Legal storm clouds gather over Rudy Giuliani, America's tarnished mayor
"Two Central Figures Face New Scrutiny In The Impeachment Inquiry | Deadline | MSNBC"
Those two are Mulvaney and Pompeo.
Tom McCarthy @TeeMcSee
Sun 1 Dec 2019 18.00 AEDT Last modified on Sun 1 Dec 2019 18.02 AEDT
Rudy Giuliani: ‘The president knows that everything I did, I did to help him.’ Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP
Analysts say an indictment is likely as prosecutors focus on Giuliani’s work for Trump and himself in Ukraine
When the former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/rudygiuliani .. emerged as one of Donald Trump’s most bareknuckle defenders during the Russia investigation, attacking his former colleagues in the justice department, people asked: “What happened to Rudy?”
Now, as federal prosecutors tighten a net of criminal investigations around Giuliani, the question has become: “What is going to happen to Rudy?”
The poignancy of Giuliani’s downfall from national hero and presidential candidate to the subject of multiple federal criminal investigations has been often remarked in the past year.
The net tightened again last week when it emerged a grand jury had issued a broad subpoena for documents relating to Giuliani’s international consulting business as part of an investigation of alleged crimes including money laundering, wire fraud, campaign finance violations, making false statements, obstruction of justice, and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
“We who admired him for so long expected much more from Rudy Giuliani and his legacy,” Ken Frydman, a former Giuliani press secretary, wrote .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/opinion/giuliani-trump-ukraine.html .. in a New York Times opinion piece last month. “‘America’s Mayor,’ as Rudy was called after September 11, is today President Trump’s bumbling personal lawyer and henchman, his apologist and defender of the indefensible.”
Giuliani has denied wrongdoing and scoffed at the notion he is in any legal jeopardy – particularly from federal prosecutors in the southern district of New York, an office he once led as a star US attorney during Ronald Reagan’s first term. There Giuliani built a reputation for taking on mob bosses and aggressively prosecuting the kind of criminal activity he now stands accused of.
“Me ending up in jail?” Giuliani told the celebrity gossip site TMZ .. https://www.tmz.com/2019/11/25/rudy-giuliani-trump-impeachment-hearing/ .. at a Washington airport on Monday. “Fifty years of being a lawyer, 50 years of ethical, dedicated practice of the law, probably have prosecuted more criminals of a high level than any US attorney in history. I think I follow the law very carefully. I think the people pursuing me are desperate, sad, angry, disappointing liars. They’re hurting their country. And I’m ashamed of them.”
[Insert: Hey Rudy, Jimmy Hoffa did much more than you did toward building America's middle class. Yet, look how he ended up.]
But in no version of events does Giuliani appear not to be in big trouble.
The immediate source of his current problems is the work he did in Ukraine over the last two years for himself and on behalf of Trump, who instructed the Ukrainian president to speak to Giuliani in a 25 July phone call.
Giuliani wanted the Ukrainians to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, Trump’s chief political rival, according to US officials who testified in the impeachment hearings. In pursuit of his errand, Giuliani contacted current and former Ukrainian prosecutors, multiple Ukrainian presidential administrations and multiple Ukrainian oligarchs, according to testimony.
Prosecutors are investigating whether Giuliani offered the oligarchs help with their problems with the US justice department in exchange for help with his project to harm Biden, a charge Giuliani has denied.
Rudy Giuliani’s business associates Lev Parnas, left, and Igor Fruman sit either side of lawyer during their arraignment in New York City on 23 October. Photograph: Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
Two Soviet Union-born American associates of Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were arrested last month on campaign finance charges, and Parnas is cooperating with investigators. Alongside the prosecutors in New York, the US justice department in Washington is also investigating Giuliani’s conduct, as is the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Congress is also after Giuliani, who came in for sharp public criticism in the impeachment hearings earlier this month, when Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch described a smear campaign Giuliani had mounted against her, allegedly because as an anti-corruption advocate she stood in the way of Trump’s Ukraine scheme.
