Max Power
Footballguy
No, I just don't understand people who's only comment is to complain about they just read. Some posters here just can't read something, and move along. I was trying to assist.
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Official Rudy Giuliani Thread (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Captain Cranks
- Start date
![[scooter]](/data/avatars/m/22/22287.jpg?1659477690){kind=avatar}
[scooter]
Footballguy
Ah, but that's not why you said "move along", is it?
Moops didn't "complain about [something he] just read". He complained (if that's the word we're going to use) about people falling for and spreading conspiracy theories. In that context, it's a good thing that he doesn't "move along".
Society would be better if we discouraged the spread of conspiracy theories. Society would be worse if we just "moved along".
Max Power
Footballguy
What conspiracy theory am I spreading? Saying if Rudy has something he should go in front of congress? Seems like a lot of people here have already made up their minds and they have no idea what he even has/knows. That seems more disingenuous.
sho nuff
Footballguy
Rudy isn't an investigator. He has been in dealings with some very unsavory people. It should be vetted before going to congress...but sure...as I said, if he wishes to be out under oath, invite him to present to a committee. But it would open him up to questioning...
Max Power
Footballguy
I have no problem with that. Rudy is looking for corruption in admittedly one of the most corrupt countries on earth. I would not be shocked if he finds something and I think he should present it.
sho nuff
Footballguy
Rudy is looking for any bogus stuff he can try to dog up on Trumps rivals . He cares little about actual corruption IMO...or he wouldn't be dealing with such corrupt people himself.
And there is zero way he will agree to testify about any of this under oath.
This again is the President’s personal attorney digging around pretty awful people to try and discredit legitimate investigations and Trumps political rivals
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John Blutarsky
Footballguy
[scooter]
Footballguy
That's fine. I'm just pointing out that when you tell other posters to "Move along" right after accusing posters of being upset, it has the net result of making it appear that you are the one who is upset.
Encyclopedia Brown
Footballguy
Barr is urging Trump to cut bait on Rudy: https://www.mediaite.com/trump/bill-barr-reportedly-advising-trump-to-dump-rudy-giuliani-amidst-impeachment-proceedings/
Reince Preibus and John Kelly have long been telling Trump to untangle himself from Giuliani, but he has pushed back against replacing him. So, either Trump has a sense of loyalty (the kind he has never shown to anyone, ever before) or Rudy was not joking about having an insurance policy.
Reince Preibus and John Kelly have long been telling Trump to untangle himself from Giuliani, but he has pushed back against replacing him. So, either Trump has a sense of loyalty (the kind he has never shown to anyone, ever before) or Rudy was not joking about having an insurance policy.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
Apple Jack
Footballguy
Joe Summer
Footballguy
I'm not sure if it's possible to cut bait on Rudy without the public assuming that Rudy was committing crimes for the President.
Mario Kart
Footballguy
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Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
Dickies
Footballguy
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Peas in a pod: The long and twisted relationship between Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani
- 2016 article on the long relationship between Trump and Giuliani.
- 2016 article on the long relationship between Trump and Giuliani.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
‘Just Having Fun’: Giuliani Doubles Down on Ukraine Probes
Trump’s personal attorney escalates his push for investigations—the effort that helped spark impeachment inquiry
- Great summary of Giuliani's travels and consulting work, by WSJ.
Trump’s personal attorney escalates his push for investigations—the effort that helped spark impeachment inquiry
- Great summary of Giuliani's travels and consulting work, by WSJ.
Some of Rudy Giuliani’s friends told him to keep a low profile.
Instead, Mr. Giuliani is escalating his push for Ukraine to conduct investigations, undeterred by federal prosecutors probing his business dealings and an impeachment inquiry into his client, President Trump.
In recent weeks, as a dozen witnesses told impeachment investigators that they were alarmed by Mr. Giuliani’s efforts, the president’s attorney has been working on a TV series about the need for investigations in Ukraine into former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and claims that Kyiv interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. Mr. Giuliani traveled to Kyiv—his first trip to Ukraine in two years—to interview officials and gather information this month, as the Democrats started to draft articles of impeachment.
When he returned to New York on Saturday, the president called him as his plane was still taxiing down the runway, Mr. Giuliani said. “‘What did you get?’” he said Mr. Trump asked. “More than you can imagine,” Mr. Giuliani replied. He is putting his findings into a 20-page report.
Several friends have urged the 75-year-old once known as “America’s mayor” to lie low amid the congressional and federal investigations. One told him to stop going on television because “every time he goes on TV, he can’t help but make the argument” for the Ukraine investigations, which in turn heightens the scrutiny on Mr. Giuliani himself. Others have urged Mr. Giuliani to forge ahead, and Republicans in Congress are echoing some of his points about Ukraine.
Mr. Giuliani says his efforts are justified to defend Mr. Trump and that he wouldn’t be a good attorney if he were daunted by opposition. The pressure, meanwhile, is bolstering a relationship with the president that has boosted Mr. Giuliani’s consulting business and returned him to the public spotlight. Friends say he’s reveling in it.
