Mr. 9/11 Rudy Giuliani

[seemslikeadream]

Giuliani warns of 'new 9/11' if Dems win
By ROGER SIMON 04/24/2007 08:29 PM EDT Updated 04/26/2007 11:07 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/story/2007/04/ ... win-003684

911 is full of piggyback crimes
Adolph Ghoulainni covers the 911 crimes and then buys the building of the first anthrax attack in FLA.. forms a clean-up business and cleans the place
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9852&p=95124&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p95124

"TRIPOD' Rudi for President!
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10694&p=104804&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p104806

Jerome Hauer joined New York City's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in 1998 and quickly obtained funding from the office of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani for the study of West Nile virus. The following year the virus appeared in the city, and Jerome Hauer led the fumigation effort.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10967&p=107475&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p107475

(Before 9:59 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Giuliani Apparently Told WTC Towers Will Collapse When Fire Chiefs Think Otherwise
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will become well known for his walking press conferences in the middle of the 9/11 crisis. [Source: Time Magazine/ Salient Stills]Between 9:25 a.m. and 9:45 a.m., one senior New York fire chief recommends to the Fire Department Chief of Department that there might be a WTC collapse in a few hours, and, therefore, fire units probably shouldn’t ascend much above the sixtieth floor (presumably this assumes the collapse would be gradual so those on lower floors would still have time to evacuate). This advice is not followed or not passed on. Apparently, no other senior fire chiefs mention or foresee the possibility of the WTC towers falling. [9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004] However, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani recounts, “I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barclay Street, which was right there, with the police commissioner, the fire commissioner, the head of emergency management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for ten, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us.” [ABC News, 9/11/2001] As can be seen by another account of similar events, this happens before the first WTC tower falls, not the second. [9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004] It is not clear who tells Giuliani to evacuate when no fire chiefs were considering the possibility of an imminent collapse. However, an EMT is also given a message around this time, warning that the towers are going to collapse. The origin of this information is apparently the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, so this may also have been from where Giuliani heard of the imminent collapse (see (Before 9:59 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Rudolph ("Rudy") Giuliani
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10973&p=107938&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p107938

After 10:28 a.m.: Fire Fighters Trying to Extinguish Fires in WTC 7

According to Captain Michael Currid, the sergeant at arms for the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, some time after the collapse of the North Tower, he sees four or five fire companies trying to extinguish fires in Building 7 of the WTC. Someone from the city’s Office of Emergency Management tells him that WTC 7 is in serious danger of collapse.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10973&p=107965&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p107965

Wow.

The other day Olberman said that the government knew 9/11 was going to happen, but then said it was incompetence.(so close keithy boy, so close! We know ya can do better)

Today Olberman spent 5 minutes detailing how Qatar was involved in 9/11 and behind al Qaeda and how Rudy Guiliani and his terror company is in bed with the facilitators of al Qaeda, KSM and 9/11.

Explosive


MSNBC Countdown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIPc6wHAO28

further expanded here:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0748,b ... 8,6.html/1

We also know...

Rudy Guiliani made a secret deal with Silverstein to make sure the emergency bunker would be in WTC7 despite everyone objecting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0E0wfShJ58

We ALSO know that Rudy made a secret no bid contract with Motorola
to make sure the firefighters had radios that didnt work, leading to hundreds of firefighter deaths:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StE_Xa6TiQU

According to mainstream news reports, no single has made more money off 9/11 than Guiliani and his terror consulting firm, which has now been confirmed to be in bed with the very people behind 9/11.

Is it ANY surprise Guiliani was within blocks of BOTH 9/11 and 7/7?

This MSNBC segment reveals how Guilianis terror business partner the Emir of Qatar's own charity directly funded the 1998 African embassy bombing(masterminded by the CIA's Ali Mohammed) and USS Cole(A Sudanese/Yemenese inside job)

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/post ... 8&p=150400

Octafish
Know your BFEE: Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik

Not to belabor the point, this guy is little more than a shill for the Rudy the Wife-swapping Turd Giuliani and the Bush Organized Crime Family, Saudi Division. Campaigning for the drunken coke-whore AWOL psychotic moron, Kerrick had the cheek to say if Kerry were elected, Osama would strike again.

How interesting. Does he know something we don't know? How many dots did Smirko miss? Well, the Bushes and the bin Ladens have been business partners for years. Hey, Kerrick! Buy a clue, uh? -- before it's too late for Metropolis.

The following article from Newsday, which should know a bum when they see one, says this turd was in over his bald head as a narc and police commissioner of Gotham. It also spells out areas of interest where he and the BFEE can make money in the future -- Carlyle, Trireme Partnerships and whatever else the Big Money War Boys have going. So, as head of Homeland Security, we can be certain he won't mind doing whatever he's ordered to do by satan's monkey.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/d ... 04x2788428

Giuliani was there
https://www.democraticunderground.com/d ... =125x29793

Rudy Giuliani: How a 9/11 hero became Trump's conspiratorial Ukraine fixer

President uses former New York mayor to constantly muddy waters

Andrew Buncombe
There is a celebrated photograph taken the day after the 9/11 attacks, of Rudolph Giuliani at his very best.

Wearing a deep-navy baseball cap, and a matching bomber jacket, the image shows him lowering his face mask in order to console Anita Deblase, whose son James was suspected to be buried beneath the debris. “He’s at the bottom of the rubble,” she told Mr Giuliani, as he clasped her hands with his and lowered his head.

The al-Qaeda assaults of 11 September, and the days that followed, changed the lives of millions, not least the likes of Ms Deblase, whose son worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. The offices of the financial services giant dominated four floors of One World Trade Centre, and James Deblase was among 658 of the company’s employees who lost their lives.

For Mr Giuliani, a former criminal prosecutor and two-term New York mayor, who had been both praised for his anti-crime efforts and criticised for measures such as “stop and frisk” that were disproportionately used against people of colour, the images of him touring southern Manhattan and grieving with victims, would be the pivot to a new career. The following month, he spoke at the United Nations General Assembly, pitching himself as someone ready to take on terrorism. “We’re right and they’re wrong – it’s as simple as that.”

Eighteen years later, with a brief stop for a failed 2008 presidential run, Mr Giuliani is still here, still in front of the cameras and still insisting that he is right. This week, the 75-year-old was named in the whistleblower complaint from a CIA officer who wanted to raise a red flag over Donald Trump’s 25 July conversation with the president of Ukraine.

During the conversation, Mr Trump asked Volodymyr Zelensky to push ahead with an investigation into Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. For doing so, critics of the president allege he made clear, the US would lift a freeze on military aid for Kiev.

“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple US government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election,” the whistleblower wrote. “This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the president’s main domestic political rivals. The president’s personal lawyer, Mr Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney general (William) Barr appears to be involved as well.”

rudy-911.jpg
After the attacks of 9/11 Mr Giuliani was dubbed ‘America’s Mayor’ (Getty)
The accusations levelled in the complaint are the centre of formal impeachment proceedings announced this week by House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who displayed a new-found willingness to pursue such a censure. “The president must be held accountable,” she said. “No one is above the law.”

Mr Trump has dismissed the complaint and its allegations as the latest effort by critics to oust him from office. This week, he appeared with Mr Zelensky at an awkward photo opportunity on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly where he insisted he had not pressured his counterpart.

“If that perfect phone call with the president of Ukraine isn’t considered appropriate, then no future president can EVER again speak to another foreign leader,” Mr Trump tweeted.

The accusations of presidential misconduct have shocked members of both parties. They have also drawn attention to what appears to have been an effort dating back at least 12 months, in which Mr Giuliani sought to persuade Mr Zelensky and his aides to investigate Mr Biden, over his alleged interference in pushing for the firing of an allegedly corrupt prosecutor who was said to have been probing an an energy company, Burisma, that employed the former vice president’s son.

Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin rejects claims by Donald Trump concerning Joe Biden
Even before the complaint was made public, Mr Giuliani was known to be lobbying on behalf of Mr Trump. This summer, The New York Times reported that he held a face-to-face meeting in Madrid, in addition to a series of phone calls, with representatives of the incoming president, and that his efforts to influence domestic decisions in Ukraine included threats about the future of US military aid to the country.

Mr Giuliani has since been on a tour of television studios and on the phone to reporters, to defend his actions and those of the president. “I’m the real whistleblower,” he told Politico.“If I get killed now, you won’t get the rest of the story.”

In a particularly colourful interview with The Atlantic, he claimed that he – not the whistleblower – should be considered a hero. “These morons – when this is over, I will be the hero,” he said. “I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government. Anything I did should be praised.”

On Fox News he said he had been acting on behalf of the US state department and said that Kurt Volker, the US’s special representative to Ukraine, needed to speak out. “He should step forward and explain what he did,” he said. “I wasn’t operating on my own.”

Commentators point out the obsession with Ukraine by Mr Giuliani and Mr Trump, echoes some of that voiced by conspiracy theorist conservatives, who allege the Democratic National Committee, whose server was allegedly hacked by Russia in 2016, was actually kept in Kiev. California-based CrowdStrike was hired in 2016 by the DNC to investigate the origins of the hack. Mr Trump even told the Associated Press he was surprised the FBI had not investigated the whereabouts of the servers given CrowdStrike was owned by “a very rich Ukrainian”.

The US media has pointed out this week, CrowdStrike was established by Dmitri Alperovitch, a Russian-born American citizen.

According to the whistleblower complaint, one of Mr Trump’s requests to Mr Zelensky was "to assist in purportedly uncovering that allegation of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election originated in Ukraine, with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the US cyber security firm CrowdStrike”.

It added: “The president named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr Giuliani and attorney general Barr, to whom the president referred multiple times in tandem.”

Mr Giuliani did not respond to enquiries on Friday. His New York-based law firm did not reply to written questions.

Christina Greer, professor of political science at Fordham University in New York, told The Independent she rejected any narrative that painted Mr Giuliani as a hero who had gone off the rails. She said his political career in New York had been based on race-baiting and discrimination. She said he once organised a riot involving off-duty white police officers to threaten David Dinkins, the city’s first African American mayor, who in 1989 had defeated Mr Giuliani.

She said he and Mr Trump shared the same beliefs and had known each other for many years in New York.

“Trump trusts him. He has no friends, but he trusts Giuliani because they see themselves as white, ethnic outsiders against the world,” she said.

Robert McCaw, director of government affairs at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Mr Giuliani had long been willing to do the president’s bidding on controversial issues, even as he was looked over for jobs such as secretary of state and attorney general.

In 2017, he helped put together the executive order that became the administration’s first Muslim ban.

“I’ll tell you the whole history of it,” he told Fox News, two years ago. “When he first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban’. He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally’.”

Some believe Mr Giuliani’s willingness to defend the president at each and every opportunity, and try to turn the focus onto Mr Biden and his son, is something Mr Trump will use to push his re-election chances.

Mike Fraioli, a Democratic strategist based in Washington DC, said it appeared the former prosecutor once known for bringing down mobsters, did not care about how he was viewed by Mr Trump’s critics when he appeared on television.

“Rudy does everything Trump asks of him. He goes on television and makes a fool of himself,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if he makes a fool of himself. They just keep trying to muddy the water.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 23981.html

[seemslikeadream]

Rudy Giuliani used the most horrific moment of the last fifty years to try to maintain power for himself.

somebody needs to talk about Rudy Giuliani’s quasi-diplomacy with Turkey’s Erdogan in a record-breaking money laundering case....maybe I will

Giuliani has connection with accused priest
Placa was legal adviser for Whitinsville center

July 22

Republican presidential candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani has close ties to a Catholic priest accused of sexually molesting boys and who also was the lawyer for a now-closed Whitinsville counseling house for troubled priests that has been described as the center of a pedophile sex ring.

Monsignor Alan J. Placa, who works for Mr. Giuliani’s consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, was legal adviser in the 1980s to the House of Affirmation, where priests accused of sexual abuse were sent for psychotherapy and other counseling services. The center closed in 1987 amid a financial scandal.

Monsignor Placa, who while an active priest arranged the annulment of Mr. Giuliani’s first marriage, baptized his two children and officiated at the funeral of his mother, is a childhood friend of Mr. Giuliani and they both attended Manhattanville College.

He was stripped of his duties as a priest, but not defrocked, after Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, published a story in 2002 about young men who alleged that Monsignor Placa abused them in the 1970s. He has been on administrative leave since and has worked for Mr. Giuliani for the past five years.

Catholic activists who are fighting the church over the clergy sex abuse issue say Mr. Giuliani’s association with the monsignor raises serious questions about the former New York mayor’s candidacy.

"The White House should not be inhabited by a man whose closest friend is accused of being an abuser of young men." said Ann Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org in Massachusetts. “Giuliani has a responsibility to account for his friendship with Alan Placa and I think he should speak with Alan Placa’s accusers and see how credible they are.

“For Giuliani to turn a blind eye to these credible allegations raises questions about his judgment,” she said.

Jeffrey Barker, a spokesman for Mr. Giuliani’s campaign, declined comment, directing questions to Giuliani Partners, Mr. Giuliani’s security consulting firm. Mr. Giuliani leads all GOP presidential contenders in Massachusetts polls.

“Rudy Giuliani believes Alan Placa has been unjustly accused,” Sunny Mindel, a spokeswoman for the company, said in a prepared statement.

Monsignor Placa did not respond to a request for an interview.

The monsignor was closely associated with several Central Massachusetts priests who were at the center of a clergy sex abuse scandal in the 1990s.

