It’s all about the connection of the two to Giuliani, how he’s met them, where, places like Trump Hotel, and how Trump is denying knowing or ever meeting them.
To which I think I should post this:
Oh, and this one.
They are such bad liars.
They are such bad liars.
2 Likes
I am for a few more days…the 2 months for $1 deal almost up!
Campaign violations - illegal PAC monies to T campaign. Rep Sessions received a lot of help, Ambassador in Ukraine was pushed out with the help of these two.
Indictment - “The two men were charged with four counts, including conspiracy, falsification of records and lying to the Federal Election Commission about their political donations, which included a $325,000 donation through a limited liability company to a super PAC formed to support Mr. Trump, according to the indictment”
Article in full.
Two Giuliani Associates Who Helped Him on Ukraine Charged With Campaign-Finance Violations
Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were part of a conspiracy to funnel foreign money into U.S. elections
Updated Oct. 10, 2019 6:35 pm ET
WASHINGTON—Two donors to a pro- Trump fundraising committee who helped Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to investigate Democrat Joe Biden were arrested late Wednesday on criminal charges stemming from their alleged efforts to funnel foreign money into U.S. elections and influence U.S. politics on behalf of at least one unnamed Ukrainian politician.
In an indictment unsealed Thursday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan alleged Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were engaged in political activities in the U.S. on behalf of one or more Ukrainian government officials—including a lobbying campaign, targeted at a Republican congressman, to remove the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv. President Trump ordered the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, removed from her post in May.
The two men were charged with four counts, including conspiracy, falsification of records and lying to the Federal Election Commission about their political donations, which included a $325,000 donation through a limited liability company to a super PAC formed to support Mr. Trump, according to the indictment. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said Thursday the investigation was continuing.
Messrs. Parnas and Fruman, both Florida businessmen who are U.S. citizens born in former Soviet republics, made a brief appearance in federal court in Virginia Thursday, dressed in T-shirts. They were arrested at Dulles Airport on Wednesday while awaiting an international flight with one-way tickets, according to people familiar with the matter.
Messrs. Parnas and Fruman have assisted Mr. Giuliani’s effort to investigate Mr. Biden’s son that is now at the center of an impeachment inquiry being conducted by House Democrats.
“I don’t know those gentlemen,” Mr. Trump said Thursday when asked about the new charges, adding he hadn’t discussed them with Mr. Giuliani.
However, Messrs. Parnas and Fruman had dinner with Mr. Trump at the White House in early May 2018, shortly before they donated to the pro-Trump super PAC, according to since-deleted Facebook posts captured in a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a nonprofit U.S.-based media organization.
Mr. Trump also said he hoped Mr. Giuliani wouldn’t be indicted.
Mr. Giuliani said Thursday that Messrs. Parnas and Fruman were headed to Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday evening for reasons related to their business. He said the two men had also left the country about two weeks ago and had traveled to Vienna between three and six times in the last two months. He said he had been scheduled to meet with the two when they were to return to Washington within days.
A federal prosecutor told a judge the government remains concerned that the men will flee. Attorneys on both sides said they would reach an agreement about the conditions of their bail and would return to the judge soon.
Their political giving—aimed at Republicans—was funded in part by an unnamed Russian donor, the indictment alleges. Federal law bans foreigners from contributing to U.S. elections. A limited liability company created by the men was used to disguise the source of some of the money, the indictment says.
Since late 2018, Messrs. Fruman and Parnas have introduced Mr. Giuliani to several current and former senior Ukrainian prosecutors to discuss the Biden case, acting as key conduits of information. Mr. Parnas in July accompanied Mr. Giuliani to a breakfast meeting with Kurt Volker, then the U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations. During that breakfast, Mr. Giuliani mentioned the investigations he was pursuing into Mr. Biden and 2016 election interference, according to Mr. Volker’s testimony to House committees.
The two had lunch with Mr. Giuliani at the Trump International Hotel in Washington on Wednesday, according to a person who was in the hotel and saw the three together.