“When he believes he’s right, he loves taking on fights,” said Tony Carbonetti, a longtime friend of Mr. Giuliani.
The impeachment inquiry was set off by efforts by Messrs. Trump and Giuliani to get Ukraine’s government to conduct the investigations into the Bidens and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, at the same time the White House was holding up nearly $400 million in aid to the country.
World Traveler
Since Trump's election, Rudy Giuliani has traveled extensively for his consulting business, or as the president's personal attorney, or both.
Messrs. Trump and Giuliani say then-Vice President Biden engaged in corruption when he called for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden served on the board. The Bidens deny wrongdoing, and ousting the prosecutor was a goal at the time of the U.S. and several European countries. The allegations of Ukrainian election interference are at odds with findings by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind the election interference.
Mr. Giuliani’s work in Ukraine has also spurred an investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors, who are examining the lawyer’s business dealings in the country and reviewing whether Mr. Giuliani should have registered as a foreign agent. Two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Soviet-born émigrés and Trump donors who assisted with his investigations in Ukraine, were arrested in October on campaign-finance charges. They have pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Giuliani denies wrongdoing and said he has never lobbied.
Mr. Giuliani has contacted the lawyers for Messrs. Parnas and Fruman several times in recent weeks and said he has spoken to one of the men with a lawyer present, but declined to identify which.
In pressing ahead on Ukraine, Mr. Giuliani has replaced the translation skills of Messrs. Parnas and Fruman with an app he downloaded that allows him to read Russian documents by holding his phone over them. But on his recent trip, he said, “despite whatever else you can say, I missed them.”
He has been reading “Ike and McCarthy,” an account of how former President Dwight Eisenhower campaigned against Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Mr. Giuliani in an interview compared Mr. McCarthy’s demagoguery to the Democrats’ impeachment campaign.
“There’s nobody in the whole world that could possibly think they are treating the president fairly,” he said.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Mr. Giuliani’s relationship with the president.
In the impeachment hearings, witnesses accused Mr. Giuliani of conducting a shadow foreign policy and orchestrating the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He was described as “problematic” and “disruptive” and, in testimony that cited former national security adviser John Bolton, likened to a “hand grenade that’s going to blow everybody up.” Mr. Giuliani has said he kept the State Department apprised of his efforts and that he was working at the president’s behest.
Mr. Giuliani in recent weeks dispatched a former Ukrainian diplomat to gather information from politicians there and ask them to participate in the documentary series, which is being produced by the conservative One America News Network. The series tries to make a case for investigating the Bidens and the gas company Burisma Holdings, as well as alleged election interference.
“Just having fun while Dems and friends try to destroy my brilliant career,” Mr. Giuliani wrote in a text message during his trip, which he described as a “secret assignment.”
Mr. Giuliani said he also has expanded his search for information about Burisma beyond Ukraine to Latvia, where the gas company had bank accounts, and Cyprus, where it is registered.
The former diplomat, Andriy Telizhenko, said the plan for the series was hatched during the impeachment hearings and intended to let Mr. Giuliani tell his side of the story. He flew to Washington on Nov. 20 to film with Mr. Giuliani, and in early December, he joined Mr. Giuliani on the Kyiv trip, which included stops in Budapest, Vienna and Rome. They interviewed former Ukrainian prosecutors—including Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko —who are supportive of a Biden probe as part of the documentary series.
In Kyiv, Mr. Giuliani met with a member of Ukraine’s parliament to discuss the creation of a group called “Friends of Ukraine STOP Corruption.”
When he returned, Mr. Giuliani says Mr. Trump instructed him to brief the attorney general and Republican lawmakers. Moments later, Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House that his lawyer would deliver a report to the Justice Department and Congress, saying, “I hear he has found plenty.” Mr. Giuliani says he has been in contact with several Republican lawmakers, but not the Justice Department, and won’t hold any briefings until he finishes the report.
In the weeks since the impeachment inquiry launched in September, Mr. Giuliani says his relationship with the president has only strengthened. The two speak by phone at least several times a week, Mr. Giuliani says, with Mr. Trump calling him more often because “I don’t want to bother him.”
Mr. Giuliani rejects the notion that Mr. Trump would cast him aside, calling it “bull####.” “He has a hard time getting rid of people,” he said.
Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Giuliani in recent weeks, calling him “one of the greatest and most famous crime-fighters anywhere in the entire world.” But, he told former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly of Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine: “I didn’t direct him.”
The attention has appeared to delight Mr. Giuliani. Weeks after the probe began, Mr. Giuliani sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic in New York City with his lawyer at the time, Jon Sale. When construction workers waved to him, Mr. Giuliani on two occasions rolled down his window to high-five them, Mr. Sale said.
Mr. Giuliani agreed to become Mr. Trump’s attorney in April 2018 to help navigate special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He took on the task pro bono and resigned from the Greenberg Traurig law firm. “This’ll be like a month or two,” Mr. Giuliani told one person.
January 2017: Rudy Giuliani, who said he wanted to serve as attorney general or secretary of state, is appointed by President Trump as a cybersecurity adviser (pictured).