At least three lawsuits were filed by area residents who said they were assaulted as boys by priests at the Whitinsville facility. The accused priests included colleagues of Monsignor Placa, one of whom was the Rev. Thomas A. Kane, former pastor of St. Mary Church in Uxbridge.

Monsignor Placa still lives in the rectory of the Long Island church where Monsignor Brendan Riordan, a former director of the House of Affirmation who was named in a sex abuse lawsuit settled by the Worcester Diocese in the mid-1990s, is pastor. He has also owned property in New York with Monsignor Riordan and co-owned property in Florida with him and Rev. Kane.

A 1993 suit filed against Rev. Kane, the diocese and the House of Affirmation by Mark Barry of Uxbridge alleges that Rev. Kane repeatedly sexually assaulted him. The New York Times has reported that Monsignor Placa was the first lawyer Rev. Kane turned to after learning of Mr. Barry’s accusations.

That suit was settled for less than $50,000 and included a non-disclosure provision. Mr. Barry has not spoken publicly about the case since.

David Lewcon, 53, of Northbridge, who worked at the center in the 1970s as a painter and wallpaperer helping his father, a contractor, renovate the 1898 building, has accused Rev. Kane of sexually assaulting him. Mr. Lewcon settled what he described as a “six-figure” lawsuit with the Worcester Diocese in which he alleged he was sexually assaulted as a minor by the Rev. Thomas H. Teczar at St. Mary in Uxbridge.

Mr. Lewcon described the House of Affirmation as a breeding ground for sexual predators.

“It was presented as a retreat for vocational redirection,” said Mr. Lewcon, a publisher of speciality magazines. “What we have found out since, and what it has been called in the Blackstone Valley by people who really know what went on there, is that it was a pedophile boot camp.”

Monsignor Placa’s involvement with the Whitinsville facility drew additional attention after the release of a 2003 report from a Suffolk County, N.Y., grand jury that accuses him of molesting young boys and, in his role as a lawyer, helping to cover up sex abuse by other priests.

He was referred to as “Priest F” in the grand jury’s lengthy investigative report, which quotes a letter he wrote to colleagues in which he touted his track record of settling multimillion dollar clergy sex abuse claims for “sums ranging from $20,000 to $100,000.” The 180-page report was written after more than 30 priests and more than 40 victims of abuse testified.

The report notes that no indictments were issued because the alleged crimes had occurred more than five years previously and could not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired.

Richard Tollner, one of Monsignor Placa’s chief accusers in the Rockville Centre, Long Island, clergy sex abuse scandal, confirmed to the Salon online magazine that he was one of the victims who gave grand jury testimony and that Monsignor Placa was Priest F.

Monsignor Placa has denied Mr. Tollner’s allegations.

Mr. Tollner and other alleged victims in New York have accused Monsignor Placa of presenting himself as a priest in interviews with them when he was really acting as the lawyer for the Rockville Centre Diocese. Monsignor Placa has denied these accusations.

“He was misusing his identity and failing to disclose to them that he was a civil lawyer,” said Daniel J. Shea, a lawyer who has represented victims of clergy sex abuse in Central Massachusetts. “The grand jury report indicated he was representing himself to victims as a priest with a Roman collar.”

With news reports on Mr. Giuliani’s relationship to Monsignor Placa, some clergy abuse victims say they think Mr. Giuliani may be forced to answer harder questions about the link to his boyhood friend and employee.

George “Skip” Shea of Uxbridge, 47, an actor and artist who also agreed to an out-of-court settlement in a sex abuse case against Rev. Teczar, worked briefly at the House of Affirmation in the 1970s as a groundskeeper.

“It was a serious, full-blown sex mentality there,” George Shea said.

“Eventually this will stick,” he said of Monsignor Placa’s links to the GOP presidential contender.

link

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/st ... _than_bush

Rollingstone.com


Giuliani: Worse Than Bush

He's cashing in on 9/11, working with Karl Rove's henchmen and in cahoots with a Swift Boat-style attack on Hillary. Will Rudy Giuliani be Bush III?

Matt Taibbi
Posted May 31, 2007 8:59 AM


Early Wednesday, May 16th, Charleston, South Carolina. The scene is a town-hall meeting staged by GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, only a day after he wowed a patriotic Republican crowd at a nationally televised debate with a righteous ass-kicking of the party's latest Hanoi Jane, terrorist sympathizer Ron Paul. A bump in the polls later, "America's Mayor" is back on the campaign trail -- in a room packed with standard-issue Adorable Schoolchildren, in this case beatific black kids in elementary school uniforms with wide eyes and big RUDY stickers pinned to their oblivious breasts.

Giuliani has good stage presence, but his physical appearance is problematic -- virtually neckless, all shoulders and forehead and overbite, with a hunched-over, Draculoid posture that recalls, oddly enough, George W. Bush, the vestigial stoop of a once-chubby kid who grew up hiding tittie pictures from nuns. Not handsome, not cuddly, if he wins this thing it's going to be by projecting toughness and man-aura. But all presidential candidates have to play the baby-kissing game, and here is an early chance for Rudy to show his softer side.

"So," he whispers to the kids. "What do you all want to be when you grow up? Do any of you know?"

A bucktoothed boy raises his hand.

"I wanna be a doctor," he says, "and a lawyer."

The crowd laughs, then looks at Rudy expectantly. The obvious line is "A doctor and a lawyer? Whaddya want to do, sue yourself?" and you can see Rudy physically straining for the joke. But this candidate's funny bone is a microscopic thing, like one of those anvil-shaped deals in the ear, and the line eludes him.

"A doctor and a lawyer, huh?" he says, grinning nervously. "Uh . . . whaddya want to do, sue the doctor?"

My notes from that moment read: Chirping crickets.

Rudy moves on. "How about you?" he says to the next boy.

"I want to be a policeman!" the kid says.

Rudy smiles. Then the next boy says he wants to be a fireman, and the crowd twitters: Wow, a fireman and a policeman, in the same room! Rudy is beaming now, almost certainly aware that every grown-up present is suddenly thinking about 9/11. His day. As he leans over, the room is filled with popping flashbulbs. Then, instead of capitalizing on the sense of pride and shared purpose everyone is feeling, Giuliani utters something truly strange and twisted.

"A fireman and a policeman, huh?" he says. "Well, the first thing that I want to do is make sure that you two get along."

Huh? Amid confused applause, Rudy flashes a queer smile, then moves on to the heart of his presentation, a neat little speech about how the election of a Democratic president will result in certain nuclear attack and the end of the free market as we know it. I'm barely listening, however, still thinking about the "make sure you get along" line.

Although few people outside of New York know it yet, there is an emerging controversy over Giuliani's heroic 9/11 legacy. Critics charge that Rudy's failure to resolve the feuding between the city's police and firefighters prior to the attack led to untold numbers of deaths, the most tragic example being the inability of firemen to hear warnings from police helicopters about the impending collapse of the South Tower. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the two departments had been "designed to work independently, not together," and that greater coordination would have spared many lives.

Given all that, why did Rudy offer this weirdly unsolicited reference to the controversy now? Was he joking? And if so, what the fuck? It was a strange and bitter comment to make, especially right on the heels of his grand-slam performance in the previous night's debate. If this is a guy who chews over a perceived slight in the middle of a victory lap, what's he going to be like with his finger on the button? Even Richard Nixon wasn't wound that tight.

--

Rudy giuliani is a true American hero, and we know this because he does all the things we expect of heroes these days -- like make $16 million a year, and lobby for Hugo Chávez and Rupert Murdoch, and promote wars without ever having served in the military, and hire a lawyer to call his second wife a "stuck pig," and organize absurd, grandstanding pogroms against minor foreign artists, and generally drift through life being a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn't even bother to conceal the fact that he's had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers. In the media age, we can't have a hero humble enough to actually be one; what is needed is a tireless scoundrel, a cad willing to pose all day long for photos, who'll accept $100,000 to talk about heroism for an hour, who has the balls to take a $2.7 million advance to write a book about himself called Leadership. That's Rudy Giuliani. Our hero. And a perfect choice to uphold the legacy of George W. Bush.

Yes, Rudy is smarter than Bush. But his political strength -- and he knows it -- comes from America's unrelenting passion for never bothering to take that extra step to figure shit out. If you think you know it all already, Rudy agrees with you. And if anyone tries to tell you differently, they're probably traitors, and Rudy, well, he'll keep an eye on 'em for you. Just like Bush, Rudy appeals to the couch-bound bully in all of us, and part of the allure of his campaign is the promise to put the Pentagon and the power of the White House at that bully's disposal.

Rudy's attack against Ron Paul in the debate was a classic example of that kind of politics, a Rovian masterstroke. The wizened Paul, a grandfather seventeen times over who is running for the Republican nomination at least 100 years too late, was making a simple isolationist argument, suggesting that our lengthy involvement in Middle Eastern affairs -- in particular our bombing of Iraq in the 1990s -- was part of the terrorists' rationale in attacking us.

Though a controversial statement for a Republican politician to make, it was hardly refutable from a factual standpoint -- after all, Osama bin Laden himself cited America's treatment of Iraq in his 1996 declaration of war. Giuliani surely knew this, but he jumped all over Paul anyway, demanding that Paul take his comment back. "I don't think I've ever heard that before," he hissed, "and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th."

It was like the new convict who comes into prison the first day and punches the weakest guy in the cafeteria in the teeth, and the Southern crowd exploded in raucous applause. Coupled with yet another implosion by aneurysm-in-waiting John McCain a few days later ("Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room!" McCain screamed at a fellow senator during a meeting about immigration), the Ron Paul ass-whipping revived Giuliani's standing among conservatives who lately had begun to abandon him over his pro-choice status.

The Paul incident went to the very heart of who Giuliani is as a politician. To the extent that conservatism in the Bush years has morphed into a celebration of mindless patriotism and the paranoid witch-hunting of liberals and other dissenters, Rudy seems the most anxious of any Republican candidate to take up that mantle. Like Bush, Rudy has repeatedly shown that he has no problem lumping his enemies in with "the terrorists" if that's what it takes to get over. When the 9/11 Commission raised criticisms of his fire department, for instance, Giuliani put the bipartisan panel in its place for daring to question his leadership. "Our anger," he declared, "should clearly be directed at one source and one source alone -- the terrorists who killed our loved ones."

Whether Rudy believes in this kind of politics reflexively, as the psychologically crippled Bush does, or as a means to an end, as Karl Rove does, isn't clear. But there's no question that Giuliani has made the continuation of Swift-Boating politics a linchpin of his candidacy. His political hires speak deeply to that tendency. Chris Henick, formerly Karl Rove's most trusted deputy, is now a key aide at Giuliani Partners, the security firm set up by the mayor to cash in on his 9/11 image. One of his top donors, Richard Collins, is a longtime Bush supporter who was instrumental in setting up "Stop Her Now," a 527 group modeled on Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that will be used to attack Hillary Clinton. And the money for the smear campaign comes from the same Texas sources behind the Swift Boaters, including oilman T. Boone Pickens and Houston home builder Bob Perry.

To further emulate the Bush-Rove model, Giuliani has recruited some thirty Bush "Pioneers," the key fund-raisers who served as the president's $100,000 bagmen. In addition, he hired the woman who spearheaded the Pioneer program to be his chief fund-raiser. "Rudy definitely got some of Bush's heavier hitters, including all the Swift Boater types," says Alex Cohen, a senior researcher at Public Citizen, who tracks the president's top donors.

--

Rudy's stump speech on the trail these days is short and sweet. He talks about two things -- national security and free-market capitalism -- and his catchphrase for both is "going on offense." When he talks about "economic offense," Giuliani is ostensibly communicating the usual conservative contempt for taxes and big government. But he means more than that. Like the Bush-Cheney crew, Rudy believes everything should be for sale, even public policy -- particularly when he's in a position to do the selling.

In his years as mayor -- and his subsequent career as a lobbyist -- Rudy jumped into bed with anyone who could afford a rubber. Saudi Arabia, Rupert Murdoch, tobacco interests, pharmaceutical companies, private prisons, Bechtel, ChevronTexaco -- Giuliani took money from them all. You could change Rudy's mind literally in the time it took to write a check. A former prosecutor, Giuliani used to call drug dealers "murderers." But as a lobbyist he agreed to represent Seisint, a security firm run by former cocaine smuggler Hank Asher. "I have a great admiration for what he's doing," Rudy gushed after taking $2 million of Asher's money.

As mayor, Rudy had a history of asking financially interested parties to help shape important government policies. At one point, he allowed a deputy mayor who was on the payroll of Major League Baseball to work on deals for the Yankees and Mets; at another point he commissioned a $600,000 report on privatizing JFK and LaGuardia from a consultant with ties to the British Airport Authority, Rudy's handpicked choice to manage the airports.

And let's not forget Bernie Kerik, Rudy's very own hairy-assed Sancho Panza, who was nixed as director of Homeland Security after investigators uncovered a gift he received from a construction firm with alleged mob ties that wanted to do business with Giuliani's administration. It is a testament to the monstrous breadth of Rudy's chutzpah that he used his post-9/11 celebrity to push his personal bagman for a post that milks the world's hugest security-contracts tit -- at the very moment when he himself was creating a security-services company.