“I do not understand Mr Giuliani’s motives for attacking me,” Yovanovitch testified. “What I can say is that Mr Giuliani should have known those claims were suspect, coming as they reportedly did from individuals with questionable motives and with reason to believe that their political and financial ambitions would be stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”
As the pressure on him has intensified, Giuliani’s antics in his own defense have grown increasingly animated. He warned last week that he had collected information that would put his political enemies on their heels.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, who was also on the call, then interjected: “He’s joking.”
“We are friends for 29 years and nothing will interfere with that,” Giuliani told TMZ of Trump. “The president knows that everything I did, I did to help him. And he knows it. I did it honorably. I did it legally. I did it in a way that it will embarrass the people who are pursuing me and have nowhere near the integrity and honor that I have.”
In an interview with disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly last Tuesday, however, Trump distanced himself from Giuliani.
Analysts watching Giuliani’s case expect that an indictment could be handed down at any moment, raising the prospect of America’s Mayor in handcuffs.
“If Rudy’s story ends the way it feels like it’s going to end,” wrote Evan Mandery, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and veteran of New York City political campaigns, “it’s not plausible for anyone who knows or has studied him to say they never saw it coming.”
The first round of hearings is over. More than a dozen closed-door depositions are out in the open. The impeachment inquiry is headed into its next phase.
After weeks of laying out their evidence, Democrats will now decide which potential charges to level against against President Trump. Unless additional public testimony is scheduled, that means the center of gravity in the impeachment process will soon shift to the House Judiciary Committee, which is holding its first hearing on impeachment on Wednesday. That committee is expected to draft articles of impeachment based on a forthcoming report from the House Intelligence Committee.
At various points, Democrats have said that they already have the “smoking gun” evidence needed to convince the public that Trump’s conduct was serious enough to warrant his removal from office. And throughout the impeachment process, Democrats have laid out a detailed timeline they say implicates Trump and his allies in a scheme to pressure Ukraine to pursue investigations of the president’s political rival. But while the House seems likely to vote on impeachment, the impact of the case against Trump may ultimately depend on what the American public — not the House Democrats — regards as the “smoking guns.” As we await the release of the Democrats’ report and the next round of hearings, it’s a good moment to take stock of the “smoking guns” they have — and don’t have.
There is, at present, no single piece of evidence that conclusively links Trump to the Ukraine scandal like the tape transcript of President Nixon ordering the Watergate cover-up. That particular piece of evidence was such a decisive “smoking gun” that its release forced Nixon’s resignation within a matter of days. Democrats’ case against Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t have that one key piece of evidence directly linking Trump to a quid pro quo. So a question moving forward is whether Democrats have enough of a “smoking gun” to persuade voters that Trump committed impeachable offenses — or if the missing evidence will turn out to be a lifeline for Trump.
1. Did Trump request an investigation that would personally benefit his political interests?
2. Did Trump and his allies pressure Ukraine into committing to an investigation, including threatening to withhold a White House meeting or military aid?
3. Did the White House then try to suppress or conceal information about Trump’s actions with regard to Ukraine?
Democrats’ evidence for the first question — that he asked a foreign leader for an investigation of his political rival — is particularly strong. They don’t just have a single smoking gun regarding whether Trump or the people close to him asked the Ukrainian president and other high-level officials to open an investigation into the Bidens — they have a whole smoldering arsenal.
That’s important because over the course of the public testimony, the Democrats have also tried to establish that this wasn’t just a one-off request. According to Gordon Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union and an integral figure in pushing for the investigations, he and others were just following the president’s orders .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/us/politics/sondland-says-he-followed-trumps-orders-to-pressure-ukraine.html , something which he testified that Trump had made clear on several different occasions. That testimony was underscored by an account from a second witness, diplomat David Holmes, who said he overheard a call between Sondland and Trump on July 26, where Trump reportedly asked Sondland about whether Zelensky was going to commit to the investigations. Sondland disputed a few of Holmes’s details .. https://www.wsj.com/articles/david-holmes-says-u-s-officials-understood-trump-was-pressing-for-biden-investigation-11574387592 .. in his testimony, like whether he mentioned the name “Biden.” But he largely agreed with the substance of what Holmes said, adding to the Democrats’ evidence that Trump himself was asking about investigations.