2017: Mr. Giuliani’s consulting business picks up and he travels widely for it, including trips in June and November to Ukraine.
April 2018: Mr. Giuliani joins Mr. Trump’s legal team to deal with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Mid-2018: Soviet-born U.S. businessman Lev Parnas’s company starts paying Mr. Giuliani, ultimately disbursing $500,000. The two begin working and traveling together.
January 2019: Mr. Giuliani meets with Yuriy Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s prosecutor general, to discuss possible investigations into the Bidens and election interference.
March 2019: Mr. Giuliani speaks to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mr. Trump about ousting Marie Yovanovitch, the ambassador to Ukraine. She is recalled the following month.
May 2019: Mr. Trump directs administration officials to work with Mr. Giuliani on Ukraine.
During the heat of the Mueller investigation, Mr. Giuliani frequently visited the White House, usually meeting with the president weekly, sometimes alone, and often in the evenings in the residence without other White House officials present, former administration officials said.
Meetings would start out discussing the Mueller probe and then veer into other subjects, like Ukraine, one of the former officials said. Mr. Giuliani often brought lists of requests for the president, according to the former official, and sought out meetings at the State Department and other agencies on behalf of clients.
“He trusts Rudy, and Rudy just kept putting this #### in his head,” the former official said of the president.
After Mr. Mueller concluded his probe in March without calling for charges against Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani celebrated with the rest of the president’s legal team and Mr. Parnas at the Trump hotel in Washington.
When an associate asked what he planned to do next, Mr. Giuliani replied, referring to the president: “Whatever he needs me to do.”
Instead, Mr. Giuliani is escalating his push for Ukraine to conduct investigations, undeterred by federal prosecutors probing his business dealings and an impeachment inquiry into his client, President Trump.
In recent weeks, as a dozen witnesses told impeachment investigators that they were alarmed by Mr. Giuliani’s efforts, the president’s attorney has been working on a TV series about the need for investigations in Ukraine into former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and claims that Kyiv interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. Mr. Giuliani traveled to Kyiv—his first trip to Ukraine in two years—to interview officials and gather information this month, as the Democrats started to draft articles of impeachment.
When he returned to New York on Saturday, the president called him as his plane was still taxiing down the runway, Mr. Giuliani said. “‘What did you get?’” he said Mr. Trump asked. “More than you can imagine,” Mr. Giuliani replied. He is putting his findings into a 20-page report.
Several friends have urged the 75-year-old once known as “America’s mayor” to lie low amid the congressional and federal investigations. One told him to stop going on television because “every time he goes on TV, he can’t help but make the argument” for the Ukraine investigations, which in turn heightens the scrutiny on Mr. Giuliani himself. Others have urged Mr. Giuliani to forge ahead, and Republicans in Congress are echoing some of his points about Ukraine.
Mr. Giuliani says his efforts are justified to defend Mr. Trump and that he wouldn’t be a good attorney if he were daunted by opposition. The pressure, meanwhile, is bolstering a relationship with the president that has boosted Mr. Giuliani’s consulting business and returned him to the public spotlight. Friends say he’s reveling in it.
“When he believes he’s right, he loves taking on fights,” said Tony Carbonetti, a longtime friend of Mr. Giuliani.
The impeachment inquiry was set off by efforts by Messrs. Trump and Giuliani to get Ukraine’s government to conduct the investigations into the Bidens and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, at the same time the White House was holding up nearly $400 million in aid to the country.
World Traveler
Since Trump's election, Rudy Giuliani has traveled extensively for his consulting business, or as the president's personal attorney, or both.
Messrs. Trump and Giuliani say then-Vice President Biden engaged in corruption when he called for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden served on the board. The Bidens deny wrongdoing, and ousting the prosecutor was a goal at the time of the U.S. and several European countries. The allegations of Ukrainian election interference are at odds with findings by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind the election interference.
Mr. Giuliani’s work in Ukraine has also spurred an investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors, who are examining the lawyer’s business dealings in the country and reviewing whether Mr. Giuliani should have registered as a foreign agent. Two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Soviet-born émigrés and Trump donors who assisted with his investigations in Ukraine, were arrested in October on campaign-finance charges. They have pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Giuliani denies wrongdoing and said he has never lobbied.
Mr. Giuliani has contacted the lawyers for Messrs. Parnas and Fruman several times in recent weeks and said he has spoken to one of the men with a lawyer present, but declined to identify which.
In pressing ahead on Ukraine, Mr. Giuliani has replaced the translation skills of Messrs. Parnas and Fruman with an app he downloaded that allows him to read Russian documents by holding his phone over them. But on his recent trip, he said, “despite whatever else you can say, I missed them.”
He has been reading “Ike and McCarthy,” an account of how former President Dwight Eisenhower campaigned against Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Mr. Giuliani in an interview compared Mr. McCarthy’s demagoguery to the Democrats’ impeachment campaign.
“There’s nobody in the whole world that could possibly think they are treating the president fairly,” he said.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Mr. Giuliani’s relationship with the president.