Separately, hours after the indictment was announced, three Democratic-controlled House committees leading the impeachment probe of Mr. Trump issued subpoenas to Messrs. Parnas and Fruman for documents. An attorney for the two men had said in an Oct. 8 letter to the committee that it would take time to gather documents and that the two wouldn’t be available for depositions originally scheduled for this week.
While the two men assisted Mr. Giuliani in investigating Mr. Biden and his son Hunter, they also solicited money from Ukrainians while touting their connections to Washington, according to people familiar with their activities in Ukraine.
Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s private lawyer, identified the two men in May as his clients. On Thursday, he said he wasn’t representing them in this case. Mr. Giuliani said Thursday morning he hadn’t been contacted by Manhattan federal prosecutors.
John Dowd, a former lawyer for Mr. Trump who now represents Messrs. Parnas and Fruman, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Mr. Dowd has previously told Congress that the two men were assisting Mr. Giuliani “in connection with his representation of President Trump.”
Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said: “Neither the president nor the campaign nor political-action committees were aware of these transactions.”
Messrs. Parnas and Fruman had almost no history of political giving before March 2018, when they both began to spend lavishly on politics, according to the indictment, although Mr. Parnas had contributed about $100,000 to Mr. Trump’s initial campaign in late October 2016, FEC records show.
Prosecutors outlined a scheme by which the two men Messrs. Parnas and Fruman made donations aimed at concealing the source of the funds.
The indictment alleges that Messrs. Parnas and Fruman conspired with two other men also named as defendants—David Correia, Mr. Parnas’s longtime business partner and No. 2, and Andrey Kukushkin—to make political donations funded by a foreign national to federal and state candidates “to gain influence with candidates as to policies that would benefit a future business venture”—a recreational marijuana business. Mr. Kukushkin was arrested on Wednesday in San Francisco but Mr. Correia hasn’t been apprehended, officials said.
The charging documents say that in May 2018 the men separately gave $325,000 to the primary pro-Trump super PAC, America First Action, through the LLC Global Energy Producers, according to FEC records. The way they structured that donation was meant “to evade the reporting requirements” in federal law, prosecutors said. The indictment also alleges that Mr. Fruman intentionally misspelled his name to further evade FEC scrutiny.
Attorney General William Barr discussed the case on Thursday with federal prosecutors in Manhattan, where he was making a previously scheduled visit. A Justice Department official said Mr. Barr was supportive of their work on the case, on which he was first briefed shortly after being confirmed as attorney general in February. He was aware on Wednesday night that the pair would be charged and taken into custody last night, the official said.
Besides dining at the White House in May 2018, the men also met later that month with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. , at a fundraising breakfast in Beverly Hills, Calif., along with Tommy Hicks Jr. , a close friend of the younger Mr. Trump who at the time was heading America First Action. Mr. Parnas posted a photo of their breakfast four days after his LLC donated to the super PAC.
A spokeswoman for America First Action said the super PAC had placed the contribution in a segregated bank account after a complaint was filed in July 2018 with the FEC. The donation “has not been used for any purpose and the funds will remain in this segregated account until these matters are resolved,” the spokeswoman said. “We take our legal obligations seriously and scrupulously comply with the law and any suggestion otherwise is false.”
The indictment refers to a congressman, identifiable as former Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, whose assistance Mr. Parnas sought in “causing the U.S. government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.” The indictment says those efforts were conducted “at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.” In a statement, Mr. Sessions denied wrongdoing and said he had been approached by Messrs. Parnas and Fruman for a meeting about “the strategic need for Ukraine to become energy independent.”
In May 2018, Mr. Sessions, a Republican, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking the removal of Ms. Yovanovitch, saying he had been told the ambassador was displaying a bias against the president in private conversations.
Mr. Trump moved to oust Ms. Yovanovitch this spring after Mr. Giuliani told him that she was undermining him abroad and hindering efforts to investigate Mr. Biden. She hasn’t responded to requests for comment, and House committees are seeking her testimony.
The indictment also says Messrs. Parnas and Fruman met in July 2018 in Las Vegas to hatch plans to start a recreational marijuana business in Nevada that would be funded by the unnamed Russian national. Their plan was to contribute as much as $2 million to politicians in Nevada, New York and other states with the goal of acquiring marijuana licenses, the indictment says. When they missed the deadline to apply for a license in Nevada, they made additional contributions to candidates there to try to get their business greenlighted.
