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Sun 29 Sep, 2019 10:02 am
Why is he representing American interests and a personal whatever? No vetting on a Security Clearance, not a State official, part of a Cabinet or even on any one's pay roll.
Rudy Giuliani fires back at former White House aide who accused him of spreading ‘completely false’ theory
ByLUCIEN BRUGGEMANSep 29, 2019, 10:39 AM ET
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, defended himself Sunday on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” from accusations lodged by a former White House official that he has trafficked unfounded theories about foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Tom Bossert, the former White House homeland security adviser, took aim at Giuliani earlier on "This Week," calling it a mistake for the president to have hired him in the first place. He also called out Giuliani for repeating a “debunked theory” that Ukraine – not Russia – was responsible for interference in the 2016 election.
“At this point I am deeply frustrated with what [Giuliani] and the legal team is doing and repeating that debunked theory to the president,” Bossert said. “It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again.”
Giuliani fired back later in the show, telling Stephanopoulos, “Tom Bossert doesn’t know what he’s talking about … I’m not peddling anything.”
The president’s personal attorney also sought to defend his role in pressing Ukrainians to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the fallout from which has led to an impeachment inquiry in Congress.
“Everything I did was to defend my client,” Giuliani told Stephanopoulos. “Everything I did was to defend my client and I am proud of having uncovered what will turn out to be a massive pay-for-play scheme.”
The "pay-for-play scheme" Giuliani has accused Biden of perpetrating in Ukraine dates back to 2016 and the dismissal of the country’s former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. At the time, Biden was leading U.S. policy toward Ukraine with an emphasis on cracking down on corruption.
He called for Shokin to be fired.
Trump and Giuliani have accused Biden of calling for Shokin's dismissal because his office was investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where Biden’s son, Hunter, had a seat on the board of directors.
But the assertion that Biden acted to help his son has been undercut by widespread criticism of Shokin from several high-profile international leaders, including members of the European Union and International Monetary Fund, who said Biden's recommendation was well justified.
The IMF threatened to withhold aid to Kiev in early 2016, citing “Ukraine’s slow progress in improving governance and fighting corruption,” according to Christine Lagard, the IMF’s managing director.
Giuliani also sought to undermine a whistleblower complaint, which was filed in August and released publicly last week, that describes the nature of the president's phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and an apparent effort within the White House to “lock down” records of the conversation.
“The whistleblower says, ‘I don’t have any direct knowledge, I just heard things,’” Giuliani said. “I’m not saying [the whistleblower] was false, I’m saying he could have heard it wrong.”
Stephanopoulos cited several examples from the complaint in which the whistleblower accurately described the content of Trump’s conversation with Zelenskiy as compared to the transcript.
The whistleblower, who has not been identified, claimed that at least a half dozen administration officials had raised concerns that Trump had used “the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
Democrats have accused the president of using his desire for an investigation into the Bidens as leverage with Zelenskiy, particularly in light of the fact that the White House had, at the time, withheld nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine.
It was later released.
Giuliani’s name is invoked more than 30 times in the whistleblower’s complaint.
In his interview on “This Week,” Giuliani sought to clarify the timeline of his conversations with Ukrainians and insisted he did not instigate communications.
“November of 2016, they first came to me,” Giuliani said of the alleged outreach from Ukrainians through the State Department. “The Ukrainians came to me. I didn't go to them.”
The State Department and its chief, Mike Pompeo, have faced scrutiny for their handling of Giuliani’s overtures to the Ukrainians. The former U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, helped coordinate at least one interaction Giuliani had with an aide to Zelenskiy in Madrid in May, Volker confirmed.
Giuliani has claimed the State Department directed him to act and has said he briefed Volker and the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, after his meetings with Ukrainians.
On Friday, ABC News reported that Volker had resigned from his post with the State Department. House Democrats still plan to interview him next week as part of their impeachment inquiry, according to a congressional aide.
Giuliani planned to speak at a conference in Armenia next week, according to a schedule. But he cancelled after news outlets reported that several Kremlin officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin would also be in attendance.
@neptuneblue,
I believe Rudy is being groomed for a comfortable spot beneath the wheels of the Trump Bus.
@farmerman,
Hey! He’s earned it.
Really, one of the (many) most glaring signs that Trump is unsuited for office is that the only attorney who dares takes him and his issues on is this bumbling, glib man.
@Lash,
he went from valiant prosecutor of mob capos to cockroach toadie to a corrupt president. How hes fallen.
I saw him on Sun AM had hows and he reminded me of some street person whod been sniffing product too long.
Although he was trying to use his ability to talk over people whose questions he was trying to confuse
Giuliani says Trump did not pay for his globetrotting push for Biden probe
Karen Freifeld
4 MIN READ
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, says he met Ukrainian officials in Madrid, Paris and Warsaw this year as he pushed an investigation into one of Trump’s main political rivals in the 2020 presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Giuliani has emerged as a central figure in a scandal that has now engulfed Trump and left him facing an impeachment inquiry into whether he misused his office for his own political gains.