In the impeachment hearings, witnesses accused Mr. Giuliani of conducting a shadow foreign policy and orchestrating the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He was described as “problematic” and “disruptive” and, in testimony that cited former national security adviser John Bolton, likened to a “hand grenade that’s going to blow everybody up.” Mr. Giuliani has said he kept the State Department apprised of his efforts and that he was working at the president’s behest.
Mr. Giuliani in recent weeks dispatched a former Ukrainian diplomat to gather information from politicians there and ask them to participate in the documentary series, which is being produced by the conservative One America News Network. The series tries to make a case for investigating the Bidens and the gas company Burisma Holdings, as well as alleged election interference.
“Just having fun while Dems and friends try to destroy my brilliant career,” Mr. Giuliani wrote in a text message during his trip, which he described as a “secret assignment.”
Mr. Giuliani said he also has expanded his search for information about Burisma beyond Ukraine to Latvia, where the gas company had bank accounts, and Cyprus, where it is registered.
The former diplomat, Andriy Telizhenko, said the plan for the series was hatched during the impeachment hearings and intended to let Mr. Giuliani tell his side of the story. He flew to Washington on Nov. 20 to film with Mr. Giuliani, and in early December, he joined Mr. Giuliani on the Kyiv trip, which included stops in Budapest, Vienna and Rome. They interviewed former Ukrainian prosecutors—including Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko —who are supportive of a Biden probe as part of the documentary series.
In Kyiv, Mr. Giuliani met with a member of Ukraine’s parliament to discuss the creation of a group called “Friends of Ukraine STOP Corruption.”
When he returned, Mr. Giuliani says Mr. Trump instructed him to brief the attorney general and Republican lawmakers. Moments later, Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House that his lawyer would deliver a report to the Justice Department and Congress, saying, “I hear he has found plenty.” Mr. Giuliani says he has been in contact with several Republican lawmakers, but not the Justice Department, and won’t hold any briefings until he finishes the report.
In the weeks since the impeachment inquiry launched in September, Mr. Giuliani says his relationship with the president has only strengthened. The two speak by phone at least several times a week, Mr. Giuliani says, with Mr. Trump calling him more often because “I don’t want to bother him.”
Mr. Giuliani rejects the notion that Mr. Trump would cast him aside, calling it “bull####.” “He has a hard time getting rid of people,” he said.
Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Giuliani in recent weeks, calling him “one of the greatest and most famous crime-fighters anywhere in the entire world.” But, he told former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly of Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine: “I didn’t direct him.”
The attention has appeared to delight Mr. Giuliani. Weeks after the probe began, Mr. Giuliani sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic in New York City with his lawyer at the time, Jon Sale. When construction workers waved to him, Mr. Giuliani on two occasions rolled down his window to high-five them, Mr. Sale said.
Mr. Giuliani agreed to become Mr. Trump’s attorney in April 2018 to help navigate special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He took on the task pro bono and resigned from the Greenberg Traurig law firm. “This’ll be like a month or two,” Mr. Giuliani told one person.
January 2017: Rudy Giuliani, who said he wanted to serve as attorney general or secretary of state, is appointed by President Trump as a cybersecurity adviser (pictured).
2017: Mr. Giuliani’s consulting business picks up and he travels widely for it, including trips in June and November to Ukraine.
April 2018: Mr. Giuliani joins Mr. Trump’s legal team to deal with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Mid-2018: Soviet-born U.S. businessman Lev Parnas’s company starts paying Mr. Giuliani, ultimately disbursing $500,000. The two begin working and traveling together.
January 2019: Mr. Giuliani meets with Yuriy Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s prosecutor general, to discuss possible investigations into the Bidens and election interference.
March 2019: Mr. Giuliani speaks to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mr. Trump about ousting Marie Yovanovitch, the ambassador to Ukraine. She is recalled the following month.
May 2019: Mr. Trump directs administration officials to work with Mr. Giuliani on Ukraine.
During the heat of the Mueller investigation, Mr. Giuliani frequently visited the White House, usually meeting with the president weekly, sometimes alone, and often in the evenings in the residence without other White House officials present, former administration officials said.
Meetings would start out discussing the Mueller probe and then veer into other subjects, like Ukraine, one of the former officials said. Mr. Giuliani often brought lists of requests for the president, according to the former official, and sought out meetings at the State Department and other agencies on behalf of clients.
“He trusts Rudy, and Rudy just kept putting this #### in his head,” the former official said of the president.
After Mr. Mueller concluded his probe in March without calling for charges against Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani celebrated with the rest of the president’s legal team and Mr. Parnas at the Trump hotel in Washington.
When an associate asked what he planned to do next, Mr. Giuliani replied, referring to the president: “Whatever he needs me to do.”
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squistion
Footballguy
Natasha Bertrand @NatashaBertrand 4h4 hours ago
!! Giuliani told the WSJ that Trump is still asking him about the dirt he's digging up in Ukraine. "What did you get?" Trump asked Giuliani upon returning from Kiev (according to Giuliani)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/just-having-fun-giuliani-doubles-down-on-ukraine-probes-11576233001
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
The only question now is if Barr opens an investigation into Joe & Hunter Biden.
sho nuff
Footballguy
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
beef
Footballguy
Just a holiday party. I always bring my dad to my work events. Come on, who doesn't like their dad embarrassing the #### out them by telling your co-workers childhood stories crazy conspiracy theories?