An obstruction charge is still on the table, though, as Democrats have indicated they could instead draft a narrower article of impeachment around obstruction or contempt of Congress, focusing on the White House’s blanket refusal to cooperate with the inquiry. Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have already said that this is an impeachable offense. Whether the public will agree remains to be seen, since this has been the Trump administration’s attitude .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/donald-trump-subpoenas.html .. toward all congressional investigations since Democrats took control of the House.
But of course, the Democrats are still missing perhaps the most essential piece of the puzzle — a smoking gun for their second question of whether Trump ordered that military aid and/or a White House meeting be conditioned on the investigations.
To be sure, Democrats do have a wide array of evidence strongly suggesting that the people involved in pushing for the investigations — including the Ukrainians — understood that a White House meeting and nearly $400 million in military aid hung in the balance. Multiple witnesses testified over the course of the public hearings that it was clear to them that there was a quid pro quo. But as Republicans pointed out repeatedly over the course of the hearings, none of these witnesses ever talked to Trump directly. Even Sondland, the one witness who did communicate with Trump directly about the investigations, said he only “presumed” there was a connection and had never heard Trump say it.
There are other witnesses who could help fill in the blanks. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who witnesses say delivered Trump’s order .. https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/08/trump-mulvaney-frozen-ukraine-aid-067874 .. to freeze the aid, seems like he’s in a position to shed light on at least some of this mystery. And Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, would also presumably be able to offer crucial input about his involvement in the pressure campaign, too — since witness after witness .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/06/is-it-rudy-giulianis-turn-go-under-bus/ .. described him as the person tasked with carrying out Trump’s orders. Of course, the rub is neither seems likely to comply with the Democrats’ subpoena to testify, so Democrats have said they’ll press ahead with the impeachment process rather than try to force Mulvaney and others to testify through what would almost certainly be a lengthy court battle. Democrats did score a win in court last week in case involving another recalcitrant witness, former White House counsel Don McGahn, when a judge ruled that White House officials can’t ignore congressional subpoenas — but that ruling is under appeal, and it’s not clear how it would affect other impeachment witnesses.
It’s possible, too, that this particular “smoking gun” — that is, direct evidence that Trump ordered a quid pro quo — might not exist. It could be that Trump truly didn’t make the connection or as Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified earlier this year, it could because Trump frequently speaks in “code .. https://www.miamiherald.com/article226865474.html ,” rather than giving direct orders. That doesn’t mean that the connection between the investigations, the aid, and the White House meeting wasn’t apparent to everyone involved. But it does potentially deprive Democrats of a smoking gun as dramatic and decisive as the tape that ended Nixon’s presidency. Over the next few weeks, we’ll see just how much of a barrier that turns out to be.
Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux is a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight.
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A new DOJ IG report exhaustively debunks Trump’s attacks on the FBI finding there was “no bias” in the Russia probe, which undercuts Trump and Attorney General Barr. Comey lawyer, David Kelley says the report vindicates the FBI and he has tough words for Attorney General Barr. For his part, Comey said Monday the report authoritatively shows Trump’s “witchhunt” attack was “all lies”. Aired on 12/9/19.
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Julia Ainsley, Frank Figliuzzi, and Chuck Rosenberg join Nicolle Wallace to discuss AG Barr's response to the IG report that contradicts President Trump's depiction of a politically biased plot against him. Aired on 12/9/19.
Well, the wait is over, and those who smeared the FBI are due for an accounting. In particular, Attorney General William P. Barr owes the institution he leads, and the American people, an acknowledgment of the truth. [...] https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152699822
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