Then there's 9/11. Like Bush's, Rudy's career before the bombing was in the toilet; New Yorkers had come to think of him as an ambition-sick meanie whose personal scandals were truly wearying to think about. But on the day of the attack, it must be admitted, Rudy hit the perfect note; he displayed all the strength and reassuring calm that Bush did not, and for one day at least, he was everything you'd want in a leader. Then he woke up the next day and the opportunist in him saw that there was money to be made in an America high on fear.

For starters, Rudy tried to use the tragedy to shred election rules, pushing to postpone the inauguration of his successor so he could hog the limelight for a few more months. Then, with the dust from the World Trade Center barely settled, he went on the road as the Man With the Bullhorn, pocketing as much as $200,000 for a single speaking engagement. In 2002 he reported $8 million in speaking income; this past year it was more than $11 million. He's traveled in style, at one stop last year requesting a $47,000 flight on a private jet, five hotel rooms and a private suite with a balcony view and a king-size bed.

While the mayor himself flew out of New York on a magic carpet, thousands of cash-strapped cops, firemen and city workers involved with the cleanup at the World Trade Center were developing cancers and infections and mysterious respiratory ailments like the "WTC cough." This is the dirty little secret lurking underneath Rudy's 9/11 hero image -- the most egregious example of his willingness to shape public policy to suit his donors. While the cleanup effort at the Pentagon was turned over to federal agencies like OSHA, which quickly sealed off the site and required relief workers to wear hazmat suits, the World Trade Center cleanup was handed over to Giuliani. The city's Department of Design and Construction (DDC) promptly farmed out the waste-clearing effort to a smattering of politically connected companies, including Bechtel, Bovis and AMEC construction.

The mayor pledged to reopen downtown in no time, and internal DDC memos indicate that the cleanup was directed at a breakneck pace. One memo to DDC chief Michael Burton warned, "Project management appears to only address safety issues when convenient for the schedule of the project." Burton, however, had his own priorities: He threatened to fire contractors if "the highest level of efficiency is not maintained."

Although respiratory-mask use was mandatory, the city allowed a macho culture to develop on the site: Even the mayor himself showed up without a mask. By October, it was estimated, masks were being worn on site as little as twenty-nine percent of the time. Rudy proclaimed that there were "no significant problems" with the air at the World Trade Center. But there was something wrong with the air: It was one of the most dangerous toxic-waste sites in human history, full of everything from benzene to asbestos and PCBs to dioxin (the active ingredient in Agent Orange). Since the cleanup ended, police and firefighters have reported a host of serious illnesses -- respiratory ailments like sarcoidosis; leukemia and lymphoma and other cancers; and immune-system problems.

"The likelihood is that more people will eventually die from the cleanup than from the original accident," says David Worby, an attorney representing thousands of cleanup workers in a class-action lawsuit against the city. "Giuliani wears 9/11 like a badge of honor, but he screwed up so badly."

When I first spoke to Worby, he was on his way home from the funeral of a cop. "One thing about Giuliani," he told me. "He's never been to a funeral of a cleanup worker."

Indeed, Rudy has had little at all to say about the issue. About the only move he's made to address the problem was to write a letter urging Congress to pass a law capping the city's liability at $350 million.

Did Giuliani know the air at the World Trade Center was poison? Who knows -- but we do know he took over the cleanup, refusing to let more experienced federal agencies run the show. He stood on a few brick piles on the day of the bombing, then spent the next ten months making damn sure everyone worked the night shift on-site while he bonked his mistress and negotiated his gazillion-dollar move to the private sector. Meanwhile, the people who actually cleaned up the rubble got used to checking their stool for blood every morning.

Now Giuliani is running for president -- as the hero of 9/11. George Bush has balls, too, but even he has to bow to this motherfucker.

ProPublica
‏

1/ Last night, the WaPo reported Rudy Giuliani was slated to make a paid appearance at a Kremlin-backed conference. He canceled after the story.

But we remembered: He ATTENDED THE CONFERENCE LAST YEAR.

WE HAVE TAPE.

via Trump, Inc podcast w/@WNYC

11:54 AM - 28 Sep 2019

Rudy Giuliani’s Mystery Trips to Russia, Armenia and Ukraine — “Trump, Inc.” Podcast
We spent weeks investigating his work and clients in the former Soviet Union. We have so many questions.

by Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, WNYCOct. 31, 2018, 4 a.m. EDT

Rudy Giuliani with Donald Trump, then president-elect, at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey in 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Find “Trump, Inc.” wherever you get your podcasts.

Rudy 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.

In this week’s episode 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 the guest of powerful players there. And since Trump was elected, he appears to have stepped up the frequency of those trips.

Listen to the Episode

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.)

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.

There are many things we don’t know about Giuliani’s trips. We don’t know whether he’s being paid, and if so by whom. Giuliani declined to answer our questions.

One thing we do know is that a company called TriGlobal Strategic Ventures claims credit for organizing the trips. Abramyan is on TriGlobal’s board, as is a former Russian government minister. TriGlobal and Abramyan also did not respond to our questions.

Giuliani’s work abroad does not appear to break any laws or rules. But it also appears to be unprecedented. Said Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and a law professor at the University of Michigan: “I don’t recall seeing anything like this before.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/trum ... ign=buffer

‏

2/ Giuliani *went to* the conference at the invitation of a Russian-allied businessman who literally rebuilt the Kremlin. (Putin gave the guy an award for it.)

Giuliani was billed to be on a panel with two advisers to Putin, including one on the U.S.’s sanctions list.

3/ Here’s Giuliani speaking at the same conference last year that he just canceled under heat last night.

4/ Here's a clip of Giuliani during the trip last year. He explains, “I’m not here in my capacity as a private lawyer for President Trump. I’m here as a private citizen.”

5/ What was Giuliani invited to speak about? Cybersecurity and “technological breakthrough.”

6/ The WaPo now reports that Giuliani was scheduled to appear this year on a panel again with — wait for it — the same sanctioned Putin adviser whom we flagged last year!
https://propub.li/2od9vlr


7/ So what *is* this conference? The WaPo describes it as the “brainchild of Putin,” meant as part of a bulwark against Western Europe.

The conference’s site says it’s bankrolled by the Russian govt.

http://ereforum.org/organizers/?lang=en …


8/ Giuliani told the WaPo he WAS going to be paid for this latest appearance. But he wouldn’t say by whom or how much.



9/ Giuliani’s appearance at the conference last year wasn’t an isolated thing. As we reported, he has been traveling to Russia and the region frequently as the guest of powerful players there.


10/ We asked Giuliani whether he was being paid for all these trips to former Soviet states, and if so by whom. He wouldn’t say.


11/ We asked a former prosecutor about Giuliani’s junkets. Her answer:


12/ There are still a lot of questions. If you happen to have any answers, please get in contact with us. There are lots of ways to do it, including via Signal and WhatsApp:

14/ Also, pssst. Trump, Inc. is about to have a very special episode on Ukraine next week. Seriously special. Sign up and we’ll send you an email:



John Powers
‏

Replying to @propublica @WNYC
With a quick layover in Bahrain to line his pockets.




John Powers
‏

John Powers Retweeted Portlus Glam
Epic thread here on Rudy’s International Cyber Grifting
John Powers added,

Portlus Glam

It isn't a mystery what Rudy Giuliani is up to as he travels the globe representing himself to foreign leaders as the President's "Cybersecurity Advisor".…
Show this thread
https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1 ... 4166211586

Firefighters union assails Giuliani
POSTED: 12:38 p.m. EST, March 10, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One of the nation's largest firefighters' unions has accused Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, of committing "egregious acts" against firefighters who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

In a letter to its members Friday, the International Association of Fire Fighters excoriated Giuliani for his November 2001 decision to cut back the number of firefighters searching the rubble of Ground Zero for the remains of some 300 fallen comrades.

The 280,000-member union accused him of carelessly expediting the cleanup process with a "scoop-and-dump" operation after the recovery of millions of dollars in gold, silver and other assets from the Bank of Nova Scotia that had been buried.

Giuliani's campaign insisted that he respects and supports first responders. (Watch union chief say why he won't forgive Giuliani Video)

The former mayor and the union have feuded for years over his policies in the aftermath of the attacks, but the firefighters' latest criticism comes as several polls show Giuliani ahead by wide margins in the GOP nomination race.

Seeking to blunt the impact of the accusations, his campaign announced the support of nearly 100 South Carolina firefighters and countered with its own letter from Lee Ielpi, a retired New York firefighter.

"There is no one who respects firefighters and first responders more than Rudy Giuliani," Ielpi wrote. "Firefighters have no greater friend and supporter."

The union's latest broadside initially was included in a scathing letter dated February 28. Union officials say that letter was drafted as leaders were weighing whether to invite Giuliani to a presidential candidate forum but never was distributed to members because the union ultimately invited Giuliani. Giuliani, however, declined the invitation to next week's forum, citing scheduling conflicts.

"We decided to fall on the side of taking the high road and extend an invitation to him," said Harold Schaitberger, the union's general president. "That letter was never intended to be released."

Nevertheless, the letter showed up on Web sites this week. After it surfaced, the union decided to send a revised letter with the same criticisms to its members on Friday and posted it on the union's Web site.

"Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that firefighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like so much garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills landfill," the letter said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them."

"What Giuliani showed is a disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen and those brothers still searching for them," it added.

The union said the purpose of the letter was "to make all our members aware of the egregious acts Mayor Giuliani committed against our members, our fallen on 9/11 and our New York City union officers following that horrific day."

Ielpi, for his part, said he was "deeply disappointed and disheartened" by the union's recent political activities and called the letter offensive and inaccurate.

Tim Brown, a former firefighter and the executive director of Firefighters for Rudy, added: "We are honored by the support of so many first responders from across the country and are appreciative of their continued enthusiasm for Mayor Giuliani's candidacy."

The union says it's bipartisan. It endorsed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004.

At least 10 Republican and Democratic candidates plan to attend Wednesday's forum, including Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, and former Sen. John Edwards. On the Republican side, the only top tier candidate who has committed is GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, declined an invitation.

============================

or be removed like so much garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills landfill

Wasn't the 'Fresh Kills landfill' the area on the waterfront that was emiting high levels of radiation last summer?

IMO, the cause of the molten metal at the base of the Twin Towers was a low level nuke exploded under each.

This could be another reason why all the distraction from CD....

gc

America's God Conspiracy
Next week Rudy Giuliani will be speaking at Regent’s Executive
Leadership Series.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11458&p=113001&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p113001

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/9/9012/51293

Rudy Wanted To Become Dictator of NY In 2001
by nathanrudy
Sat Jun 09, 2007 at 06:18:25 AM PDT

I am amazed that anyone is seriously considering Rudy Giuliani as President, in no small measure because I am from New Jersey and read the New York papers daily. And I have a pretty good memory for obscure crap I read. Giuliani before 9/11 was an unpopular, arrogant, abusive Mayor who was term limited out of office.

But the main reason why I cannot believe anyone – and I mean anyone from any party including the most rabid neocon – can support Rudy Giuliani for President is that his first reaction to the 9/11 attacks was to seek an extension to his term in office.

Most folks forget that September 11, 2001 was the day of the primary for Mayor of New York. Mike Bloomberg was the frontrunner for the Republicans, but was more than 15 percent behind the Democrats. The reason why a liberal former Democrat like Bloomberg got any play in the Republican primary was that no one – and I mean no one – expected a Republican to win. It was an outlandish joke and no serious Republican wanted to get creamed.

We all watched the Mark Green/Fernando Ferrer Democratic primary with gusto, expecting September 11th to be the day a new Mayor of New York was selected. None of us knew, obviously, that day would have far bigger consequences for the future of the city, our country and our world.

But the horrors struck our nation in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC and things changed. Obviously, one of the major changes was that the primary for New York City Mayor was scuttled and had to be postponed.

Rudy Giuliani rose to the occasion that day. Even those of us who think he was a bully and lousy administrator admit that. Even those who think he is a terrible person for the way he has treated his family admit that. He was central casting hero standing in front of the cameras telling us that while we'd lived through a horror, we had lived and we would get our revenge.

But in the following days we got to see the real Giuliani. It's easier to be heroic in front of cameras while people are afraid. Strongmen for all time have been able to do that, gathering the fears of the people together into a small place and whipping them up into a frenzy of passion that lifts the strongman to greater power.

Giuliani knew that, and tried to benefit. On September 26, 2001 – two weeks after the worst attack on our mainland since the Civil War – Giuliani proposedthat he be able to hold on to his office for three more months.

How to extend his term -- something the mayor and his advisers insist is needed to ensure a more rapid recovery for the city -- has been very much on the mayor's mind for at least part of the week. Mr. Giuliani and his aides have contacted lawmakers and business leaders to see if there is support for a challenge to the term-limits laws adopted twice by voters, and to see if legislators would accept an emergency extension of his term. Some argue that either move would require state legislation; lawmakers have responded coolly to altering the term-limits law.

There was no law that supported such an extension, no tradition that offered it, no constitutional power that allowed it. Giuliani simply thought that the law of his city, state and nation should be aborted for his own personal glory.

Let me say that again: Rudy Giuliani used the most horrific moment of the last fifty years to try to maintain power for himself.

For some reason, this attempted and rebuffed coup d'etat is a matter of non-history. It never happened, and has been conveniently forgotten by the bulk of not only American people but also the media and the political intelligentsia.

But it is a big freaking deal. In a time when we could be hit by terrorists at any moment Rudy Giuliani is seeking to be our leader. He wants to be the guy with the most power in our country, not only over the proverbial button but also able to suspend habeas corpus and arrest people and torture them without court review.