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
How many republicans went bat #### crazy because someone testifying didn't "wear a pin"? A dozen or so? This is totally cool though.
Looks like Rudy has released his "report"/conspiracy manifesto on OANN and Twitter today.
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
Godsbrother
Footballguy
Rudy tweeting some pretty serious allegations.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Yeah, suggesting there was a murder attempt on Shokin and connecting that to Biden is a pretty serious allegation.
Henry Ford
Footballguy
They're allegations. I'm not sure they're serious unless someone other than Rudy is tweeting them.
Godsbrother
Footballguy
Henry Ford
Footballguy
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Giuliani Provides Details of What Trump Knew About Ambassador’s Removal
Rudolph W. Giuliani said on Monday that he provided President Trump with detailed information this year about how the United States ambassador to Ukraine was, in Mr. Giuliani’s view, impeding investigations that could benefit Mr. Trump, setting in motion the ambassador’s recall from her post.
In an interview, Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, described how he passed along to Mr. Trump “a couple of times” accounts about how the ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, had frustrated efforts that could be politically helpful to Mr. Trump. They included investigations involving former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ukrainians who disseminated documents that damaged Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The president in turn connected Mr. Giuliani with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who asked for more information, Mr. Giuliani said. Within weeks, Ms. Yovanovitch was recalled as ambassador at the end of April and was told that Mr. Trump had lost trust in her.
The circumstances of Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster after a smear campaign engineered in part by Mr. Giuliani were documented during testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, where she was a key witness in impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump. Mr. Giuliani has made no secret of his role in flagging concerns about Ms. Yovanovitch to Mr. Trump.
But Mr. Giuliani’s account, in an interview with The New York Times on Monday evening, provided additional detail about the president’s knowledge of and involvement in one element of a pressure campaign against Ukraine.
Mr. Giuliani’s interview came as the House prepared for a vote on Wednesday to impeach Mr. Trump. The articles of impeachment put forward by Democrats accuse the president of abusing the power of his office to push Ukraine to help him politically and of obstructing Congress by blocking testimony from key officials. Over several weeks of testimony, Democrats assembled a case that Mr. Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine and denied its president an Oval Office meeting as he sought a commitment from the Ukrainians for the investigations promoted by Mr. Giuliani.
In conversations in the first months of the year with the president, Mr. Giuliani, by his account, cast Ms. Yovanovitch as impeding not only investigations in Ukraine that could benefit Mr. Trump, but also Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to gather evidence to defend him — and target his rivals — in the United States.
“There’s a lot of reasons to move her,” Mr. Giuliani said, asserting that his briefings of Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo most likely played a role in their decision to recall Ms. Yovanovitch.
“I think my information did,” he said. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. But they relied on it.”
He added that he did not recommend that Mr. Trump or Mr. Pompeo recall Ms. Yovanovitch. “I just gave them the facts,” he said. “I mean, did I think she should be recalled? I thought she should have been fired.” He said, “If I was attorney general, I would have kicked her out. I mean — secretary of state.”
Testimony in the impeachment proceedings as well as other information have shown that Mr. Giuliani’s claims about Ms. Yovanovitch were either unsubstantiated or were taken out of context. In the interview, he portrayed himself as personally involved in the effort to derail a career diplomat around the time he was considering business arrangements with some of the Ukrainians funneling information to him.
Mr. Giuliani told the president and Mr. Pompeo that Ms. Yovanovitch was blocking visas for Ukrainian prosecutors to come to the United States to present evidence to him — and also to federal authorities — that he claimed could be damaging to Mr. Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and to Ukrainians who distributed documents that led to the resignation of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
Mr. Giuliani also claimed, based on his own interviews with those prosecutors, that Ms. Yovanovitch had sought to block investigations in Ukraine. And he relayed vague claims that she had been bad-mouthing the president.
“I think I had pointed out to the president a couple of times, I reported to the president, what I had learned about the visa denials,” Mr. Giuliani said, as well as the claims that she ordered one Ukrainian prosecutor to drop cases. “I may or may not have passed along the general gossip that the embassy was considered to be a kind of out-of-control politically partisan embassy, but that was, like, general gossip, I didn’t report that as fact.”
Mr. Giuliani had told The New Yorker in an article published on Monday that he needed Ms. Yovanovitch “out of the way,” and that she “was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.”
Ms. Yovanovitch, a 33-year veteran of the Foreign Service, testified in the impeachment proceedings that Mr. Giuliani helped lead a smear campaign against her based on what she described as scurrilous lies, and she described the State Department as capitulating to the president’s demands to recall her.
There is no evidence that she had disparaged Mr. Trump, nor that she had issued a do-not-prosecute list, as one of Mr. Giuliani’s prosecutor sources once claimed.
But, by Mr. Giuliani’s account on Monday, the information he was spreading about her seemed to find a receptive audience at the highest reaches of the United States government and led Mr. Trump to involve Mr. Pompeo.