Messrs. Parnas and Fruman and their business partner, Mr. Kukushkin, attended an Oct. 20, 2018, rally in Nevada, according to the indictment. That day, Mr. Trump held a rally in Elko, Nevada, to urge support for Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Laxalt.
Nevada state fundraising records show Mr. Fruman gave $10,000 to Mr. Laxalt and Republican attorney-general candidate Wesley Duncan on Nov. 1, 2018. Both men lost to Democrats. Representatives for Messrs. Laxalt and Duncan said Thursday that they didn’t know Mr. Fruman and had no idea the donations were made unlawfully.
—Julie Bykowicz and Natalie Andrews contributed to this article.
4 Likes
Brace yourself.
The Mystery of Rudy Giuliani’s Vienna Trip
President Trump’s personal lawyer told me he was planning to fly to Vienna roughly 24 hours after his business associates were arrested as they prepared to do the same.
Fruman and Pernas had one-way tickets.
I was also just shown this old article from July about Fruman and Pernas:
3 Likes
Someone on twitter mentioned that Dimitry Firtash lives there…
U.S. extradition request
On 13 March 2014, Austrian authorities arrested Firtash. U.S. law enforcement authorities sought to have Firtash extradited after a judge in Virginia issued a warrant for his arrest on bribery and other charges.[75] A week later, Firtash was released on bail of €125 million (£105m, $172m), the largest in Austrian history. He said: “thankfully, I have the utmost confidence in the Austrian judicial system and will use all legal means to prove my innocence”.[76] He said U.S. authorities were making allegations that were “completely absurd and unfounded”.[76] In April, a U.S. grand jury in Chicago indicted Firash and five others under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on charges that included bribery, racketeering, and money laundering. The charges centered on a $18.5 million bribe offered to government officials in India related to titanium mining licenses, with the minerals destined for sale to Chicago-based Boeing.[77][a]
Extradition of Firtash was cleared by the Austrian Supreme Court in June 2019[79] and by Austrian Minister of Justice Clemens Jabloner in July 2019.[80] In July 2019, it was reported that Robert Mueller’s chief deputy, Andrew Weissmann, reached out to Firtash’s US lawyers in June 2017 offering to “resolve the Firtash case” in exchange for information about Donald Trump and the case of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Firtash’s legal team rejected the offer on the grounds that Firtash had “no credible information or evidence on the topics” outlined.[81][82] Extradition of Firtash has been suspended as a result of appeal by his defense team.[83]
Denial of U.S. extradition
The Vienna Regional Criminal Court rejected the U.S. request for the extradition of Firtash on 30 April 2015. Judge Christoph Bauer said that the request for extradition was “politically motivated”.[84][85]
Bauer said that in the year since Firtash’s arrest in Vienna, the U.S. authorities had not provided sufficient evidence that Firtash paid bribes in India, and in particular had not provided witness statements in support of its assertions.[84] During the proceedings, Bauer had said that he did not doubt the veracity of the Americans’ witnesses so much as whether they existed at all. A New York Times reporter described the decision as a “scathing rebuke of the Justice and State Departments”, reflecting the diminished credibility of the United States authorities in the eyes of a European ally.[86]
Attempted return to Ukraine
On 25 November 2015, German media reported that Firtash could return to Ukraine and participate in the FEU on 2 December.[ citation needed ] On 26 November, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, Artem Shevchenko, said that the Interior Ministry had no criminal proceedings against Firtash, but there was a proceeding for the Ostchem group in which he was summoned as a witness.
3 Likes
Cross-posting
2 Likes
Maddow’s show (The Rachel Maddow Show) is doing a segment on Dimitry Firtash as being the only one that all three of them - Giuliani, as well as Fruman and Parnas who were arrested were visiting in Vienna.
She points to the fact that Giuliani went on Fox network with a document in the last 10 days waving it…and saying it was how corrupt Biden was…and it was from Firtash.