And when his city was touched, horribly, by terrorism he spent two weeks of considering his options. Even after democracy continued and the primary had been revoted in the face of a terrorist attack, Rudy Giuliani still thought the best thing to do was suspend the law of the land and give him the power for "just a little longer" until the crisis was averted.

That's bad enough in itself. But it was the courage of Democrat Fernando Ferrer to tell Rudy to stuff it that stopped this usurpation of democratic control of our country. Ferrer was the only primary candidate who opposed this plan. Democrat Mark Green said it was OK as long as he still got four years after Giuliani was done. Bloomberg was fine with it. Republicans Governor George Pataki and Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno were willing to let Giuliani do whatever he wanted.

But Ferrer stood in the way. A Democrat, one of those people Giuliani recently decried as unable to respond to terrorism, said that we should allow the democratic process to proceed in the face of terrorism. In essence, he said we cannot allow our ideals and our democratic way of life to be changed because some assholes attacked us. That was a tough stand to take, and it hurt his political career while helping our country.

Ferrer was right, and Giuliani was wrong.

And we know that because the normal American election happened on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. As a result of his courageous stand Ferrer lost the runoff to Mark Green, and as a result of Giuliani's fear mongering Mark Green lost the general election to Mike Bloomberg.

And on January 1, 2002, as scheduled and as determined by the rule of law, Mike Bloomberg took office as the Mayor of the City of New York, the state of New York, the United States of America.

In the face of terrorism, in the face of fear, in the face of the greatest national moment since Pearl Harbor the normal election process continued and the people peaceably and freely elected a new leader. And the transition went smoothly, and nothing was the worse for wear.

Fernando Ferrer was right, the American Way of democracy and the rule of law was proven right. Rudy Giuliani and the impulse to trash the rule of law was proven dead wrong.

Now he wants to be President, with even more power. If the country were to face another major attack on our soil, Giuliani is likely to once again seek a power grab that would make President Bush's look like nothing. He has already tried it once, but he didn't have the power to make it stick.

And he would do it again if he had the chance.

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/nyregion/05nyc.html


Giuliani Makes 9/11 His Brand
By CLYDE HABERMAN

The Republican candidates for president will go at it again tonight,
debating in New Hampshire. Terrorism and national security are bound
to figure as topics, and we all know what that means: Former Mayor
Rudolph W. Giuliani will have another chance to assert proprietary
rights to Sept. 11 and how we should understand that day.

Not that Mr. Giuliani is alone in believing that his perspectives on
this subject are special. Like him, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
claims a unique status by virtue of being a New Yorker.

During the Democratic candidates’ own New Hampshire debate on Sunday
night, former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina dismissed the
“war on terror” as a political slogan — a “bumper sticker,” as he
called it. In disagreeing, Mrs. Clinton established her street cred.

“I’m a senator from New York,” she said. “I have lived with the
aftermath of 9/11.”

It will be interesting to see what happens should she and Mr.
Giuliani go toe to toe as their party’s nominees. One can imagine the
former mayor hauling off on her should she use that aftermath line
again. Aftermath? I was there, he’d say.

That was Mr. Giuliani’s tactic during a debate last month when he lit
into a fellow Republican, Representative Ron Paul of Texas. Mr. Paul
had suggested that American policies in the Middle East, going back
to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, have contributed to the Muslim anger
that has produced atrocities like the 2001 terrorist attacks. Though
it wasn’t his turn to speak, Mr. Giuliani piped up as the indignant
proprietor of 9/11 memory.

“That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the
attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were
attacking Iraq,” he said. No Clintonesque aftermath for him. He was
there.

Mr. Giuliani has made the attack so much his province — the satirical
newspaper The Onion says he is running for “president of 9/11” — that
you have to wonder why he doesn’t try to trademark “9/11” as his own.

For a trademark claim, “he’d have to say that every time people saw
‘9/11,’ there was an association of that phrase with him, that there
was an immediate link to him and his product, whatever that might
be,” said Tim Wu, a professor of copyright law at Columbia University.

Indeed, that is essentially what Mr. Giuliani does say. His
presidential race rests heavily on his performance on Sept. 11 and
his hope that, when Americans contemplate antiterror strategies, the
first name to pop into their heads is Rudy. Like every other
candidate, he definitely has a product to sell: himself.

Nor is he shy about protecting himself in this regard. He has
trademarked “Rudolph Giuliani” and “Giuliani Partners L.L.C.,” the
company he formed after his mayoral term expired at the end of 2001.
As The Daily News reported a few months ago, the company asserts that
anything that “tarnishes, degrades, disparages or reflects adversely”
on the Giuliani name could be grounds for terminating a contract.

The former mayor’s sensitivities about his name are well known.

You may recall how he went ballistic a decade ago when New York
magazine ran advertisements on city buses that said of itself,
“Possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn’t taken credit
for.” The mayor leaned on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority
to remove the ads, and that led to lawsuits over free speech. The
magazine prevailed in court. To fight a no-win battle in Mr.
Giuliani’s behalf, the bus people tossed away $183,766 of riders’
money in legal fees.

GIVEN that background, the notion of trying to trademark “9/11”
doesn’t seem so outlandish. But it would be an uphill climb and most
likely an unsuccessful one, specialists in copyright law say.

A date on the calendar is “something so generic,” said Edward J.
Davis, a Manhattan lawyer. Susan P. Crawford, a professor at the
Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, agreed. “It’s in broad
use by so many people that it doesn’t uniquely distinguish any good
or service,” she said. “It has no trademark heft.”

Professor Wu said much the same — that the date is “sort of a
collective property,” beyond any individual claim. Still, he said, he
could envision a debate in which “another candidate, let’s say
McCain, gets up and says, ‘9/11 is important.’ And Giuliani says, ‘Do
you realize that “9/11” happens to be a Giuliani trademark? You’re
not allowed to talk about it.’ ”

An ironic statement in light of recurring allegations that Rudy Giuliani and
Jerry Hauer were instrumental in the development and release of the West
Nile virus - a flagrant and deadly act of terrorism. The culmination of the
plot came with the announcement of the vaccine (Financial Times, August 1, 2000): "Peptide Therapeutics, the UK biotech company, said it had been
awarded a $3,000,000 grant to develop a new vaccine to combat the
mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which killed seven. The vaccine will be
developed at OraVax, Peptide's US subsidiary, using the company's
proprietary ChimeriVax technology."5
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12219&p=124704&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p124704

Drug Kingpins for Rudy Giuliani

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/

[seemslikeadream]

someone tell alloneword in the Biden thread that I am aware that it is Richard N. Haass

AND
Rudy wants you all to look into Whitey Bulger's nephew

AND

"affidavit" that Rudy is waiving around this morning is sworn out on behalf of Paul Manafort's former business partner who is in Austria fighting extradition to the US for bribery charges.


so odd that Rudy's conspiracy theories are being taken as anything but idiotic at RI

What's next the official 9/11 story?

Rudy Giuliani = Truth Teller

what then was the supposed rationale for Joe Biden seeking his firing?

I welcome this new level of honesty, at least!

$9.11 For Rudy
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13532&p=132415&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p132415

Oh man, you guys seen this explosive Rudy Giuliani child sex kidnapping coverup?

http://www.911blogger.com/node/8922

and also this
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3753385&page=1

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13170&p=142786&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p142786

Tom Bossert (who knows Trump "colluded" but claims he has reason to be mad he was accused of such) actually makes news by saying the USG attributed the DNC hack to Russia "before it even communicated it to the FBI."

Former Trump homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said on ABC's "This Week" that the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016 has been "debunked," and he condemned Rudy Giuliani for continuing to push it with President Trump.

Zachary Basu
48 mins ago
Ex-Trump adviser: The best way to self-impeach is to hire Rudy Giuliani

Former Trump homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said on ABC's "This Week" that the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016 has been "debunked," and he condemned Rudy Giuliani for continuing to push it with President Trump.


"It's not only a conspiracy theory, it is completely debunked. I don't want to be glib about this matter, but last year, retired former Sen. Judd Gregg wrote a piece in The Hill magazine saying the 3 ways or the 5 ways to impeach one's self. And the 3rd way was to hire Rudy Giuliani. And at this point, I am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing in repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again. And for clarity here, George, let me just again repeat that it has no validity."
Why it matters: In his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump claimed that the hacked DNC server is in Ukraine and asked Zelensky to work with Attorney General Bill Barr to "get to the bottom of it." The assertion is part of an easily debunked right-wing conspiracy theory that alleges that CrowdStrike, the first firm to publicly release evidence that Russia perpetrated the hack, made up information to fuel the Russia investigation.

The big picture: Bossert said that while he doesn't believe Trump was "pressuring" the Ukrainian president, he was "deeply disturbed" by the phone call and said that Trump could be in serious trouble as House Democrats' formal impeachment inquiry heats up: "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."

Bossert added that Trump needs to "move forward" from 2016 collusion allegations and that Giuliani's obsession with the Ukraine-DNC conspiracy could help bring down the president.

Rudy Giuliani’s Mystery Trips to Russia, Armenia and Ukraine — “Trump, Inc.” Podcast

We spent weeks investigating his work and clients in the former Soviet Union. We have so many questions.

by Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, WNYCOct. 31, 2018, 4 a.m. EDT

Rudy Giuliani with Donald Trump, then president-elect, at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey in 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Find “Trump, Inc.” wherever you get your podcasts.

Rudy 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.

In this week’s episode 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 the guest of powerful players there. And since Trump was elected, he appears to have stepped up the frequency of those trips.

Listen to the Episode

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.)

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.

Get More Trump, Inc.
Stay up to date with email updates from WNYC and ProPublica about their ongoing investigations.
There are many things we don’t know about Giuliani’s trips. We don’t know whether he’s being paid, and if so by whom. Giuliani declined to answer our questions.

One thing we do know is that a company called TriGlobal Strategic Ventures claims credit for organizing the trips. Abramyan is on TriGlobal’s board, as is a former Russian government minister. TriGlobal and Abramyan also did not respond to our questions.

Giuliani’s work abroad does not appear to break any laws or rules. But it also appears to be unprecedented. Said Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and a law professor at the University of Michigan: “I don’t recall seeing anything like this before.”

Do you know something about Giuliani’s work abroad? We want to hear from you.

You can contact us via Signal, WhatsApp or voicemail at 347-244-2134. Here’s more about how you can contact us securely.

You can always email us at tips@trumpincpodcast.org.

And finally, you can use the postal service:

Trump Inc at ProPublica
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-giul ... propublica

Her son, Brady Toensing, has been instrumental in a number of smear campaigns in Vermont. Most notably, he filed a complaint falsely alleging that Jane Sanders (wife of Bernie Sanders) committed financial fraud during her time with Champlain College.

Thomas Cleveland
‏
Victoria Toensing doesn’t get enough credit. She orchestrated (fixed typo):

1. Uranium One
(link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1GK2MU …)

2. “Spygate”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/to ... ry-n816106 …
https://dailycaller.com/2018/03/25/geor ... on-emails/ …
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... a9e6e74396 …

3. And now this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/p ... trump.html …


https://twitter.com/tcleveland4real/sta ... 6715914241

It also contains a report on Rudy Giuliani’s problematic response to a group of activists who asked him, with camera running, how he knew that the Twin Towers were going to collapse. (He had told Peter Jennings on ABC News on 9/11 itself that he had been warned.) Given the fact that he Giuliani is currently the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, evidence that he had inside information on the collapse of the towers---an event for which there was no historical precedent---should certainly be investigated.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13777&p=135141&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p135141

Would You Buy a Used Hawk From This Man?



By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

Oct. 15, 2007 issue - Neocons can't help but slink around Washington, D.C. The Iraq War has given the neoconservatives—who favor the assertive use of American power abroad to spread American values—something of a bad name, and several of the Republican candidates seem less than eager to hire them as advisers. But Rudy Giuliani apparently never got that memo. One of the top foreign-policy consultants to the leading GOP candidate is Norman Podhoretz, a founding father of the neocon movement.

Podhoretz is in favor of bombing Iran because of the country's unwillingness to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. He also believes America is engaged in a "world war" with "Islamofascism" and that Giuliani is the only man who can win it. "I decided to join Giuliani's team because his view of the war—what I call World War IV—is very close to my own," Podhoretz tells NEWSWEEK. (World War III, in his view, was the cold war.) "And also because he has the qualities of a wartime leader, including a fighting spirit and a determination to win."

Giuliani clearly hopes this image, born of his heroic performance on 9/11, can carry him to the GOP nomination and to the White House. But is he really the candidate who will "keep Americans safer" if his primary tactic is to go "on offense" in the "long war," as he often puts it in his campaign stump speech? Critics will say that the neocons already tried that—in Iraq. Still, what's left of the neocon movement does seem to be converging around the Giuliani campaign, to some degree, because he embraces their common themes: a willingness to use military power, a tendency to group all radical Islamist groups together as a common enemy, strong support for Israel and an aggressive posture toward Iran. "He's positioning himself as the neo-neocon," jokes Richard Holbrooke, a top foreign-policy adviser to Hillary Clinton.

Among the core consultants surrounding Giuliani: Martin Kramer, who has led an attack on U.S. Middle Eastern scholars since 9/11 for being soft on terrorism; Stephen Rosen, a hawkish professor at Harvard who advocates major new spending on defense and is close to prominent neoconservative Bill Kristol; former Wisconsin senator Bob Kasten, who often sided with the neocons during the Reagan era and was an untiring supporter of aid to Israel, and Daniel Pipes, who has advocated for the racial profiling of Muslim Americans. (He's argued that the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was not the moral offense it's been portrayed as, though he doesn't say Muslims should suffer the same.)

