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The first red flag was Allen’s experience. She styles herself as a jet-setting, gun-porning, right-wing Instagram influencer. Her online bios say she was a “spokeswoman” for the 2016 Trump campaign, but in reality she was a teenage intern with a thin record of spokeswomaning. Allen also did social media for the 2018 congressional campaign of far-right Republican long-shot Tim Donnelly, founder of the California Minutemen Party, who didn’t come close to winning even the GOP vote. She volunteered for Virginia Women for Trump, and her bios say she now serves on the finance committee for Trump Victory Committee. (Allen’s LinkedIn omits her work on the Donnelly campaign.)
But her LinkedIn page has an anomaly: A 2016 summer internship Allen landed at a Long Island personal injury firm, a long way from her rural Virginia home.
That personal injury firm is Gucciardo Law, headed by Charles Gucciardo. Last week Giuliani and Gucciardo confirmed to the New York Times that Gucciardo gave $500,000 to the former mayor through Giuliani’s firm, Giuliani Partners, in two payments in September and October 2018. According to Gucciardo’s lawyer, the payments went to Giuliani on behalf of Fraud Guarantee, a company co-managed by Giuliani’s clients Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Their work with Fraud Guarantee — whose mission statement is to help their customers “reduce and mitigate fraud” — helped earn them a federal indictment last month.
...Strangely enough, we still don’t yet know how Gucciardo, Giuliani, and Parnas all met. The only thing that binds this group other than money is, oddly enough, Christianné Allen.
Facebook posts show Gucciardo met Allen at a 2015 Stanford University law seminar for high school students, where she impressed him. (Allen said in an Instagram story that she “did high school online.”) In the photos posted on Facebook by Gucciardo, Allen appears in the front row of a lecture hall, and then with her arm around Gucciardo’s son.
...Allen interned at Gucciardo’s firm the following year, and appeared with him at a pro-Trump event that October at Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, where Gucciardo gave a lengthy speech.
After Trump’s election, Allen tried to start a combination marijuana business–reality TV show in Nevada with her father, registered at a house. Neither venture bore fruit, but after some travel, Allen attended another Trump fundraiser with Gucciardo at Trump International, held for major donors to the America First PAC in June 2018.
As far as we know, that $100,000-a-head event is the first time the various members of the group seem to have met, at least in public record: the first time Giuliani met Parnas; the first time Gucciardo met Parnas; the first time Giuliani met Gucciardo; and apparently the first time Giuliani was photographed with Allen. (Giuliani told me in a text he’s “known of” Gucciardo for a while.)
Parnas’s son, Aaron, was also present. (Aaron was the first person to comment on Allen’s Facebook post announcing her job with Giuliani.)
After the Trump International fundraiser, Gucciardo donated $50,000 to America First. The next month Parnas and Fruman traveled with Gucciardo to Israel, where they were photographed with Anthony Scaramucci, who said Parnas and Fruman were trying to “rope people into their game” on the trip. On his return, Parnas pledged Giuliani the $500,000 payment, but, needing cash, got Gucciardo to front the money. According to the New York Times, this money secured Parnas’s relationship with Giuliani, which as far as we know was about three months old.
Parnas and Fruman ramped up their work for Giuliani. In November 2018, according to Giuliani, Parnas began introducing him to Ukrainian officials, and Giuliani made his own trip to the country. Parnas and Fruman made some more trips abroad — including reportedly trying to shake down a powerful oligarch — and then, in April of this year, Gucciardo was given a "friend of Zion" award at a Times Square event that also honored Parnas and Fruman. Giuliani posed onstage for pictures.
Allen announced her new job with Giuliani in late September, but Giuliani’s Instagram account suggests she’d been involved in his social media operation since at least the end of August. An Internet Archive search shows that at some point between September 2 and 5 Giuliani’s Twitter account deleted an August 24 photo of Gucciardo, captioned, “A wonderful boat ride with Captain Charles Gucciardi.A great person.” [sic]
Allen joined Giuliani on a boat with Daily Caller contributors in July, after which they dined at Scaramucci’s restaurant.
And then there are the drugs. Allen’s Nevada marijuana business, Discovery Club, has since dissolved, and the alleged reality show, “High Stakes,” never got made. (She did do a podcast interview about the experience, however, which has since been deleted.)
Coincidentally, though, the Parnas and Fruman indictment alleges the two of them, with the help of two associates, tried to finagle illegal pot licenses for a Russian billionaire via donations to political candidates who could influence marijuana laws in Nevada, New York, and Florida. Their indictment alleges they started the effort when Gucciardo made the $500,000 loan to Fraud Guarantee. Around that same time, Gucciardo, who lives on Long Island, donated to a PAC supporting Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis. Parnas also donated to DeSantis, who upon winning the election legalized smokable medical marijuana. The governor has since returned Parnas’s donation.
It’s unclear how Allen came to Giuliani, whether through Gucciardo or Parnas or some other happy coincidence. No matter the path, it seems Giuliani and Allen by omission both tacitly acknowledge that these connections, if uncovered, might cause problems, but for whatever combination of reasons, Giuliani offered her the job, and Allen took it. Rudy's Twitter voice has been noticeably different since he brought her on, however, evincing that trademark Charlie Kirk-esque snark, grammar slightly improved, and penned in a young Trumpublican style. She’s injected a freshness that I imagine Giuliani finds revitalizing in such a stressful time, for better or worse. The old-school Giuliani brand, the savvy swinger of smoke-filled, backroom deals, the man who guided our greatest city through its worst tragedy, has given way to tossed-off lines imposed Powerpoint-style over a digital American flag.
This all reflects a larger theme in Trump world: As it becomes increasingly untenable for serious people to associate themselves with Trump, their world gets smaller, and the tried and true allies who hang on find themselves with fewer and fewer options for top-tier advisers, lawyers, campaign staff, and so on. It’s hard to quench the thirst for loyalty in the middle of such a drought, but, as the saying goes, there’s honor among thieves. They might at first seem like odd couples, but they tend to play in the same sandbox, by the same rules.
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- This is crazy nuts.
right now.
