those facing the government and public entities today, such as hacking, intrusions, disruptions, manipulations, theft of data and identities, and securing information technology infrastructure.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The President-elect’s intent is to obtain experiential and anecdotal information from each executive on challenges faced by his/her company, how the company met the challenges, approaches which were productive or successful, and those which were not. The attendees may or may not change from session to session, but the specific agenda subjects will likely change because of the rapidly evolving field of cyber security, and frequent developments, both positive and negative. No consensus advice or recommendations resulting from group deliberations or interaction is expected or will be solicited.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cyber intrusion is the fastest growing crime in the United States and much of the world. Its impact is felt from the individual citizen whose identity is stolen to the large private and government entities that have seen their confidential information seriously compromised. It is also a major threat to our national security.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the use of modern communications and technology has moved forward at unparalleled speed the necessary defenses have lagged behind. The President-elect recognizes that this needs immediate attention and input from private sector leaders to help the government plan to make us more secure.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Giuliani was asked to initiate this process because of his long and very successful government career in law enforcement and his now sixteen years of work providing security solutions in the private sector.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Giuliani is the chairman of the global cyber security practice at Greenberg Traurig and the Chairman and CEO of Giuliani Partners, an international security consulting firm.</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Novaknovak@gizmodo.com@paleofuture</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Novak is the editor of Gizmodo's Paleofuture blog</font></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></aside></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>