Some traditional conservatives are wary of the Giuliani team. "Clearly it is a rather one-sided group of people," says Dimitri Simes of the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank. "Their foreign-policy manifesto seems to be 'We're right, we're powerful, and just make my day.' He's out-Bushing Bush." Giuliani campaign spokeswoman Maria Comella says that while the candidate listens to these advisers because "he wants to have as much information as possible, at the end of the day he makes his own decisions." In some speeches and writings, Giuliani has clearly departed from the more extreme views of Podhoretz—who has said he "hopes and prays" that Bush bombs Iran—and others. His foreign-affairs team also consists of those who take a more centrist view, chief among them his policy coordinator, Yale scholar Charles Hill, who is more skeptical of policies like democracy promotion than most neocons. "I don't really know much about neoconservatives," Hill tells NEWSWEEK, adding that the team engages in "lively discussions." Asked recently in London about Iran, Giuliani said he hoped to avoid military action in the end, but he indicated that the threat of using it should be made plain. "I believe the United States and our allies should deliver a very clear message to Iran, very clear, very sober, very serious: they will not be allowed to become a nuclear power," he said. Podhoretz, by contrast, tells NEWSWEEK: "I believe that a bombing campaign is the only way to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability."

Regardless of any differences on Iran, Giuliani's neocons are in line with his pro-Israel stance. As mayor of New York—home to the largest Jewish community in the United States—Giuliani became renowned in the 1990s for his aggressive support of Israel and his mistrust of Palestinian leaders. In 1995, with the Oslo peace process underway, Giuliani kicked Yasir Arafat out of a concert for world leaders at Lincoln Center. Arafat "has never been held to answer for the murders he was implicated in," the mayor said.

[b]On a trip to Israel in 2001, Giuliani told an Israeli audience: "We're together with you. We are bound by blood." Earlier this year, in an interview with Foreign Affairs magazine, Giuliani suggested that "too much emphasis" had been placed on promoting negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. He said "it is not in the interest of the United States, at a time when it is being threatened by Islamist terrorists, to assist in the creation of another state that will support terrorism." One of his advisers, Pipes, has advocated "razing [Palestinian] villages from which attacks are launched."[/b]

...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21162326/site/newsweek/

posting.php?mode=quote&f=8&p=134461

There will never be enough bombings and sending others off to start new wars that will erase those feelings. But Podhoretz and his bloodthirsty followers -- including his combat-avoiding protegee Rudy Giuliani -- will never stop trying.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13630&p=133542&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p133542

[seemslikeadream]

Giuliani: “I’m the true whistleblower; a real hero! I can’t wait to tell the American people the truth and expose the Democrats!”

Congress: “Would you like to appear before Congress, tell the American people the truth and expose the Democrats?”

Giuliani: “No thanks.”



Asked if Ukrainian prosecutors could question Biden or his son, Kholodnitskiy said they would need to see possible wrongdoing.

“As of now, there is nothing there,” he said.


Since Paul Manafort is in the background of this Ukraine stuff, a reminder that he lied about why he was meeting with a GRU asset and trading his strategy to win MI for a plan to carve up Ukraine in hopes of getting back in Oleg Deripaska's service.

1/ Last night, the WaPo reported Rudy Giuliani was slated to make a paid appearance at a Kremlin-backed conference. He canceled after the story.

But we remembered: He ATTENDED THE CONFERENCE LAST YEAR.

WE HAVE TAPE.

via Trump, Inc podcast w/
@WNYC

https://mobile.twitter.com/MalcolmNance ... r%5Eauthor

Washington Post running OpEd from FARA agent Ed Rogers, former partner of Volker, named in whistleblower case WITHOUT MENTIONING THE CONNECTION.

[seemslikeadream]

Funny thing is both NYC 9/11 and London 7/7 had Rudy Giuliani present at the time.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13874&p=136709&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p136709

Armageddonites know little about the outside world, which they think of as threatening and awash with Satanic temptations. They are big supporters of Bush's "go it alone" foreign policies. For example, they love John Bolton. They were prime supporters for attacking Iraq. And, with very few exceptions, they were noticeably quiet about, if not supportive, of torturing prisoners of war (only with a new leadership did the National Association of Evangelicals finally condemn torture in May, 2007). Their support of the Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani shows that they consider aggressively prosecuting Mideast war (to help speed up the apocalypse) more important than the domestic programs of these socially liberal politicians.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13834&p=135859&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p135859

It also contains a report on Rudy Giuliani’s problematic response to a group of activists who asked him, with camera running, how he knew that the Twin Towers were going to collapse. (He had told Peter Jennings on ABC News on 9/11 itself that he had been warned.) Given the fact that he Giuliani is currently the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, evidence that he had inside information on the collapse of the towers---an event for which there was no historical precedent---should certainly be investigated.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13777&p=135141&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p135141

Oct. 15, 2007 issue - Neocons can't help but slink around Washington, D.C. The Iraq War has given the neoconservatives—who favor the assertive use of American power abroad to spread American values—something of a bad name, and several of the Republican candidates seem less than eager to hire them as advisers. But Rudy Giuliani apparently never got that memo. One of the top foreign-policy consultants to the leading GOP candidate is Norman Podhoretz, a founding father of the neocon movement.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13712&p=134461&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p134461

[Jerky]

Unironic round of applause.

You're made of stronger stuff than I am, SlaD. In just the time it took to scan the latest content here and type this tiny note to you, the overwhelming psy-op stink rolling off the usual suspects' smug, self-satisfied, ripped-from-the-New-Fascist-International(e)-propaganda-playbook circle-jerk marathon nearly overwhelmed me with literal nausea.

82_28, please contact American Dream about letting him back on the board. His year-long suspension for doing NOTHING WRONG is just about up, I think.

To my few remaining friends here, I miss you.
Jerky

[seemslikeadream]

I suppose some folks just do not know me very well

I have led a RL of massive sorrow, pain, happiness, family and a few very good friends

I am not phased by nonsense, occasionally irritated, frequently just amused.

look out Pence he'll throw you under the fence

What Happened To Marie Yovanovitch?

Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York attends "Free Iran 2018 - the Alternative" event organized by exiled Iranian opposition group on June 30, 2018 in Villepinte, north of Paris. (Photo by Zakaria ABDELKAFI / AFP)...
By Josh Kovensky

September 30, 2019 6:10 pm

It’s one of the stranger subplots in what may turn out to be the defining story of President Trump’s tenure.

Between March and April 2019, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch went from having a secure spot as the country’s representative in Kyiv to having nothing at all, fired amid jockeying by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to pressure Ukraine into manufacturing dirt as part of the President’s 2020 reelection bid.

“There have been two American foreign policy approaches towards Ukraine- one that was conducted by the embassy and State Department,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer told TPM. “And a second one led by Rudy Giuliani which has been focused on enhancing the prospects for the presidential election next year.”

“Those two agendas are not the same,” he added.

While it must have been a surreal experience for Yovanovitch, a well-respected career diplomat, for House Democrats, it could be a boon for their burgeoning impeachment inquiry. A deposition with Yovanovitch is scheduled for Oct. 2, as the chamber prepares to consider whether to send a case for Trump’s removal to the Senate.

The earliest traces of a campaign to force Yovanovitch’s removal come in May 2018, when former Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo informing him that Yovanovitch had an “anti-Trump bias,” while demanding her removal.

The letter does not appear to have had any immediate effect on the diplomat’s posting to Kyiv.

Rather, it would appear that it was Yovanovitch’s decision to criticize then-Ukraine prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko that eventually led to her departure.

In a March 5 speech, Yovanovitch hit out at Lutsenko’s tenure and demanded the resignation of another prosecutor over failed efforts at tackling corruption. But within weeks, Lutsenko hit back at Yovanovitch with an accusation of his own conveyed via The Hill‘s John Solomon: that she had previously provided Ukrainian prosecutors with a list of officials not to be prosecuted.

Through March and April, Lutsenko was conferring with Giuliani, and Solomon continued to pump out articles citing Lutsenko as accusing Yovanovitch — and later, the Bidens — of corruption.

Pressure continued to build around The Hill articles, culminating in an April 25 appearance by President Trump on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program in which Trump said that Attorney General Bill Barr “would want to see” Lutsenko’s allegations.

Four days later, Yovanovitch was recalled to Washington, according to the whistleblower complaint released by the House Intelligence Committee.

The State Department put out a statement on May 6, saying that Yovanovitch would conclude her posting to Kyiv “as planned.”

The intelligence community whistleblower wrote that Yovanovitch’s “tour was curtailed because of pressure stemming from Mr. Lutsenko’s allegations.”

Pifer, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, described the State Department’s statement on Yovanovitch’s departure from Kyiv as “total bullshit.”

“Her removal was unusual,” Pifer said. “Typically, when you have a new president taking office in a host country, you would like to have an ambassador there to make initial contacts with the president and his team.”

Within one week of Yovanovitch’s removal, Lutsenko began to walk back his statements, telling Bloomberg that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing by the Bidens.

Pifer told TPM that the problem for the Ukrainian government is that Giuliani “is probably closer to the President than any other American you’d be able to talk to.”

“I’m worried that you had some in Ukraine thinking we should respond to Giuliani’s agenda,” he added.

The House Intelligence Committee is investigating Giuliani’s activities — and Yovanovitch’s firing— with the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees. A subpoena issued by the committees to Giuliani on Monday demanded documents relating to Yovanovitch’s firing.

But they’re in uncharted territory.

Philip Zelikow, a history professor at the University of Virginia, told TPM, “As for the Giuliani mission to Ukraine, I know of no precedent in U.S. history for that sort of mission to a foreign government.”

He added that “it is hard to evaluate what happened to Ambassador Yovanovitch until more information is made available.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker ... ovanovitch

Your Road Map To Understanding The House Probe of Giuliani’s Ukraine Gambit
Tierney Sneed

Rudy Giuliani’s loose lips have caught up with him.

For months, the former New York mayor and current personal attorney to President Trump hasn’t been exactly hiding his globe-trotting effort to dig up dirt on the President’s personal political enemies.

That gambit — thanks to Trump’s own appeal to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky — is now the focus of a House impeachment inquiry that has moved quickly to subpoena Giuliani, and to request documents and depositions from his associates and State Department figures wrapped up in the endeavor.

The House probe was jumpstarted by a whistleblower’s complaint that Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has described as lawmakers’ “road map.”

Consider this piece your road map to that road map, and your guide to who and what House investigators are looking into, based on the subpoenas and requests they have issued:

The Scheme

Giuliani’s crusade has been geared towards fueling fire around a fabricated claim that Joe Biden, when he was vice president, blocked an investigation into a Ukrainian energy company where his son Hunter sat on the board. In fact, Biden likely encouraged more oversight of the company by helping oust a prosecutor who was widely accused of turning a blind eye to corruption.

The Giuliani subpoena and other subpoenas of his associates point directly at his interest in digging up dirt on the Bidens, the company Burisma and its founder Mykola Zlochevsky.



Investigators are also interested in what Giuliani has been trying to dig up on the investigation into Paul Manafort — the former Trump campaign chairman who is now in prison for financial crimes related to work in Ukraine — in what appears to be an effort to cast doubt on the genesis of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian probe.



The U.S. Players

Trump and Giuliani weren’t working alone and appear to have American partners, including some of Trump’s other favorite legal freelancers, and perhaps even officials in the Trump administration.

Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing are both mentioned in the Giuliani subpoena. The husband-wife-duo are prominent Mueller critics who represented key players in the Russia probe and were briefly enlisted to represented Trump personally in that investigation, until they dropped out due to conflicts.

They’re now reportedly involved in Giuliani’s Biden opposition research effort (they’ve denied that the President was aware of their efforts) and have been lobbing wild-eyed claims about the impeachment drive on Fox News.

House Democrats are particularly interested in what government officials were doing to further Giuliani’s goals. The whistleblower complaint describes two state department officials — Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland — as trying to “contain the damage” of Giuliani’s exploits, while Giuliani has claimed that they had in fact encouraged his work.



The House has requested that Volker, a Ukraine special envoy who resigned on Friday, and Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, appear for depositions.

The Middle Men

Giuliani has reportedly relied on several Soviet-born figures who now live in the United States to broker his connections to Ukraine.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman— two Florida-based businessmen who were born in Ukraine and Belarus respectively — have both been described as Giuliani’s “fixers.” They have put Giuliani in touch with Ukrainian officials whom they believe can dig up dirt on the Bidens and have also pushed for probes into Ukraine’s role in providing evidence in the Justice Department’s Russia investigation.

The House wants to depose both men next week and also requested from them a set of documents similar to those demanded from Giuliani.



Also in the House’s deposition list is Semyon “Sam” Kislin, an 84-year-old Russian emigre who has described himself as Giuliani’s “ex-advisor.” The Kislin-Giuliani relationship stretches back to the 1990s, when Kislin was donating to Gualiani’s mayoral campaigns, and Kislin also has a link to President Trump’s financial dealings of that era. More recently, Kislin has been trading fraud accusations with a former Ukrainian prosecutor who is key to the conspiracy theories against Biden.