Also, Firtash is being represented by same dufous “Fox” legal team (the ones who always go on as legal experts)
The lawyers retained by Firtash are Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, according to representatives for Firtash and for the attorneys.
3 Likes
I just played that and loved it. Yes, it is soooo easy to get stressed with all this barrage of news, and then life’s real obstacles getting one down. It is so easy to go down the rabbit hole on it…in the attempt to…“I think we got him this time.”
Yes…get it out…have some laughs…move a little, divert your attention…I went HERE this week…big BREAK.
and saw this too Malibu at sunset…
Remember…IT WILL ALL COME OUT…HE IS INFURIATING…and a bit more than half of AMERICA THINKS SO TOO.
3 Likes
All coming out…
3 Likes
What happened today
- Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman , two associates of Rudy Giuliani , were indicted on campaign finance charges. They were part of the pressure campaign on Ukraine to investigate President Trump ’s political rivals, including Joe Biden .
- Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York said Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office,” including by making donations to a pro-Trump super PAC. Read the indictment.
- The indictment refers to a “Congressman-1” — identified in campaign finance filings as former Representative Pete Sessions , Republican of Texas — who was the beneficiary of approximately $3 million that the super PAC spent during the 2018 cycle. The men sought Mr. Sessions’s assistance in removing the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, “at least in part at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials,” according to the indictment. (The men were also seeking political assistance setting up a legal marijuana business in Nevada.)
- Shortly after the indictment became public, House impeachment investigators issued subpoenas to Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, compelling them to speak with Congress about their work with Mr. Giuliani in Ukraine.
- Energy Secretary Rick Perry was subpoenaed for records that could shed light on any role he may have played in Mr. Trump’s attempts to pressure the Ukrainian government. Investigators also want to know whether Mr. Perry tried to influencethe management of Ukraine’s state-owned gas company.
2 Likes
A complementary run-through by Axios:
3 Likes
Despite orders from the Trump regime to not do so, Marie Yovanovitch, the ex-Ukraine ambassador Rudy forced out, just walked into the capital ready to testify.
Some doors are about to get blown off their hinges.
BREAKING: Trump loses appeal to stop House subpoena of his tax documents
Uncertain on Sondland, if he really intends to testify or is a poison pill intended to obstruct further. He feels like a bad actor all the way.
3 Likes
Decision from DC court of Appeals below…
T’s tax returns must become available to Congress.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1trAO6IWcy-WZlVQJTzZFUz1551RIwe7w/view
1 Like
Ousted ambassador Marie Yovanovitch tells Congress Trump pressured State Dept. to remove her
The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine whose abrupt ouster in May has become a topic of interest for House impeachment investigators said Friday that her departure came as a direct result of pressure President Trump placed on the State Department to remove her, according to her prepared remarks before Congress obtained by The Washington Post.
Marie Yovanovitch told lawmakers that she was forced to leave Kiev on “the next plane” this spring and subsequently removed from her post, with the State Department’s No. 2 official telling her that, though she had done nothing wrong, the president had lost confidence in her and the State Department had been under significant pressure to remove her since the summer of 2018.
Read Marie Yovanovitch’s prepared deposition statement
In explaining her departure, she acknowledged months of criticisms by Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had accused her of privately badmouthing the president and seeking to protect the interests of former vice president Joe Biden and his son who served on the board of Ukrainian energy company.
Yovanovitch denied those allegations and said she was “incredulous” that her superiors decided to remove her based on “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.” She also took direct aim at Giuliani’s associates whom she said could’ve been financially threatened by her anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.
“Contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine,” she said.
She arrived on Capitol Hill on Friday despite the White House’s stated objections and refusal to cooperate with the Democrat-led proceedings.
She is one of several current and former diplomats whom the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees have identified as witnesses in their probe into whether Trump leveraged U.S. military aid and official diplomatic interaction to pressure Ukraine’s president to investigate his Trump’s political rivals.
4 Likes
U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland will testify next Wednesday before the House committees investigating President Trump and Ukraine, despite being blocked by the State Department from appearing at a closed-door deposition this week, 4 congressional sources tell Axios.