Mr. Giuliani told The Times that after he briefed Mr. Trump on the claims, the president said “either ‘discuss it with Mike’ or ‘turn it over to Mike.’” Mr. Giuliani said he could not recall “if he had me call him, or him call me — but he put us together so that Pompeo could evaluate it.”
Mr. Giuliani’s account of the phone calls with Mr. Pompeo seems to be corroborated by emails released by the State Department to a liberal watchdog group that had filed a public records lawsuit. The emails reflect at least two telephone calls between the men in late March, including one that was arranged with guidance from Mr. Trump’s personal assistant.
Mr. Giuliani said that Mr. Pompeo asked him whether he had anything in writing, so Mr. Giuliani sent a timeline listing events related to some of the claims about Ms. Yovanovitch, the Bidens’ work in Ukraine and other matters.
Mr. Pompeo subsequently requested more detailed information, Mr. Giuliani said, so he had someone hand deliver to Mr. Pompeo’s office an envelope containing a series of memos detailing claims made by a pair of Ukrainian prosecutors in interviews conducted by Mr. Giuliani and his associates in January. The existence of those memos has been previously reported, as has Mr. Giuliani’s hope that Mr. Pompeo would pass them along to State Department investigators and the F.B.I. as a way of prompting an investigation in the United States that could benefit Mr. Trump.
“What I thought was, a really smart guy and he’s going to see what else is involved,” Mr. Giuliani said, referring to Mr. Pompeo. “And then he’ll be the one referring it to the F.B.I. And maybe they’ll take it from him and also it won’t look like I’m pushing the F.B.I. to do it.”
One of the interviews detailed in a memo sent to Mr. Pompeo was conducted by phone with Viktor Shokin, a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was denied a visa by the State Department. He was denied the visa because he was seen as having wasted American assistance money that had been allocated to his office for anti-corruption programs, according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry.
Mr. Shokin “wanted to come to the United States to share information suggesting that there was corruption at the U.S. Embassy,” testified George P. Kent, a State Department official. “Knowing Mr. Shokin, I had full faith that it was bunch of hooey, and he was looking to basically engage in a con-game out of revenge because he’d lost his job.”
Another Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, had traveled to New York to be interviewed by Mr. Giuliani for hours over two days in January, and information he relayed was included in memos sent to Mr. Pompeo.
Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine have come under scrutiny from federal prosecutors examining whether he violated laws requiring Americans to publicly disclose when they lobby government officials or communicate with journalists on behalf of foreign political interests.
Yet Mr. Giuliani traveled to Europe this month, as first reported by The Times, to meet with some of those same Ukrainian prosecutors to continue gathering information to try to undercut the impeachment case, including through a series of programs on a conservative cable network.
Mr. Trump has said that Mr. Giuliani will submit a report of his findings to Attorney General William P. Barr and Congress.
Mr. Giuliani has shared some information gathered on the trip with Mr. Trump — but “not too much” — the president told reporters on Monday. He added that Mr. Giuliani “knows what he is doing.”
Mr. Giuliani would not comment on any conversations with Mr. Trump about the report from his most recent trip. He said he has not spoken with Mr. Barr about it. He has spoken to “several” members of Congress about his findings, he said, but he would not identify them, explaining, “It’s all very confidential.”
In an interview, Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, described how he passed along to Mr. Trump “a couple of times” accounts about how the ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, had frustrated efforts that could be politically helpful to Mr. Trump. They included investigations involving former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ukrainians who disseminated documents that damaged Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The president in turn connected Mr. Giuliani with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who asked for more information, Mr. Giuliani said. Within weeks, Ms. Yovanovitch was recalled as ambassador at the end of April and was told that Mr. Trump had lost trust in her.
The circumstances of Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster after a smear campaign engineered in part by Mr. Giuliani were documented during testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, where she was a key witness in impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump. Mr. Giuliani has made no secret of his role in flagging concerns about Ms. Yovanovitch to Mr. Trump.
But Mr. Giuliani’s account, in an interview with The New York Times on Monday evening, provided additional detail about the president’s knowledge of and involvement in one element of a pressure campaign against Ukraine.
Mr. Giuliani’s interview came as the House prepared for a vote on Wednesday to impeach Mr. Trump. The articles of impeachment put forward by Democrats accuse the president of abusing the power of his office to push Ukraine to help him politically and of obstructing Congress by blocking testimony from key officials. Over several weeks of testimony, Democrats assembled a case that Mr. Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine and denied its president an Oval Office meeting as he sought a commitment from the Ukrainians for the investigations promoted by Mr. Giuliani.
In conversations in the first months of the year with the president, Mr. Giuliani, by his account, cast Ms. Yovanovitch as impeding not only investigations in Ukraine that could benefit Mr. Trump, but also Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to gather evidence to defend him — and target his rivals — in the United States.
“There’s a lot of reasons to move her,” Mr. Giuliani said, asserting that his briefings of Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo most likely played a role in their decision to recall Ms. Yovanovitch.