The Ukrainian Side

Not surprisingly, Democrats want access to Giuliani’s records related to the Ukrainian politicians and officials who are the targets of the pressure campaign. Serhiy Leshchenko is a former member of parliament who helped expose the “black ledger” payments to Manafort from Ukraine’s pro-Russian politicians.

Ihor Kolomoisky is a Ukrainian oligarch in President Zelensky’s circle who is being probed by the FBI for his own shady dealings; Giuliani, meanwhile, has accused him of being “super dangerous” and threatening toward Giuliani pals Parnas and Furman.



The Giuliani subpoena lists several other current and former officials swept up in his smear campaign against Biden. Among them: Petro Poroshenko, Zelensky’s predecessor; Yuri Lutsenko, a former prosecutor who has made comments to conservative media figures — only later to retract them — that have helped fuel the bogus Biden allegations; and Victor Shokin, the top Ukrainian prosecutor Biden helped oust in conjunction with other western officials.



Giuliani records related to the mayors of Kiev and Kharkiv — including any contributions to those cities — are also listed in the subpoena.



Then there are the Ukrainian businessmen whose work with Giuliani lawmakers are now interested in.



Pavel Fuks — who was also involved in the Trump Moscow project — was a client of Giuliani’s as he was ramping up his international consulting. Vitaly Pruss is president of the consulting firm TriGlobal (also name-checked in the subpoena), which has had several dealings with Giuliani in recent years.

The Pressure Points

House investigators are interested in several episodes in which Giuliani and Trump may have applied pressure on Ukrainian officials — or their U.S. counterparts — to move forward with an investigation into the Biden.

The July 25 phone call, and other calls and meeting plans with Ukrainian officials, are an obvious focus.



There are references to other allegations in the whistleblower complaint as well: that that Trump withheld military assistance to Ukraine as leverage; that Trump allegedly swapped out Vice President Mike Pence for Energy Secretary Rick Perry in the U.S. delegation sent to the Zelensky inauguration; and that he recalled U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch because she was not deemed loyal enough to Trump’s cause.



There’s also mention of of May 23 White House meeting between Perry, Sondland and Volker.

Sketchy PAC Donations

This wouldn’t be a Trump scandal if there wasn’t also a question about where the money was flowing.

Lawmakers want to see any records pertaining to donations to political election campaigns coming from foreign individuals and those on the U.S. sanctions lists.



House investigators ask Parnas, Fruman and Kislin specifically for records regarding a mysterious $325,000 donation that the Giuliani associates made to the pro-Trump American First PAC in May 2018. The donation is linked to companies owned by Parnas, but the origin of the contribution is unknown, as TPM has previously reported.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/profile/tierney

‘He conned us from day one’: Giuliani’s Ukraine ally leaves trail of South Florida debts
By Nicholas Nehamas and Kevin G. Hall October 01, 2019 07:33 AM, Updated 58 minutes ago
From left to right: Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas, President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
From left to right: Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas, President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
Over the summer, Dianne and Michael Pues got an ominous phone call from the business partner of a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur who owes the couple more than $500,000 over a movie deal gone bad.

“He said the Ukrainians were upset because we were ‘a dangling participle’ and we needed to make a deal to make them go away,” Dianne Pues, who lives in New Jersey with her husband, recounted in a recent interview. “He said we no longer knew who we were dealing with and that the Ukrainians had ties all the way up to the State Department and the White House and they were partners with Rudy Giuliani.”

Working with Giuliani, the White House and the State Department was no idle boast.

He used bolt cutters to steal GPS boat gear, then led cops on two-county chase, police say

The “Ukrainians” are two South Florida businessmen named Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman who on Monday were sent letters by three House committees requesting information as part of an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Parnas and Fruman have recently become major Republican donors — and couriers of what they say is explosive information sourced from Ukraine about widespread corruption involving Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, American diplomats and Ukrainian officials. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a former New York City mayor, has been their conduit to the Trump administration.

On Monday, three House committees subpoenaed Giuliani for documents relating to his efforts in Ukraine. They also sent letters to Parnas, Fruman and a third man, Semyon Kislin, “seeking documents and noticing depositions.”

Before the scandal became a cable-news fixture, the exploits of Parnas and Fruman caught the admiring eye of Trump, as well as right-wing pundits and politicians who amplified their material. A government whistleblower complaint — one that led House Democrats last week to open the impeachment inquiry — cited media reports detailing Parnas and Fruman’s work introducing Giuliani to Ukrainian officials, although the two men weren’t mentioned by name.

Experts on Ukrainian politics have largely debunked the accusations against Biden and others as conspiracy theories. Even the Ukrainian prosecutor who originally brought attention to the matter has walked back some of his claims. The prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, was introduced to Giuliani thanks to Fruman and Parnas, according to media accounts and interviews.

To Dianne and Michael Pues, it’s no surprise Parnas has helped inject a stream of apparent misinformation into the public discourse.

“Mr. Parnas is a con man, he is a crook,” Dianne Pues said. “He conned us from day one.”

Their relationship with Parnas dates back to 2010, long before the South Florida businessman rose to a position that could see House investigators start asking questions about him and Fruman. Parnas solicited Michael Pues for a $350,000 bridge loan to help finance a movie called “Anatomy of an Assassin,” according to a lawsuit filed in 2011. Parnas even arranged a dinner with Jack Nicholson, court records state. But he never paid the money back. Five years later, a judge in New York federal court ruled that Parnas owed more than $500,000 to a Pues family trust. Tracking down Parnas to enforce the judgment has been a Herculean labor, according to court records and an attorney representing the trust in Florida, where the couple is now pursuing the case. Parnas’ failure to pay has left them in a precarious situation.

“He financially ruined us,” Dianne Pues said. “Our lives have not been the same since the day we met him.”

Fruman_2016.jpg
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.
A trail of lawsuits left in Parnas’ wake suggests she’s not the only one feeling burnt. (Michael Pues declined to be interviewed for this story.)

Parnas has been sued over everything from a small-claims debt owed to a furniture maker in Delray Beach to unpaid legal bills to a $100,000 loan issued to a natural gas firm he runs with Fruman. The plaintiff in the latter case also alleged that Parnas and Fruman “boasted” about their close relationships with major figures in the GOP.

In 2014, Parnas and his wife were evicted from a $15,000-per-month, six-bedroom house in Boca Raton, court records show. Separately, his business, Fraud Guarantee, was ordered to pay more than $26,000 to its landlord. His career as a securities broker saw him work for three brokerages that were expelled from the industry by regulators. In Florida, he has dabbled in everything from stocks to real estate to consumer electronics to hyperbaric chambers — machines for treating decompression sickness, a hazard of scuba diving — corporate records show.

Parnas says he’s done nothing wrong in business or politics and the information he’s gathered from Ukraine is of vital national importance. He did not respond to messages this week but said in a previous interview that he planned to counter-sue Dianne and Michael Pues.

“The truth is going to come out about that judgment,” he said.

As for his various business disputes, he remarked, “I don’t know anybody that has only good in their business. ... I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon. I had a rough time in 2008. That makes me a bad person?”

At the same time he and Fruman have faced lawsuits over unpaid debts, the two men and their natural gas company, Global Energy Producers, have donated more than $400,000 to Republican candidates and committees supporting them in federal elections. A $325,000 donation to a pro-Trump super PAC was the subject of a complaint from a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Fruman runs an import/export business and a boutique hotel in Odessa, Ukraine, according to a profile by Buzzfeed. He also invested in a milk-canning plant in Ukraine that went bankrupt after going nearly $25 million in debt.

He has not responded to messages. David Correia, the business partner who made the call to Michael and Dianne Pues, could not be reached. He works with Parnas at Fraud Guarantee, which says online that its goal is to help investors “reduce the risk of fraud as well as mitigate the damage caused by fraudulent acts.”

The two South Florida residents — Parnas lives in Boca Raton, Fruman owns property in Sunny Isles Beach — have had discussions both with officials in Ukraine and the United States, raising questions about whether they should register as foreign agents. Giuliani has described the two men as legal clients and been photographed with them in the company of the president. His efforts to retrieve dirt from Ukraine have been blessed by President Trump, Giuliani says, and coordinated with the State Department. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the phone with Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when Trump asked his counterpart to investigate Biden. The call helped form the basis of the whistleblower complaint.

giuliani parnas.jpg
Aram Roston Reuters
Parnas was asked by the House to appear for a deposition on Oct. 10, according to a copy of the letter. Fruman was asked to appear the next day.

The committees seek a wide range of information, including documents and communications relating to Giuliani, Trump, Attorney General William Barr and other administration figures, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Biden’s son Hunter and Ukrainian officials and businesspeople, as well as the source of funds for their political contributions.

“The Committees are prepared to work cooperatively with you to obtain this information,” the letters state. “Please let us know by 5:00 pm on October 1, 2019 whether you intend to voluntarily comply with the Committees’ request, or whether the Committees should pursue alternative means to obtain the information.”

The letters were signed by the chairmen of the House committees on Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform.

Kislin, the third man who received a letter, told the Miami Herald Tuesday he intends to comply with the House’s request.


“Of course. I have to,” Kislin said.

The Daily Beast described Kislin as “a businessman and philanthropist often identified with the Russian émigré community of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn” and involved in Giuliani’s Ukraine work.

Kislin referred all the Herald’s other questions to his lawyer.

Ukrainian misadventures

At the center of the purported scandal is the fact that Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while his father was vice president and had purview over the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. That presents issues of nepotism and the appearance of a conflict of interest.

But then the conspiracy theories kick in. Chief among them: Joe Biden sought to have Ukraine’s top prosecutor fired in order to forestall an investigation of his son’s company. In fact, the investigation had fallen dormant under that prosecutor. Biden’s efforts to replace him, supported by many other countries, international organizations and anti-corruption activists, actually might have made it more likely the company and his son could come under scrutiny.

And Lutsenko, the former Ukrainian prosecutor who met with Giuliani in New York City and Warsaw thanks to Parnas and Fruman, has said he did not uncover evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden. “From the perspective of Ukrainian legislation, he did not violate anything,” Lutsenko told the Washington Post.

Over the weekend, Trump’s former homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, told ABC’s This Week that another allegation spread by Giuliani and the president in his now-disclosed call with the new Ukraine leader — that a Democratic National Committee server was hosted in Ukraine and is somehow tied to a hack attributed to Russia — is patently false.

“It’s not only a conspiracy theory, it is completely debunked,” Bossert said.

The use of Giuliani — via Fruman and Parnas — as an emissary to a foreign government is not unprecedented but is unusual. For example, Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt both had private emissaries involved in global peace talks.

“I think what’s worrying is that he [Giuliani] wasn’t tasked with carrying out secret negotiations to advance the interests of the country, but he was effectively acting as an arm of Trump’s reelection campaign,” said Jeff Mankoff, an expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, specializing in Russia and neighbors. “A closer analogy to all this might be CREEP — the Committee for the Re-election of the President — under Nixon, which was involved in all the shenanigans.”


McConnell does not object to whistleblower complaint resolution

The U.S. Senate approved a resolution calling for a whistleblower's complaint against President Trump to be turned over to Congress on September 24. Sen. Chuck Schumer proposed the resolution, and Sen. Mitch McConnell offered no objection. By Senate TV via AP
It’s not clear how Giuliani first cemented a relationship with the two South Florida men pulled into the Trump impeachment. The relationship, however, appeared to deepen this past spring when the two men brought Giuliani to the gala dinner of the National Council of Young Israel, a Jewish communal group that is increasingly involved in partisan politics.

The March 31 gala dinner featured House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as the keynote speaker. Republican National Committee Co-Chairman Tommy Hicks Jr. received the Guardian of Israel Award. Fruman and Parnas were each honored with the Chovevei Zion Award, or Lovers of Zion Award.

At least one leader of the group is now seeking distance from the men.

“Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are philanthropists. That was my relationship to them. I was trying to do fundraising, pure and simple,” explained Dr. Joseph Frager, 1st vice president of Young Israel and co-chair of the gala event. “They brought Rudy Giuliani to the National Council of Young Israel Dinner.”

But McClatchy and the Miami Herald learned that Frager, a New York area gastroenterologist, had actually hosted the three in his home.

Contacted again, Frager said that Parnas and Fruman brought Guiliani to the grave of Menachem Schneerson, the leader of the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

“They needed a place to go for a light meal afterward. My home was not far from the Ohel [grave]. I offered to have them come to my home that evening,” said Frager. “It was a group of about 20 people that came to my home that evening. All of this was done to enable additional fundraising.”

Asked if the group will revisit how it came to honor Parnas and Fruman, Frager said Young Israel expects to put out a statement after the Jewish New Year holiday, which ends Tuesday.

“I am deeply disturbed by what I have been reading,” Frager said.

The group’s president, Farley Weiss, did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment. His law office said he was observing the Jewish New Year and would not likely comment until after the period of observation ended late Tuesday.

While Parnas has a long trail of lawsuits, less is known about Fruman. However, a lengthy court docket shows a messy divorce from model Yelyzaveta Naumova. She did not respond to phone calls.

Divorce records are often sealed, but their separation has been before the courts since December 2017. Fruman sought several orders for drug testing on his wife, and she sought via subpoena details of his finances and bank accounts. In addition to fighting over custody, the couple was fighting over a Collins Avenue luxury condo with a $3 million mortgage.