Driving the news: Sondland’s lawyer confirmedFriday that the ambassador does plan to testify — “notwithstanding the State Department’s current direction not to testify.”
- He also said while Sondland wants to produce documents requested by the committees, that decision is ultimately up to the State Department.
Why it matters: One source familiar with the rescheduling tells Axios that after the State Department pulled the plug on Sondland’s testimony, Republicans close to Trump encouraged the president to let the ambassador come before the committees. Trump’s allies believe Sondland’s testimony will be helpful to their side.
- “Republicans are looking for any silver lining they can get,” the source said. “Sondland could be a silver lining. … He donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural. He’s a Trump guy. Whereas [former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie] Yovanovitch is a career person.”
The backdrop: Text messages turned over by former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker revealed that Sondland, who was named in the whistleblower complaint that set off the impeachment inquiry, was an intermediary in Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s alleged efforts to push Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
One particularly explosive exchange that Democrats have keyed in on was a text sent to Sondland by the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, Bill Taylor.
- “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor texted.
- Sondland texted back: “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind.” The New York Times reported that Sondland’s response came after he spoke to the president.
After the State Department blocked Sondland’s testimony , Trump tweeted that he didn’t want the ambassador “testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court, where Republican’s [sic] rights have been taken away, and true facts are not allowed out for the public.”
- Sondland was subpoenaed hours later by the committees.
- Later that day, the White House sent a letterinforming House Democratic leaders that the Trump administration will not participate in their impeachment inquiry, condemning it as “constitutionally illegitimate.”
The big picture: On Thursday, the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees sent out the following schedule, obtained first by Axios, to committee members and staffers outlining the officials who are expected to testify over the next week, per the congressional sources.
- Friday: Former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
- Monday: Trump’s former Russia adviser Fiona Hill.
- Tuesday: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent.
- Wednesday: U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland.
- Thursday: Counselor of the State Department Ulrich Brechbuhl.
Yes, but: These sources acknowledge that they can’t say with 100% certainty that the Trump administration will allow these officials to testify.
- “We’re never sure until the morning of,” one of the sources said.
- But they all said that as of now, the committees are preparing as if each of these individuals are appearing.
4 Likes
2 Likes
House Democrats have requested a deposition from Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, as part of their impeachment inquiry, but his interview has not yet been formally scheduled, multiple sources familiar with the issue told CNN.
The request, if met by expected White House and State Department opposition, is likely to present a quandary for the longtime diplomat, according to former State Department officials who know him.
Those former officials close to the former ambassador suggested that if Taylor were made to choose between staying on to guide US policy as charge d’affaires in Kiev – a post he came out of retirement to take – or resigning to be able to testify, he would choose the former.
Nine former State Department officials who spoke to CNN about Taylor described him as a person of high character and professionalism – a “very quiet guy,” in the words of retired Ambassador Ronald Neumann – who is deeply respected in the diplomatic world and seen as more likely to put sound foreign policy before politics.
4 Likes
Rudy Giuliani’s relationship with arrested men is subject of criminal investigation: Sources
The business relationship between President Donald Trump’s private lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the men charged Thursday in a campaign finance scheme is a subject of the ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by federal authorities in New York, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The investigation became public after the FBI had to quickly move to arrest Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman before they boarded a flight out of the country from Washington Dulles Airport with one-way tickets. They have been named as witnesses named in the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
5 Likes
The good news: There should be a paper trail showing the process by which the aid for Ukraine was frozen.
The bad news: The Office of Budget and Management is fighting tooth and nail any requests for information. Why?
These documents are supposed to be routine stuff. Congress appropriates money, then the OMB does the paperwork to ensure it’s distributed. They are not supposed make any political judgments whatsoever. It would be as if you wrote a check to buy a car and your bank stopped the check because they thought you were making a bad decision.
It looks like a Trump appointee, Michael Duffey, intervened to hold up this aid. I say there’s no way he did this independently. Congress needs to call him on the carpet and ask him who directed him to take the unprecedented step of obstructing funds that Congress had duly appropriated. However, as you’ll see in the article, the Director of the OMB has politicized the investigation, claiming the requests for information are a “a sham process that’s designed to relitigate the last election.” Say what? You’re a government bureaucrat. Do your job. Distribute money that Congress has appropriated and if asked about the process, simply answer the questions. Period.
