Tag: Giuliani

  • Rudy’s trip to Kiev

    Giuliani’s travel plans are raising eyebrows.

    Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, is encouraging Ukraine to wade further into sensitive political issues in the United States, seeking to push the incoming government in Kiev to press ahead with investigations that he hopes will benefit Mr. Trump.

    Mr. Giuliani said he plans to travel to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in the coming days and wants to meet with the nation’s president-elect to urge him to pursue inquiries that allies of the White House contend could yield new information about two matters of intense interest to Mr. Trump.

    One is the origin of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The other is the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.

    Mr. Giuliani’s plans create the remarkable scene of a lawyer for the president of the United States pressing a foreign government to pursue investigations that Mr. Trump’s allies hope could help him in his re-election campaign. And it comes after Mr. Trump spent more than half of his term facing questions about whether his 2016 campaign conspired with a foreign power.

    Giuliani, when asked, says it’s perfectly fine, nothing to see here, totally normal.

    Mr. Giuliani’s planned trip, which has not been previously reported, is part of a monthslong effort by the former New York mayor and a small group of Trump allies working to build interest in the Ukrainian inquiries. Their motivation is to try to discredit the special counsel’s investigation; undermine the case against Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s imprisoned former campaign chairman; and potentially to damage Mr. Biden, the early front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

    In other words it’s mob boss shenanigans, but involving a foreign country, with the (implied? explicit?) endorsement of the US president.

    A new administration is taking over in June, and Giuliani is hoping to coax them into being Trump’s stooges.

    He said his efforts in Ukraine have the full support of Mr. Trump. He declined to say specifically whether he had briefed him on the planned meeting with Mr. Zelensky, but added, “He basically knows what I’m doing, sure, as his lawyer.”

    The White House is ignoring questions on the subject.

    https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1126673595156049920

  • Apparently Giuliani is the boss of everything

    Giuliani says Trump will not answer questions. Mind you he’s been saying that for weeks, but maybe now he’s saying it for real no backsies.

    President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president’s attorneys told The Associated Press on Thursday.

    Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said questions about obstruction of justice were a “no-go.”

    Because look: he stole the election fair and square and now he’s in there and you can’t do a damn thing about it so ha.

    Giuliani’s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview the president about any efforts to obstruct the investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russians.

    Most definitive how? Jonathan Lemire doesn’t say.

    If the legal team holds its stance, it could force Mueller to try to subpoena the president, likely triggering a standoff that would lead to the Supreme Court.

    And that’s why Trump nominated Kavanaugh.

    Mueller’s office has previously sought to interview the president about the obstruction issue, including his firing last year of former FBI Director James Comey and his public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump’s legal team has argued that the president has the power to hire and fire appointees and the special counsel does not have the authority to ask him to explain those decisions. Giuliani said Thursday the team was steadfast in that position.

    So it’s basically just “I can because I can and it doesn’t matter how corrupt and criminal it is, you can’t touch me, so ha.” In other words the US is an authoritarian kleptocracy and that’s the end of it.

    Though the president has publicly said he was eager to face questions from Mueller, his lawyers have been far more reluctant to make him available for an interview and have questioned whether Mueller has the right to ask him about actions that he is authorized, under the Constitution, to take as president.

    This is what I mean; this is fucked up. We shouldn’t be having a criminal guy who does criminal things telling us we can’t touch him because of the Constitution – the one that he 1. knows nothing about and 2. shits on every chance he gets. We shouldn’t have thug Giuliani thugging around the place and telling us the thugs can do whatever they want. This is ALL WRONG.

  • Clown Giuliani

    A few highlights from Jeffrey Toobin’s long piece on Giuliani at the New Yorker:

    He reflected on the tumultuous six months he has spent thus far representing Trump in the investigation led by Robert Mueller, the special counsel. Giuliani’s work has involved countless television appearances—often featuring false or misleading claims—as well as frequent phone calls with the President and months of negotiations with Mueller about the possibility of Trump testifying.

    Good to know where we are at the outset.

    Like Trump, he characterizes the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt” and the prosecutors as “thugs.” He has, in effect, become the legal auxiliary to Trump’s Twitter feed, peddling the same chaotic mixture of non sequiturs, exaggerations, half-truths, and falsehoods. Giuliani, like the President, is not seeking converts but comforting the converted.

    And he cheerfully lies.

    Giuliani’s behavior has provoked disgust among some of his former fellow-prosecutors. “He has totally sold out to Trump,” John S. Martin, a predecessor to Giuliani as U.S. Attorney who later became a federal judge, said. “He’s making arguments that don’t hold up. I always thought of Rudy as a good lawyer, and he’s not looking anything like a good lawyer today.” Preet Bharara, who served as U.S. Attorney from 2009 until 2017, when he was fired by Trump, told me, “His blatant misrepresentations on television make me sad. It’s sad because I looked up to him at one point, and this bespeaks a sort of cravenness to a particularly hyperbolic client and an unnecessary suspension of honor and truth that’s beneath him. I would not send Rudy at this point in his career into court.”