Among those receiving subpoenas were Oleksandr Kurinnyi, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politi ... 26327.html

"The president got the big decision of his presidency right," Rudy Giuliani said. He meant the decision to "go on the offense" against terror. John McCain agreed, Mitt Romney agreed, Mike Huckabee agreed - albeit with slightly less enthusiasm - and Fred Thompson noted that this was a "global war." Afterward, the five began arguing with Paul, a Republican candidate who blamed American foreign policy for inviting and encouraging terror.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15560&p=159456&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p159456

Nordic wrote:
Hey, how come Rudy Giuliani doesn't bring THAT up every five minutes like he does about "9/11"?
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15191&p=159027&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p159027

The network said previously that it had limited space in its studio _ a souped-up bus _ and that it invited candidates who had received double-digit support in recent polls. Fox invited Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.

Here's an example of how loaded, rigged and deceitful the polls can be:

short video example of a rigged poll with commentary <link>

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15553&p=158963&hilit=Rudy+Giuliani#p158963

[seemslikeadream]

Josh Rogin
‏

Giuliani consulted on Ukraine with imprisoned Paul Manafort via a lawyer 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 … Makes sense @washingtonpost
https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/11 ... 4435845120

Giuliani consulted on Ukraine with imprisoned Paul Manafort via a lawyer
Paul Sonne

Paul Manafort arrives in court on June 27 in New York, where he pleaded not guilty to mortgage fraud charges. He is serving a 7½ -year term in a federal prison in Pennsylvania for federal bank and tax fraud convictions. (Seth Wenig/AP)
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.

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.

The alliance, 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.

Giuliani’s effort is gaining traction on Capitol Hill. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, have announced their renewal of an inquiry into any coordination between Ukraine and Democratic Party officials.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, did not respond to a request for comment.

[Impeachment inquiry puts new focus on Giuliani’s work for prominent figures in Ukraine]

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

“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.”

Giuliani said he needed to consult with Manafort through the latter’s lawyer this spring to ask whether a black ledger ever existed.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

In a text conversation with Manafort from August 2017 released by prosecutors, Fox News host Sean Hannity mentions “Ukraine interference” 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.

The White House also promoted the allegation.

“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.

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.

“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.

Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... story.html

PRESS PLAY

Biden Dirt File Has Private Email Between John Solomon and Rudy Allies

The email was then included in part of a misinformation dossier that the State Department Inspector General delivered to Congress.
Erin Banco
National Security Reporter
Maxwell Tani
Media Reporter
Updated 10.02.19 10:07PM ET / Published 10.02.19 9:03PM ET

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty
A controversial right-leaning reporter at the center of the Trump-Ukraine scandal emailed a copy of one of his stories—before it was published—to a top ally of Rudy Giuliani, as well as two pro-Trump investigators attempting to dig up negative information on the Biden family.

In March, The Hill's investigative reporter John Solomon published a story claiming that the U.S. government had pressured Ukrainian prosecutors to drop a probe of a group funded by the Obama administration and liberal billionaire George Soros. The story was published at 6 p.m., according to a timestamp on the paper’s website. Solomon himself didn’t share it on his Twitter account until 6:56 p.m. that night. The earliest cache of the story in the Internet Archive is from 7:42 pm. Eastern time.

But hours before that, at 12:52 p.m. Eastern time, Solomon appears to have sent a version of the article to Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas and the Trumpworld lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. The email was titled “Outline of Soros reporting, including embedded documents” and included the headline and the text of his piece.

Two congressional sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that Solomon’s email was part of a roughly 50-page package of material that was turned over to lawmakers on Wednesday by the State Department’s Inspector General’s office. Reuters was the first to report the email’s inclusion in the packet.

That material, according to congressional sources, appeared to be a “misinformation” effort meant to smear the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and the Bidens. CNN reported on Wednesday that Giuliani had conceded that the information in the package originated, at least in part, with him.

“They told me they were going to investigate it,” Giuliani said to CNN, referring to a call he got from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Neither Solomon nor The Hill responded to request for comment from The Daily Beast. But in a series of tweets Wednesday night, Solomon said he sent the email “as a reporter fact-checking my work”—although the email contained the text of a fully drafted story, not isolated items that needed vetting.

“The email released to the public appears to omit the opening line of my originally sent email,” Solomon claimed in the tweets. “Here is the passage that preceded the summary of my reporting. ‘Appreciate eyeballing for accuracy. Want to be fair and accurate.’ That’s not scandalous. It’s good journalism.”


John Solomon
@jsolomonReports
Today I understand the State Department IG released a private email I sent as a reporter fact-checking my work before I published a story back in March. I typically spend a long period of time before any column or news story fact-checking information with numerous people.

8,592
7:07 PM - Oct 2, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy

3,440 people are talking about this

Emails sent to the addresses Solomon used for Parnas, diGenova and Toensing did not bounce back but were not returned.

Solomon’s email to Parnas, diGenova, and Toensing suggests even stronger ties between the Hill columnist and the Trump team tasked with digging up dirt on Biden abroad. And it raises questions about the degree to which pro-Trump figures were working directly with sympathetic journalists to try and dig up and spread dirt on Biden and like-minded Democrats.

Solomon’s March 29 story about the U.S. embassy in Ukraine makes no direct mention of Parnas, diGenova, or Toensing—instead, the piece cites a letter about the probe from U.S. embassy official George Kent, and claims by former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko that the U.S. pressured him to halt an investigation into the Soros and U.S.-backed group. But the three individuals have emerged as key players in the leadup to Trump’s request for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to investigate the Bidens.

Parnas, a Giuliani friend and golf buddy, was a key player in connecting the former New York City mayor to former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, who Biden and other top western government entities and officials had hoped to push out because of his perceived inaction tackling corruption.

"Rudy Giuliani, Former Mayor of New York City speaks to the Organization of Iranian American Communities during their march to urge \"recognition of the Iranian people's right for regime change,\" outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York on September 24, 2019. - They urged recognition of the Iranian people's right for regime change and declared their support for the leader of democratic opposition, Maryam Rajavi. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Photo credit should read ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images)"
Giuliani, diGenova Rage at Fox Bombshell on Ukraine Plan
DiGenova and Toensing have been some of the president’s most trusted outside allies for years. During Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation last year, the duo was briefly mentioned as possibilities to join the president’s legal defense team. On Sunday, Fox News reported that diGenova and Toensing had been working alongside Giuliani to dig up dirt on Biden—a revelation that the New York Times had noted months prior.

‘I AM DISTURBED’
Leaked Memo: Colleagues Unload on Journo Behind Ukraine Mess


Solomon’s work has come under intense scrutiny following the revelation that a series of his stories about Ukraine may have helped spark events leading to Trump’s request that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky team up with Giuliani to investigate the Bidens.

On March 20, Solomon published an interview with former Lutsenko in which the ex-prosecutor accused the former vice president of pressuring the then-Ukrainian president in 2016 to fire Lutsenko’s predecessor Shokin. The insinuation, according to Lutsenko, was Biden hoped to quash an investigation into a Ukrainian gas company connected to his son Hunter Biden. Despite Lutsenko’s retraction of some of the claims, and conclusion that Hunter Biden “did not violate any Ukrainian laws,” the incident was cited in a U.S. government whistleblower’s complaint as one of the circumstances that eventually led to Trump’s call with Zelensky.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported new details Wednesday night about Giuliani’s dirt-digging on another front: He’s been meeting with Trump's imprisoned former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort to inquire about the so-called black ledger that reportedly revealed a Ukrainian political party had funneled millions to Manafort. Giuliani believes the ledger was part of a conspiracy by Ukrainians to interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-ukr ... udy-allies

with help from @th3j35t3r for grabbing the web archive...

Wendy Siegelman
‏
NEW: Giuliani associate Sam Kislin was CEO Brunlow Limited Inc headquartered 2005-2011 at 261 Madison Suite 1504 address of Oksy Global owned by Andrii Artemenko's wife Oksana Kuchma

Brunlow was 24% owner of Russian TransRegioninvest/TRI formed 2002 w/Simon Dikker Sergey Parilis

Sam Kislin’s company Brunlow Limited Inc owned 24% of Russian real estate firm TransRegioninvest/TRI formed 2002 w/Simon Dikker, Sergey Parilis




Kislin started liquidating stake late 2007, later sued Dikker for $4million he said he was owed for his buyout
https://casetext.com/case/kislin-v-dikker-1 …



Around 2005 Kislin and Dikker met with Vladimir Semernin (Chmn) and Vadim Sachkov (CEO) of Solid-Management which had a fund, Boyarkino-Invest. Kislin & Dikker swapped property for shares of Boyarkino-Invest & then sold shares to other investors.
https://casetext.com/case/kislin-v-dikker-1 …



CEO of Solid-Management who did business with Sam Kislin around 2005 is Vadim Sachkov

@brazencapital found a Vadim Sachkov who had overpaid $200K for an apartment in Trump Tower I in FL

However there is no evidence yet that this is the same person
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politi ... 77439.html …



Sam Kislin’s Brunlow Limited Inc. and Oksana Kuchma’s Oksy Global shared address at 261 Madison Suite 1504. 261 Madison is owned by Sapir Org. Alex Sapir was partner in Trump Soho, his father Tamir was associate of Donald Trump & Kislin’s business partner


Sleepy Hudson a real estate company run by Sam’s son David Kislin is also located at 261 Madison Suite 1504
http://ny-unclaimed.org/data/unclaimed/ ... HUDSON_LLC …

https://twitter.com/WendySiegelman/stat ... 2947152897

Sleepy Hudson plans 21-story condo building in TriBeCa
Sleepy Hudson LLC has gotten a $28.3 million senior bridge loan to acquire two adjacent parcels of land on Broadway between White and Franklin Streets and Franklin Place in TriBeCa where it plans to erect a 21-story residential condominium building.

The financing was provided by Canyon Capital Realty Advisors and Pantheon Financial.

Sleepy Hudson LLC is the developer of Highline 519, a residential condominium development adjacent to the High Line at 519 West 23rd Street. That project had been designed by Lindy Roy and is distinguished by its cloud-like scrims on its balconies. Alexander Campagno is now the architect for that project, which has added one floor to its height and recently has been topped out and is scheduled for occupancy in the first quarter of next year, according to Paul Bonnar of Sleepy Hudson.

Dave Kislin and Leo Tsimmer are the principals of Sleepy Hudson LLC.

Details about the number of apartments planned for the building and which architect is designing it have not been finalized, according to Mr. Bonnar, who added that the number of apartments will probably be in the range of 65 to 70.

The building is an "as-of-right" project, according to Mr. Bonnar, meaning that it will be erected within existing zoning and building department regulations and not require public review.

The new project will probably have its residential entrance on Franklin Place and retail frontage of Broadway. It is a mid-block project and does not have frontages on White and Frankln Street.

Franklin Place runs one block from White and to Franklin Street.

The site is one block south of the proposed conversion into 90 residential condominium apartments of the 29-story office tower at 401 Broadway on the northwest corner of Walker Street.

The site is convenient to SoHo and Chinatown and there is good public transportation in this area.
https://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/market-i ... ribeca/757

Prison Bars Haven’t Kept Manafort And Giuliani Apart

By Kate Riga
October 3, 2019 8:51 am


Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has kept up a steady flow of communication with the imprisoned Paul Manafort through the former Trump campaign chairman’s lawyer, seeking to further the rightwing talking point that Ukrainians interfered in 2016 to help Hillary Clinton.

A happy byproduct of this narrative would be muddying the charges against Manafort.

Giuliani told the Washington Post that their conversations have centered around the infamous ledger uncovered by the Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which included a payment to Manafort that touched off his legal problems.

Giuliani is trying to reshape investigations into Manafort as a feature of a Ukrainian attempt to derail the Trump campaign in favor for Clinton’s. This has long been a convenient digression for Trump allies trying to shift attention off of Russia’s meddling in the election on his behalf.

According to a New York Review of Books report, this is how the whole smear campaign against Joe and Hunter Biden started in the first place: with President Donald Trump and Giuliani molding a pretense for a Manafort pardon.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mana ... ine-ledger

[seemslikeadream]

Yashar Ali
There are now multiple reports revealing that the president's personal attorney, the former mayor of New York, Rudi Giuliani, is the subject of a federal criminal investigation.
9:30 AM - 11 Oct 2019

Man the second time your lawyer is the subject of a federal investigation must be a sobering experience
https://twitter.com/Jinjifra/status/1182695569778708484

[thrulookingglass]

We shouldn't forget Giuliani's gaff with his atrocious Police Commissioner during the "9/11" years Bernard Kerik who would later become Interior Minister of Iraq.

Kerik acknowledged that during the time he was Interior Minister of Iraq, he accepted a $250,000 interest-free "loan" from Israeli billionaire Eitan Wertheimer and failed to report it. Kerik first met the billionaire, whose vast holdings include major defense contractors, when Kerik took a four-day trip to Israel less than two weeks before September 11, 2001 to discuss counter-terrorism with Israeli officials

Dirty, dirty politicians. Organized crime by any other name would smell as foul.

[seemslikeadream]

We shouldn't forget Giuliani's gaff with his atrocious Police Commissioner during the "9/11" years Bernard Kerik who would later become Interior Minister of Iraq.