“I think my information did,” he said. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. But they relied on it.”
He added that he did not recommend that Mr. Trump or Mr. Pompeo recall Ms. Yovanovitch. “I just gave them the facts,” he said. “I mean, did I think she should be recalled? I thought she should have been fired.” He said, “If I was attorney general, I would have kicked her out. I mean — secretary of state.”
Testimony in the impeachment proceedings as well as other information have shown that Mr. Giuliani’s claims about Ms. Yovanovitch were either unsubstantiated or were taken out of context. In the interview, he portrayed himself as personally involved in the effort to derail a career diplomat around the time he was considering business arrangements with some of the Ukrainians funneling information to him.
Mr. Giuliani told the president and Mr. Pompeo that Ms. Yovanovitch was blocking visas for Ukrainian prosecutors to come to the United States to present evidence to him — and also to federal authorities — that he claimed could be damaging to Mr. Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and to Ukrainians who distributed documents that led to the resignation of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
Mr. Giuliani also claimed, based on his own interviews with those prosecutors, that Ms. Yovanovitch had sought to block investigations in Ukraine. And he relayed vague claims that she had been bad-mouthing the president.
“I think I had pointed out to the president a couple of times, I reported to the president, what I had learned about the visa denials,” Mr. Giuliani said, as well as the claims that she ordered one Ukrainian prosecutor to drop cases. “I may or may not have passed along the general gossip that the embassy was considered to be a kind of out-of-control politically partisan embassy, but that was, like, general gossip, I didn’t report that as fact.”
Mr. Giuliani had told The New Yorker in an article published on Monday that he needed Ms. Yovanovitch “out of the way,” and that she “was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.”
Ms. Yovanovitch, a 33-year veteran of the Foreign Service, testified in the impeachment proceedings that Mr. Giuliani helped lead a smear campaign against her based on what she described as scurrilous lies, and she described the State Department as capitulating to the president’s demands to recall her.
There is no evidence that she had disparaged Mr. Trump, nor that she had issued a do-not-prosecute list, as one of Mr. Giuliani’s prosecutor sources once claimed.
But, by Mr. Giuliani’s account on Monday, the information he was spreading about her seemed to find a receptive audience at the highest reaches of the United States government and led Mr. Trump to involve Mr. Pompeo.
Mr. Giuliani told The Times that after he briefed Mr. Trump on the claims, the president said “either ‘discuss it with Mike’ or ‘turn it over to Mike.’” Mr. Giuliani said he could not recall “if he had me call him, or him call me — but he put us together so that Pompeo could evaluate it.”
Mr. Giuliani’s account of the phone calls with Mr. Pompeo seems to be corroborated by emails released by the State Department to a liberal watchdog group that had filed a public records lawsuit. The emails reflect at least two telephone calls between the men in late March, including one that was arranged with guidance from Mr. Trump’s personal assistant.
Mr. Giuliani said that Mr. Pompeo asked him whether he had anything in writing, so Mr. Giuliani sent a timeline listing events related to some of the claims about Ms. Yovanovitch, the Bidens’ work in Ukraine and other matters.
Mr. Pompeo subsequently requested more detailed information, Mr. Giuliani said, so he had someone hand deliver to Mr. Pompeo’s office an envelope containing a series of memos detailing claims made by a pair of Ukrainian prosecutors in interviews conducted by Mr. Giuliani and his associates in January. The existence of those memos has been previously reported, as has Mr. Giuliani’s hope that Mr. Pompeo would pass them along to State Department investigators and the F.B.I. as a way of prompting an investigation in the United States that could benefit Mr. Trump.
“What I thought was, a really smart guy and he’s going to see what else is involved,” Mr. Giuliani said, referring to Mr. Pompeo. “And then he’ll be the one referring it to the F.B.I. And maybe they’ll take it from him and also it won’t look like I’m pushing the F.B.I. to do it.”
One of the interviews detailed in a memo sent to Mr. Pompeo was conducted by phone with Viktor Shokin, a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was denied a visa by the State Department. He was denied the visa because he was seen as having wasted American assistance money that had been allocated to his office for anti-corruption programs, according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry.
Mr. Shokin “wanted to come to the United States to share information suggesting that there was corruption at the U.S. Embassy,” testified George P. Kent, a State Department official. “Knowing Mr. Shokin, I had full faith that it was bunch of hooey, and he was looking to basically engage in a con-game out of revenge because he’d lost his job.”
Another Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, had traveled to New York to be interviewed by Mr. Giuliani for hours over two days in January, and information he relayed was included in memos sent to Mr. Pompeo.
Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine have come under scrutiny from federal prosecutors examining whether he violated laws requiring Americans to publicly disclose when they lobby government officials or communicate with journalists on behalf of foreign political interests.
Yet Mr. Giuliani traveled to Europe this month, as first reported by The Times, to meet with some of those same Ukrainian prosecutors to continue gathering information to try to undercut the impeachment case, including through a series of programs on a conservative cable network.
Mr. Trump has said that Mr. Giuliani will submit a report of his findings to Attorney General William P. Barr and Congress.