    If it were really beneath him he wouldn’t be doing it.

    This spring, Giuliani met with Mueller and his staff, and Giuliani pressed the special counsel about whether he believed that a sitting President could be criminally indicted. According to a 1973 opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel, a President should not be subject to indictment while in office because it “would interfere with the President’s unique official duties, most of which cannot be performed by anyone else.” (A 2000 legal opinion from the Justice Department reached a similar conclusion.) Giuliani recalled Mueller saying, “Well, we’re going to reserve our thinking on that.” Giuliani told me that after “two days, with a lot of going back and forth,” Mueller’s team affirmed that it wouldn’t indict, regardless of the result of the investigation. (Mueller’s spokesman declined to comment.)

    This apparent concession has shaped Giuliani’s defense of Trump ever since. He now knew that there would never be a courtroom test of the President’s actions; the only risk to Trump was that Mueller’s report could lead Congress to impeach the President, a process that is political as much as it is legal. With impeachment, Giuliani explained to me, “the thing that will decide that the most is public opinion,” and the perception of Mueller is as important as that of Trump. “If Mueller remains the white knight, it becomes more likely that Congress might at some point turn on Trump,” he told me. As a result, Giuliani has set out to destroy Mueller’s reputation.

    Which remains striking and repulsive no matter how familiar with it we already are. To save the evil and criminal Donald Trump from richly deserved justice, former prosecutor and mayor Giuliani sets out to destroy Robert Mueller’s reputation. It makes me want to puke.

  • What’s all this “tackling corruption” nonsense?

    Good ol’ Rudy:

    Donald Trump’s attorney Rudolph Giuliani caused a diplomatic stir on Tuesday by complaining to the president of Romania about the country’s efforts to tackle corruption and calling for an amnesty for some convicted criminals.

    In a letter to Romanian president Klaus Iohannis, which was published by Mediafax, Giuliani sharply criticised what he called “excesses made in the name of ‘law enforcement’” by Romania’s national anti-corruption directorate. The agency, he said, had used unfair tactics against suspects and intimidated judges and lawyers.

    And you know what else? He did it because people paid him to.

    Giuliani’s remarks aligned him with political forces in Romania who last month succeeded in ousting the country’s top corruption prosecutor, who had pursued senior politicians, prompting tumultuous public protests.

    Gee, does that ring any bells? Any dingdingmuellerdingding?

    His letter was written under the letterhead of Giuliani Partners, his private consultancy firm, and did not mention his role as personal lawyer to the US president. Giuliani said in a text message he was acting as a contractor for the Freeh Group, a consultancy run by his friend Louis Freeh, the former FBI director. Freeh is currently “advising a Romanian defendant contesting his conviction” by the anticorruption agency, according to an interview he gave Forbes last week.

    He’s collecting a (doubtless large) paycheck for his efforts to impede Rumania’s efforts to get rid of corruption. Nice guy.

    The State Department said “Giuliani Who?”

    By then the former New York City mayor’s letter had been criticised by Romania’s ambassador to the US, George Maior, who said Giuliani appeared to be speaking on behalf of Romanians “who have problems with the justice system”.

    Oh, coincidence, he’s doing the same thing in the US! Only, for “Romanians” swap “a president.”

    Romania scores 48 out of 100 on a perceived government corruption scale measured by Transparency International, where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 least. Romania ranks joint 59th out of 180 countries, alongside Greece and Jordan.

    Well so there’s plenty of room for Romania to become more corrupt. Shoulder to the wheel, Rudy.

  • They just get lower and lower

    Another day, another

    The AP article on Rudy’s jaunt to Tel Aviv:

    TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is trying to frame President Donald Trump.

    Football players who kneel while a patriotic song is sung are Disloyal but the president’s lawyer talking shit about the US justice system in a foreign country is Loyal+++.

    “There are a group of 13 highly partisan Democrats who make up the Mueller team, excluding him, and are trying very, very hard to frame him to get him in trouble when he hasn’t done anything wrong,” said Giuliani, who has been serving as Trump’s lawyer amid the Russia scandal.

    “They can’t emotionally come to grips with the fact that this whole thing with Russian collusion didn’t happen. They are trying to invent theories of obstruction of justice,” Giuliani told a business conference in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

    “They have revealed no evidence that President Trump has done anything wrong,” he added. “None.”

    The investigation is in progress. Giuliani is a lawyer (and a former prosecutor) and I’m not, but I’m pretty sure investigations are not required to reveal evidence before they are completed. I think it is rather the other way around: they’re supposed to refrain from doing that.

    Just another Wednesday.