Kerik acknowledged that during the time he was Interior Minister of Iraq, he accepted a $250,000 interest-free "loan" from Israeli billionaire Eitan Wertheimer and failed to report it. Kerik first met the billionaire, whose vast holdings include major defense contractors, when Kerik took a four-day trip to Israel less than two weeks before September 11, 2001 to discuss counter-terrorism with Israeli officials

Dirty, dirty politicians. Organized crime by any other name would smell as foul.

yes and Kerik ended up in the jail Rudy named after him!

here's a great thread on him I was in on 15 years ago

Know your BFEE: Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik
https://www.democraticunderground.com/d ... 04x2788428

here's conformation of the post I made above

Rudy Giuliani's relationship with arrested men is subject of criminal investigation
Sources - ABC News

PHOTO: Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump, addresses a gathering during a campaign event for Eddie Edwards, who is running for the U.S. Congress, in Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 1, 2018. Charles Krupa/AP, FILE
The business relationship between President Donald Trump's private lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the men charged Thursday in a campaign finance scheme is a subject of the ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by federal authorities in New York, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The investigation became public after the FBI had to quickly move to arrest Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman before they boarded a flight out of the country from Washington Dulles Airport with one-way tickets. They have been named as witnesses in the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

The investigation is being conducted by the FBI's New York field office and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, the same U.S. Attorney's office Giuliani ran before he became mayor of New York.

Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump, addresses a gathering during a campaign event for Eddie Edwards, who is running for the U.S. Congress, in Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 1, 2018. more +
Parnas and Fruman, two Soviet-born, Florida-based businessmen, assisted Giuliani in his effort to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his family. The association among the three men goes back several years. Giuliani has represented Parnas and Fruman in the past.

The two men were charged Thursday with four counts, including conspiracy to commit campaign finance fraud, false statements to the Federal Election Commission, and falsification of records.

Two associates of Parnas and Fruman, David Correira and Andrey Kukushkin, were indicted along with Parnas and Fruman on Thursday. William Sweeney, FBI assistant director in charge of the New York Field office, said at a Thursday news conference that Kukushkin was taken into custody in San Francisco, while Correia had yet to be arrested.

"I don't know those gentleman. That is possible I have a picture with them because I have a picture with everybody -- I have a picture with everybody here. But somebody said there may be a picture with -- at a fundraiser or somewhere so, but I have pictures with everybody. I don't know if there's anybody I don't have pictures with. I don't know them," Trump said.

"You have to ask Rudy. I just don't know," Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on his way to a political rally in Minnesota on Thursday
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rudy-gi ... d=66212654.

[seemslikeadream]

Federal Prosecutors Scrutinize Rudy Giuliani’s Ukraine Business Dealings, Finances
Trump lawyer’s bank records have been examined; witnesses are questioned about work for a Ukraine mayor, efforts to oust U.S. ambassador

Updated Oct. 14, 2019 7:19 pm ET
Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, has been President Trump’s personal lawyer since 2018. Photo: carlos barria/Reuters
By
Rebecca Davis O’Brien and
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are examining Rudy Giuliani’s business dealings in Ukraine, including his finances, meetings and work for a city mayor there, according to people familiar with the matter.

Investigators also have examined Mr. Giuliani’s bank records, according to the people.

Witnesses have been questioned about Mr. Giuliani since at least August by investigators, who also want to know more about Mr. Giuliani’s role in an alleged conspiracy involving two of his business associates, the people said. The investigation is being led by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York.
Mr. Giuliani has denied wrongdoing and on Monday said he hadn’t been informed of any investigation. “They can look at my Ukraine business all they want,” he said.

It couldn’t be determined how far along the investigation stands. The scope of the inquiry also isn’t known. Since April 2018, Mr. Giuliani has been President Trump’s personal lawyer, work for which he isn’t paid.

The investigation into the president’s lawyer comes as House Democrats are issuing subpoenas and deposing witnesses in the impeachment probe of Mr. Trump’s efforts with Mr. Giuliani to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination.
President Trump's efforts to persuade Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, have set off an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats. WSJ's Shelby Holliday lays out a timeline of interactions between the president's inner circle and Ukrainian officials. Photo Composite: Laura Kammermann/The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were arrested last week on campaign-finance and conspiracy counts. The indictment accuses the two men of misrepresenting the sources of hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. campaign contributions they made, including to a former Republican congressman who was part of a lobbying effort to remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine that started in the spring of 2018.

Messrs. Parnas and Fruman were released on $1 million bonds and haven’t yet entered pleas. They are scheduled to appear in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday.

Messrs. Parnas and Fruman were also helping Mr. Giuliani investigate work in Ukraine by Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, on Mr. Trump’s behalf, and introduced Mr. Giuliani to several current and former senior Ukrainian prosecutors.
Hunter Biden was paid $50,000 a month to sit on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at a time when his father, President Obama’s vice president, was spearheading anticorruption efforts in Ukraine. Mr. Trump and his allies have described that as a corrupt arrangement. Ukrainian officials have produced no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden, and they both deny they did anything wrong.

U.S. prosecutors announced charges against two Soviet-born donors to a pro-Trump fundraising committee who helped Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to investigate Democrat Joe Biden. Photo: Alexandria Sheriff's Office
Prosecutors’ interest in Mr. Giuliani has been previously reported by CNN and other news outlets, but the examination of Mr. Giuliani’s bank records and business dealings in Ukraine haven’t been reported.

Mr. Giuliani is best known for being mayor of New York during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since then, he has built up an international consulting business. Investigators have asked questions about business Mr. Giuliani conducted in Ukraine, where the former mayor began working over a decade ago, say the people familiar with the matter.

That work began shortly after he folded his 2008 Republican presidential campaign, when he announced he would be a strategic adviser to help boxer Vitali Klitschko, known as “Dr. Iron Fist,” root out corruption and win election as the mayor of Kyiv. Mr. Klitschko lost that election but became mayor in 2014 and remains in that post.

After protests in Kyiv in 2014, Mr. Klitschko negotiated a potential contract for Giuliani Security & Safety to restore order in the city. Mr. Giuliani’s fee, roughly $300,000, was too steep, and the deal wasn’t completed, the Journal previously reported.

During visits to Ukraine in 2017, he met with then-President Petro Poroshenko and then-Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko and held meetings on behalf of his private security business in Kyiv and Kharkiv.

In May 2017, Giuliani Security & Safety inked a contract with the city administration of Kharkiv to streamline municipal emergency services, according to the company. A person familiar with the negotiations said Pavel Fuks, a Kharkiv native who had made a fortune in Russian real estate, paid the contract. Mr. Fuks didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Giuliani declined to comment on that arrangement.


valentyn ogirenko/Reuters

About a decade earlier, Mr. Fuks had negotiated with Mr. Trump to license the Trump brand for a tower that Mr. Fuks was building, with other partners, in the Russian capital’s Moscow City, Mr. Fuks said at the time. The deal didn’t come together.

Mr. Giuliani said in an interview last week that he met with the Kharkiv mayor and members of the city council on a December 2017 trip. He also met with Mr. Fuks during that trip.

Mr. Giuliani’s extensive effort to oust Ms. Yovanovitch was referenced in the indictment of Messrs. Parnas and Fruman. She was removed as ambassador after months of complaints from Mr. Giuliani and others that she was undermining Mr. Trump abroad and obstructing efforts to persuade Kyiv to investigate Mr. Biden, which she denies. She was removed three months before her customary three-year term was to end.

As part of that effort, Mr. Giuliani has said he spoke with the president, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and an unidentified White House official who asked him to recount the complaints he voiced to the president.

Mr. Giuliani has said that he spoke with Ukrainian prosecutors, including Mr. Lutsenko, as he targeted Ms. Yovanovitch, Mr. Biden and others. Mr. Lutsenko himself was dismissed in August.

—Brett Forrest and Sadie Gurman contributed to this article.
http://archive.is/0AdVA

Andrew S. Weiss
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THREAD: Have we reached the point where Giuliani’s role in Ukraine-gate no longer looks like an outtake from a bad Coen Brothers movie and is creating a far more serious legal situation that should be setting off alarm bells inside DOJ comparable to James Comey's firing? 1/

1:30 PM - 14 Oct 2019


Bear with me as I lay out some facts. They exceed the unreality of a Gary Shteyngart novel. Yet based on my reading of these facts, several questions readily jump out. I don’t have all of the answers to these questions but think it’s worth asking them. 2/

In reality ties betw Parnas/Fruman and Firtash run much deeper. They were “working for Firtash" before "Parnas joined [Firtash’s] legal team…Firtash has paid their expenses in the past. Their costs include private jet charters..& foreign travel to Vienna.”


Firtash acknowledged as much in a leaked 2008 conversation with then US Amb Bill Taylor (yes, the same Bill Taylor who wrote the famous text message lambasting Trump’s demand for a quid pro quo from Zelenskyy). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/ ... -mafia-gas … 13/

Screen Shot 2019-10-14 at 9.54.36 PM.png

It’s been all too easy to get a chuckle out of Parnas and Fruman’s bumbling hijinks after they joined the ranks of top GOP/Trump donors, despite having such a long trail of bad debts, evictions, and sketchy relationships back in Ukraine. 14/

But something about them doesn’t add up. Whose funds were they using to buy their way into the ranks of top GOP donors? Whose interests were best served by their efforts to mount attacks on US officials like Amb Yovanovitch? The Federal indictment is conspicuously silent. 15/

What then to make of the revelation that Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles last Thursday while en route to Vienna? Or that Giuliani planned to leave for Vienna, Firtash’s home base, the following day? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... na/599833/ … @elainaplott 16/


My hunch is that Parnas and Fruman may have been frontmen for Firtash, dangling info that was too good about Ukraine's role in 2016 to lure people close to Trump. Was Firtash trying to get himself out of a jam with DOJ? Did Giuliani, wittingly or unwittingly, play any role? 17/

Back to Elliot Broidy. The Feds are investigating a Malaysian financier who reportedly asked Broidy to provide similar help. Broidy requested a $75 million fee from Jho Low if he succeeded in getting DOJ to drop charges in the case. https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-ally ... 1519919321 … 19/

That brings us back to where I started. Does this scandal echo the circumstances that led to the naming of Robert Mueller? Was Giuliani ever involved in seeking special favors for Firtash? Did he or anyone else ( DiGenova? Toensing?) raise this case with Trump or others? 20/

Key question: who's the right person to investigate this? Surely the US Atty's office in Illinois, which indicted Firtasy, has been watching him like hawks. SDNY is now reportedly investigating Giuliani. Did any of Firtash's team touch people at even more senior levels? 21/

What is AG Barr’s involvement in the search for dirt on the Bidens and conspiracy theories about the 2016 election? Trump told Zelenskyy to contact Barr. Does Barr have a conflict of interest or at least the appearance of one? Does he need to recuse himself? 22/

Given the very real possibility that Trump’s personal lawyer (Giuliani) and others (DiGenova/Toensing) have clear connections to Firtash, is it conceivable they engaged w himon Firtash’s behalf to subvert the rule of law? If so, that sounds like a job for a special counsel END

ADDENDUM The Reuters team which broke the story about Firtash’s ties to Giuliani’s associates deserves a majorshoutout @AramRoston @karen_freifeld @polinaivanovva
https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status ... 6445807616

Exclusive: Trump lawyer Giuliani was paid $500,000 to consult on indicted associate's firm
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was paid $500,000 for work he did for a company co-founded by the Ukrainian-American businessman arrested last week on campaign finance charges, Giuliani told Reuters on Monday.

FILE PHOTO: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks during a rally to support a leadership change in Iran outside the U.N. headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., September 24, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
The businessman, Lev Parnas, is a close associate of Giuliani and was involved in his effort to investigate Trump’s political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, who is a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination.

Giuliani said Parnas’ company, Boca Raton-based Fraud Guarantee, whose website says it aims to help clients “reduce and mitigate fraud”, engaged Giuliani Partners, a management and security consulting firm, around August 2018. Giuliani said he was hired to consult on Fraud Guarantee’s technologies and provide legal advice on regulatory issues.

Federal prosecutors are “examining Giuliani’s interactions” with Parnas and another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, who was also indicted on campaign finance charges, a law enforcement source told Reuters on Sunday.

The New York Times reported last week that Parnas had told associates he paid Giuliani hundreds of thousands of dollars for what Giuliani said was business and legal advice. Giuliani said for the first time on Monday that the total amount was $500,000.

Giuliani told Reuters the money came in two payments made within weeks of each other. He said he could not recall the dates of the payments. He said most of the work he did for Fraud Guarantee was completed in 2018 but that he had been doing follow-up for over a year.

Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles Airport outside Washington last week on charges they funneled foreign money to unnamed U.S. politicians in a bid to influence U.S.-Ukraine relations in violation of U.S. campaign finance laws. The men were preparing to board a plane to Europe.

According to an indictment unsealed by U.S. prosecutors, an unidentified Russian businessman arranged for two $500,000 wires to be sent from foreign bank accounts to a U.S. account controlled by Fruman in September and October 2018. The money was used, in part, by Fruman, Parnas and two other men charged in the indictment to gain influence with U.S. politicians and candidates, the indictment said.

Foreign nationals are prohibited from making contributions and other expenditures in connection with U.S. elections, and from making contributions in someone else’s name.

Giuliani said he was confident that the money he received was from “a domestic source,” but he would not say where it came from.

“I know beyond any doubt the source of the money is not any questionable source,” he told Reuters in an interview. “The money did not come from foreigners. I can rule that out 100%,” he said.

He declined to say whether the money had been paid directly to him by Fraud Guarantee or from another source.

John Dowd, a lawyer for Parnas and Fruman, also would not discuss the source of the funding that Giuliani said he received for his work for Fraud Guarantee. “What I know is privileged,” Dowd said.

Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Aram Roston,; Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Ross Colvin and Marla Dickerson
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN1WU07Z