One of the key questions is who financed Giuliani’s globe-trotting as he pursued unsubstantiated allegations that Biden had tried to fire Ukraine’s then chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop him investigating an energy company on which his son Hunter served as a director.
“Nobody pays my expenses,” Giuliani said in an interview with Reuters on Friday. “What does it matter if I’m getting paid for it. Isn’t the real story whether he (Biden) sold out the vice presidency of the United States, not whether I got paid for it?”
Reuters was not able to independently verify how Giuliani paid for his trips.
Biden has accused Giuliani of peddling “false, debunked conspiracy theories,” and on Sunday urged U.S. television networks to stop booking him to appear on air.
Giuliani traveled to Madrid to meet Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy, a few days after a July 25 phone call in which Trump pressed Zelinskiy to investigate Biden. Yermak had sought the meeting with Giuliani.
Giuliani said that he chose Madrid as the meeting place because he was going to be there anyway on behalf of two clients, whom he declined to name.
“We were negotiating where to meet. He was going to come to New York. I said Mr. Yermak, I’m going to Madrid for four days, five days. Would it be easier if I met you there? He said yes, so those expenses were paid by I assume one client. Since I took two days off I think I paid some of that personally as well.”
Giuliani did not say what they discussed at that meeting, but a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s call with Zelinksiy made public last week said U.S. officials had characterized the meeting as a “direct follow-up” to the president’s call.Giuliani said he had received no money from Trump’s election campaign or the Republican National Committee, the bureaucratic body that oversees Trump’s Republican Party.
He said he did not view his work as a “political act.”
“This began almost a year ago, two years before any election, when I heard the allegations about Joe Biden I did not think about them as connected to the 2020 election. At that point he wasn’t even a candidate.”
Giuliani said he met a Ukrainian prosecutor in Paris in April or May for further discussions about the firing of Shokin. He added that he had been in the French capital “for other reasons once again.”
Giuliani said he met Shokin’s replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko, in Warsaw in February after first meeting him in New York in January. Giuliani said the meeting with Lutsenko in Warsaw was “really social.” “I think it was either dinner or cigars after dinner. Not opportune for substantive discussion,” he said.
In a break with the president, Trump’s former homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, on Sunday said that he was “deeply disturbed” by Trump’s call with Zelenskiy and that Trump was referring to “a debunked conspiracy theory.” [nL2N26K04E]
@neptuneblue,
neptuneblue wrote:
Who is Rudy Giuliani?
He is and always was a sentient turd that all other sentient turds in the universe consider beneath them.
@neptuneblue,
I recall seeing colleagues of RG's from the 90s who said the RG of that time would have today's RG arrested and prosecuted.
@jespah,
Sucking from the Murdoch teat has that effect.
RUDY GIULIANI’S NEW IMPEACHMENT PLAN: SUE THE SWAMP!
“It’s worse than McCarthy!” the president’s lawyer raved on Fox, elaborating on his new, desperate, and totally ridiculous plan.
BY ERIC LUTZ
OCTOBER 2, 2019
As the walls close in on Donald Trump, his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is doing everything he can to rewrite the narrative, reading text messages out loud on air, making fun of Joe Biden’s “little cottage” and “little car” in yet another TV hit, and ranting to reporters, “I will be the hero” and “anything I did should be praised,” among other things. Though the base is assuredly eating them up, his antics haven’t done much to bail out the president, either in polls or with Congress. And so, with a Congressional subpoena in his hands and his back against the wall, Giuliani has a new plan.
“Looking at a [lawsuit] to end lawless action,” he texted the Atlantic’s Elaina Plott on Tuesday night.
“Who are you going to sue?”
“The swamp. Trump v The Swamp.”
“How do you sue The Swamp?”
“In federal court.”
Giuliani expanded on this unusual strategy during an appearance Tuesday night on Fox News, telling host Laura Ingraham that he plans to file a lawsuit against Congress. “They are doing extraordinary things,” he said of House Democrats. “For example, they are violating—they’re interfering with the president in exercising his rights under Article II: The president United States conducts the foreign policy of the United States...This is worse than McCarthy!”
For the record, Article II gives the president, “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,” to make treaties with foreign countries, “provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.” Giuliani’s insistence that members of Congress “calling foreign leaders” and “going to foreign capitals” as part of their investigation into whether Trump attempted to use his executive power for personal gain is essentially grasping at straws. Even Ingraham seemed to recognize that suing the Swamp isn’t really a thing. “It’s novel,” she managed of the strategy.
The over-the-top threat underscores the difficult positions in which Giuliani and Trump now find themselves. The former is a key figure in Trump’s potential wrongdoing, and the latter is likely to become the third president in American history to be impeached—an asterisk that may not end in his removal from office, but that could make his road to reelection in 2020 even rockier. Left with few options, it’s natural that the president’s wing is threatening to sue—Trump has been highly litigious since his days as a sleazy businessman, and even today he’s filed suits to do things like shield his tax returns from prying eyes. Unfortunately for the president, threats to sue the members of Congress conducting constitutionally-mandated oversight are likely to get about as far as Trump’s threats to have them arrested for treason.
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