Tag: Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani Declares His Mission Is ‘To Disrupt The World’

Trump’s personal attorney is doubling down on his defenses of the president as both are ensnared in an escalating House impeachment probe.

Attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has defended his client, President Donald Trump, in a series of cable news hits and off-the-rails conspiracy-mongering interviews, said Friday that his purpose is “to disrupt the world.”

The former New York City mayor made the remark during a Fox News appearance, where he continued to spread unfounded corruption allegations aimed at former Vice President Joe Biden amid an escalating impeachment inquiry into the president.

“My mission is to defend my client in the best traditions of the legal profession,” Giuliani told host Martha MacCallum, adding that it is in Trump’s “best interest” to “unravel the corruption in the Ukraine.”

View the complete October 5 aritcle by Amy Russo on the Huffington Post website here.

Giuliani says State Dept vowed to investigate after he gave Ukraine docs to Pompeo

Democrats who saw the documents dismissed them as “propaganda and disinformation spreading conspiracy theories.”

WASHINGTON — Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney for President Donald Trump, said Wednesday that he personally gave Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a file of documents with unproven allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and was told that the State Department would take up an investigation of those claims.

Some of those documents are contained in the 79-page packet that the State Department’s inspector general handed over to Congress Wednesday, which were obtained by NBC News. The documents, combined with Giuliani’s version of events, raise new questions about what was done with the files after they were delivered to the State Department and whether an investigation into the allegations contained in them was ever launched.

Also included in the packet are nearly 20 pages of communications between State Department employees working to push back against the “fake narrative” that Giuliani was pushing.

View the complete October 4 article by Leigh Ann Caldwell, Kristen Welker, Heidi Przybyla, Josh Lederman and Abigail Williams on the NBC News website here.

Did Rudy Giuliani Nullify His Attorney-Client Protections?

Sometimes he says he’s acting as President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer — and sometimes he says he’s not. That could cost him a key legal shield and force him to cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry.

Rudy Giuliani received a subpoena this week from House Democrats as part of their impeachment inquiry. He wasn’t happy about it. In a tweet on Monday, Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, accused the Democratic committee chairs of having “prejudged this case.” He asserted that the subpoena, which seeks “all documents and communications” about Giuliani’s repeated forays into the world of Ukrainian law enforcement and politics, raises “constitutional and legal issues” including “attorney client and other privileges.”

At first blush, it’s a reasonable position. The attorney-client privilege shields confidential communications between a lawyer and his client so long as they pertain to seeking or providing legal advice. Giuliani is an attorney; the president is his client. With a number of exceptions, lawyers do not have to reveal anything about conversations with their clients. Continue reading “Did Rudy Giuliani Nullify His Attorney-Client Protections?”

Giuliani consulted on Ukraine with imprisoned Paul Manafort via a lawyer

Washington Post logoIn 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 relationship, 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.

View the complete October 2 article by Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger, Paul Sonne and Rosalind S. Helderman on The Washington Post website here.

Giuliani turns on ‘honest’ Ukrainian prosecutor who says Bidens did nothing illegal

Rudy Giuliani had nothing but praise for Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko — until he didn’t.

WASHINGTON — For much of this year, Rudy Giuliani was counting on Ukraine’s former chief prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, to reopen a dormant investigation into an energy company where Joe Biden’s son Hunter had once served as a board member.

In an early May phone call with NBC, Giuliani called Lutsenko a “much more honest guy” than the previous, Kremlin-aligned prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, whom the Ukrainian Parliament sacked for failing to crack down on corruption.

Lutsenko recently told NBC News the two talked about 10 times and The New York Times reported that Giuliani’s allegations that Joe Biden’s family engaged in wrongdoing in Ukraine were based on a series of meetings with Lutsenko.

View the complete October 1 article by Heidi Przybyla and Allan Smith on the NBC News website here.

On Fox News, Giuliani Talked Of ’Tapes’ And Soros Conspiracies

Not content with making the rounds of the Sunday shows, Rudy Giuliani decided to spend Monday night on Fox with Sean Hannity. One might think that in the far friendlier confines of Hannity’s show, Giuliani might have managed to come across as slightly less erratic and unhinged, but you’d be wrong.

To Giuliani’s credit, he has found new conspiracy theories to allege, and they’re even weirder than his previous attempts. He told Hannity that he has “overwhelming” proof that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats cooperated with Ukrainians, with the order to do so coming directly from Obama. However, he’s talking about January 2017, when Donald Trump had already won the election, so it’s unclear what all this alleged spycraft would have accomplished.

When asked if he would respond to the subpoenas issued by the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform Committees, Giuliani mused that he would go if he could bring “videotapes” and “tape recordings.”

View the complete October 1 article by Lisa Needham on the National Memo website here.

GOP uneasy with Giuliani

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s allies are growing increasingly uneasy with Rudy Giuliani’s role at the heart of the Ukraine controversy that has engulfed the administration.

A White House transcript and whistleblower complaint have shed additional light on the extent of the former New York City mayor’s efforts to dig up dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in service of Trump.

Giuliani’s involvement has implicated members of the State Department, frustrated Republican officials and placed the former mayor in the crosshairs of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

View the complete October 1 article by Brett Samuels and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

The Ukraine scandal is testing the limits of the conservative media spin operation

These days, the conservative news media ecosystem generally works like this: a constellation of fringe websites churns out heavily skewed stories that either misinterpret or fabricate information in order to create narratives that defend President Trump’s reported misconduct. If those same stories can accuse his opponents of an unfounded conspiracy theory, all the better.

The stories then make their way to Fox News’s prime-time opinion shows. From there, they’re disseminated through a vast network of television talking heads, elected officials, and right-wing content aggregators — finally landing themselves on the president’s Twitter feed. Rinse, repeat. Continue reading “The Ukraine scandal is testing the limits of the conservative media spin operation”

House Democrats subpoena Giuliani for Ukraine documents

The Hill logoHouse Democrats on Monday subpoenaed President Trump‘s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as part of their investigation into the president’s efforts to get the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

The chairmen of the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees asked Giuliani to hand over documents by Oct. 15.

“Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena, including at the direction or behest of the president or the White House, shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry and may be used as an adverse inference against you and the president,” the chairmen warned in a letter to Giuliani.

View the complete September 30 article by Cristina Marcos on The Hill website here.

‘Ridiculous’: Former prosecutor laughs off Giuliani’s latest defense of Trump — and advises him to lawyer up

AlterNet logoAppearing on MSNBC early on Sunday morning, former prosecutor Glenn Kirschner laughed off Rudy Giuliani’s latest defense of Donald Trump’s attempt to blackmail Ukraine for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, calling his reasoning “ridiculous” and warning the former New York City mayor he better consider pleading the 5th Amendment if he is called before Congress.

Referring to Giuliani’s appearance on Fox News on Saturday night where the former New York mayor claimed the president had a constitutional duty to pursue claims of criminality in the case of Biden, Kirschner all but rolled his eyes.

“I have never heard an argument before that if the president hadn’t committed this crime, he would have committed a crime,” Kirschner explained to laughter.

View the complete September 29 article by Tom Boggioni from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.