A political appointee at the Office of Management and Budget took the unusual step of getting involved in signing off on freezing US aid to Ukraine this past summer – a process normally reserved for career budget officials, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Michael Duffey, OMB’s associate director for national security programs and a Trump political appointee, signed at least some of the documents delaying aid to Ukraine, two sources told CNN. Normally a career budget official signs such documents. Sources told CNN it is highly unusual for a political appointee to be involved in signing off on such a freeze.
In this case, career budget officials raised concerns about signing the documents because they believed such a move may have run afoul of laws requiring OMB to spend money as it is appropriated by Congress, according to a congressional aide.
Duffey’s role is of interest to House Democrats who are conducting an impeachment inquiry over Trump’s moves to pressure Ukraine for help investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either.
Congressional impeachment investigators believe that there may be a paper trail at OMB that sheds light on the decision to block aid to Ukraine this summer as Trump and his allies were pressuring the new government. …
The Wall Street Journal first reported that Duffey’s involvement is of interest to the impeachment inquiry.
…
"This is a highly unusual set of circumstances that would have raised serious red flags for career officials at the Department of Defense, the State Department and OMB," said Sam Berger, a vice president at the left-leaning Center for American Progress and a former senior counselor and policy adviser at OMB.
Congressional investigators looking to follow the money – or rather, where it was frozen – have so far hit a wall at OMB.
OMB’s acting director Russell Vought made it clear Wednesday that he’s prepared to block requests for information from House Democrats, in line with the White House position.
"We will not be participating in a sham process that’s designed to relitigate the last election," Vought said on Fox News.
The documents that Duffey signed – known as apportionments – are part of the normal protocol at OMB and would reveal when military aid to Ukraine – intended in part to help the country counter Russian aggression – was halted and what explanation was offered.
The apportionment process isn’t designed as a tool to carry out policy priorities or to advance political interests. If directed to freeze aid to Ukraine, OMB staffers may have been concerned they were running afoul of the law by not spending the money as appropriated.
…
OMB faces another deadline Friday to hand over another set of documents to those committees, but sources told CNN they wouldn’t be surprised if the budget office now refuses to hand over any documents to any committee for any purpose.Asked repeatedly Wednesday whether a paper trail exists at OMB, Vought dodged the questions and offered up a non-response instead.
“OMB continues to do the job that is statutorily required to manage the people’s money in a way that’s consistent with the law and on behalf of the priorities of the President,” Vought told Fox, “there’s no question about that.”
1 Like
Giuliani was paid big money by the two political operatives just arrested for campaign finance fraud.
When Rudolph W. Giuliani set out to dredge up damaging information on President Trump’s rivals in Ukraine, he turned to a native of the former Soviet republic with whom he already had a lucrative business relationship.
Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-American businessman with a trail of debts and lawsuits, had known Mr. Giuliani casually for years through Republican political circles. Last year, their relationship deepened when a company he helped found retained Mr. Giuliani — associates of Mr. Parnas said he told them he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars — for what Mr. Giuliani said on Thursday was business and legal advice.
Even as he worked with Mr. Parnas’s company, Fraud Guarantee, Mr. Giuliani increasingly relied on Mr. Parnas to carry out Mr. Trump’s quest for evidence in Ukraine that would undercut the legitimacy of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference on his behalf in the 2016 election and help him heading into his 2020 re-election campaign.
Mr. Giuliani dispatched Mr. Parnas and an associate, Igor Fruman, a Belarusian-American businessman, to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, where, despite fending off creditors at home, BuzzFeed reported, they ran up big charges at a strip club and the Hilton International hotel. Their mission was to find people and information that could be used to undermine the special counsel’s investigation, and also to damage former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a prospective Democratic challenger to Mr. Trump.
Over the past year, the two men connected Mr. Giuliani with Ukrainians who were willing to participate in efforts to push a largely unsubstantiated narrative about the Bidens. They played a key role in a campaign by pro-Trump forces to press for the removal of the United States ambassador to Ukraine on the grounds that she had not shown sufficient loyalty to the president as he pursued his agenda there.