Mr. Giuliani has shared some information gathered on the trip with Mr. Trump — but “not too much” — the president told reporters on Monday. He added that Mr. Giuliani “knows what he is doing.”
Mr. Giuliani would not comment on any conversations with Mr. Trump about the report from his most recent trip. He said he has not spoken with Mr. Barr about it. He has spoken to “several” members of Congress about his findings, he said, but he would not identify them, explaining, “It’s all very confidential.”
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Rudy's helpers: A guide to the controversial figures assisting Giuliani in Ukraine
- Andrii Artemenko
- Andrii Derkach
- Andriy Telizhenko
- Oleksandr Dubinsky
- Kostiantyn Kulyk
- Viktor Shokin
- Yuriy Lutsenko
- Nazar Kholodnytsky
- Gennady Kernes
- Dmytro Firtash
- Ihor Kolomoisky
- Pavel ***hs
Joe Summer
Footballguy
President's (Catholic) personal lawyer proclaims he is more of a Jew than George Soros
Also of note: the President's lawyer is claiming that George Soros controls Marie Yovanovitch and FBI agents.
Also of note: the President's lawyer is claiming that George Soros controls Marie Yovanovitch and FBI agents.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
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SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
>>When Giuliani got to his hotel in Vienna, he said it was 2:30 in the morning, and the first thing he did was search for opera tickets. “Lo and behold, that Friday night they were performing Tosca, with the conductor Marco Armiliato.” He sang me an aria from Rigoletto, one of the first pieces he fell in love with when he was introduced to opera in high school, as he theatrically conducted with his hands.
Over a sweater, he wore a navy-blue suit, the fly of the pants unzipped. He accessorized with an American-flag lapel pin, American-flag woven wallet, a diamond-encrusted pinky ring, and a diamond-encrusted Yankees World Series ring (about which an innocent question resulted in a 15-minute rant about “####### Wayne Barrett,” a journalist who manages to enrage Giuliani even in death).<<
Over a sweater, he wore a navy-blue suit, the fly of the pants unzipped. He accessorized with an American-flag lapel pin, American-flag woven wallet, a diamond-encrusted pinky ring, and a diamond-encrusted Yankees World Series ring (about which an innocent question resulted in a 15-minute rant about “####### Wayne Barrett,” a journalist who manages to enrage Giuliani even in death).<<
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
>>As we sped uptown, he spoke in monologue about the scandal he co-created, weaving one made-up talking point into another and another. He said former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whom he calls Santa Maria Yovanovitch, is “controlled” by George Soros. “He put all four ambassadors there. And he’s employing the FBI agents.” I told him he sounded crazy, but he insisted he wasn’t.<<
>>In the grand tradition of Soros conspiracy theorists, Giuliani believes the media is doing the billionaire’s bidding by printing lies about him, yet he often bungles his own attempts to discredit the media’s reporting. While attempting to argue that, despite what has been written, “I have no business interests in Ukraine,” he told me about his business interests in Ukraine.<<
>>In the grand tradition of Soros conspiracy theorists, Giuliani believes the media is doing the billionaire’s bidding by printing lies about him, yet he often bungles his own attempts to discredit the media’s reporting. While attempting to argue that, despite what has been written, “I have no business interests in Ukraine,” he told me about his business interests in Ukraine.<<
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Don Hutson
Footballguy
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Rudy Giuliani Calls New York Police After Being Pranked by Sacha Baron Cohen
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Sacha Baron Cohen strikes again.
Just a few weeks after the Who is America? star made a clandestine appearance at a far-right rally and led the crowd in a racist sing-song, Cohen managed to trick former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani into an interview at which he reportedly wore a pink bikini.
Page Six reported on Wednesday that the British comedian, via his team, had set up an interview with Giuliani at a New York hotel to talk about the Trump administration's response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The interview began with a woman asking Giuliani questions before someone who would later be indentified as Cohen burst in wearing a pink bikini.
“This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit," Giuliani, the personal attorney to President Donald Trump, told Page Six.
He added: “It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive.”
Giuliani says he did not immediately recognize Cohen. “I only later realized it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me," he said. Giuliani called the NYPD but Cohen was not apprehended. ...
********
********
Sacha Baron Cohen strikes again.
Just a few weeks after the Who is America? star made a clandestine appearance at a far-right rally and led the crowd in a racist sing-song, Cohen managed to trick former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani into an interview at which he reportedly wore a pink bikini.
Page Six reported on Wednesday that the British comedian, via his team, had set up an interview with Giuliani at a New York hotel to talk about the Trump administration's response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The interview began with a woman asking Giuliani questions before someone who would later be indentified as Cohen burst in wearing a pink bikini.
“This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit," Giuliani, the personal attorney to President Donald Trump, told Page Six.
He added: “It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive.”
Giuliani says he did not immediately recognize Cohen. “I only later realized it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me," he said. Giuliani called the NYPD but Cohen was not apprehended. ...
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AAABatteries
Footballguy
sho nuff
Footballguy
He is the one out digging up dirt...they don't care about that "PC" stuff...as long as he does the dirty work for POTUS.
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