They met regularly with Mr. Giuliani, often at the Trump International hotel in Washington. And all the while, they were pursuing their own business schemes and, according to an indictment unsealed on Thursday, illegally funneling campaign contributions in the United States in the service of both their political and business activities.
The indictment, along with interviews and other documents, show Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman and their associates as somewhat hapless operators, scrambling recklessly to use their new connections to the highest levels of American politics to seek financial gain while guiding Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, into a Ukrainian political culture rife with self-dealing and ever-shifting alliances.
The indictment provided new details about the dealings of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, as well as a pair of associates, including David Correia, who with Mr. Parnas helped found Fraud Guarantee, the fraud prevention and mitigation company that retained Mr. Giuliani. The four men were charged with campaign finance violations related to their efforts to enlist public officials in their moneymaking efforts and their political efforts in Ukraine.
The congressional committees overseeing the impeachment inquiry have subpoenaed Mr. Giuliani for records related to his efforts in Ukraine, including records related to Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman and Semyon Kislin, another Ukrainian-born businessman.
…
The two men did get something useful for their Ukrainian efforts from Pete Sessions, then a Republican member of Congress from Texas, who is not identified in the indictment. It says that after making substantial campaign donations to him, Mr. Parnas asked Mr. Sessions for help last year in pressing the Trump administration to remove the United States ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch. Mr. Sessions subsequently wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticizing Ms. Yovanovitch and seeking to have her dismissed.Mr. Parnas had told associates that she was not open to his proposals related to the lucrative gas business in Ukraine, where Mr. Parnas pitched a natural gas deal to the chief executive of Naftogaz, as The New York Times reported last month.
Ms. Yovanovitch had also come under fire from a **Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenk**o, who was connected to Mr. Giuliani by Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman and played a key role in Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to promote investigations into Mr. Trump’s rivals.
While the indictment did not identify any officials by name, it said that Mr. Parnas, in his effort to oust Ms. Yovanovitch, acted, “at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.”
Mr. Giuliani also said he provided legal advice to Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman after their efforts in Ukraine brought them into conflict with a powerful oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky.
Mr. Kolomoisky said in interviews in the Ukrainian news media that Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman traveled to see him in Israel in April, ostensibly to talk about their plans to sell gas to Ukraine. But, he said, the two men then pushed him to arrange a meeting between Mr. Giuliani and Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Mr. Giuliani had been seeking to press Mr. Zelensky to agree to investigate the Bidens and Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election, and had been working with Mr. Parnas to lay the groundwork for the effort, as The Times first reported in May.
Upon returning to Ukraine, Mr. Kolomoisky threatened in May to expose Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman. Mr. Giuliani, in turn, posted on Twitter that the oligarch had “defamed” Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, “and I have advised them to press charges.” He also warned Mr. Zelensky not to surround himself with allies of Mr. Kolomoisky.
Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman and Mr. Giuliani were frequently spotted together over the past year at the Trump International hotel in Washington, and were overheard discussing politics and energy projects, including a methane initiative in Uzbekistan. Mr. Giuliani and his associates were to be paid at least $100,000 for the project, on which Mr. Parnas offered advice.
The project did not pan out, Mr. Giuliani said.
Mr. Parnas said in an interview last month that he and Mr. Fruman were self-financing their efforts on behalf of Mr. Giuliani’s political work in Ukraine and that those “have nothing to do with our business.”
He added, “My only business with Giuliani was a long time ago,” and involved an insurance company that Mr. Parnas suggested he owned that Mr. Giuliani “offered some advice on.”
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Giuliani at first seemed to acknowledge having advised Fraud Guarantee in 2018, then backtracked.
“I can’t acknowledge it’s Fraud Guarantee, I don’t think,” he said.
“I can acknowledge I gave them substantial business advice,” he said, adding that one of his companies trains institutional customers in security work, including “how to investigate crimes, from murder to terrorism to fraud.” He said that “most of it is subdivisions of government, but every once in a while it is a private enterprise.”
…
3 Likes