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.
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.
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.”
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.”
…
In more evidence that Donald Trump was trying to use his position to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, The New York Times reports that senior diplomats in the administration had pushed Ukraine to commit – on paper – to investigations into the president’s political rivals.
Happy Friday!
RE: Deutsche Bank and their losing/not having T’s taxes. Sounds super fishy
(I know there was a recent post but I can not locate it)
Here are some updates…
NYT reporter David Enrich
A former Deutsche Bank executive who reviewed President Donald Trump’s tax returns reportedly said it is “not normal” that the institution no longer holds copies of those records.
Trump for many years relied on Deutsche Bank for loans to sustain his real estate business when many other institutions would not lend to him because of his rocky financial history.
The president is accused by some, including his former attorney Michael Cohen, of manipulating the value of his assets to either secure finance or reduce his tax bill.
He has broken with recent precedent for presidents and refused to release publicly all of his recent tax returns, despite pressure to do so.
Congress is investigating Trump’s finances and attempting to get hold of his tax returns from Deutsche. But the bank told the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals that it did not hold them.
David Enrich, finance editor at The New York Times , posted to Twitter a screenshot of his conversation with the unnamed executive in which they expressed surprise that Deutsche told a federal appeals court it did not have the president’s tax returns anymore.
“Holy f**k,” the executive wrote, per the screenshot. “The circumstance could be that they returned any physical copies or destroyed any physical copies under an agreement with a client and cleansed their servers. Not normal though.”
Deutsche Bank did not respond immediately to Newsweek 's request for comment.
And now the New York Times confirms.
Interesting that Rudy is using his legal research skills as a defensible postion. Giuliani has been under SDNY’s sites for a long while…he’s gonna get indicted.
And T saying Rudy is not his lawyer…
Yet…
I’m not a lawyer, but in reading this, it seemed to me that Giuliani is pretty much admitting to committing crimes – the least of which would be not registering as a lobbyist for a foreign government (even though in his own mind he thinks he’s not admitting to anything). He says loud and clear about his work in Ukraine: “… I was representing the president of the United States.” So, here he is working for the President, digging up dirt on the President’s political opponent in coordination with two (alleged) criminals who are now in custody in the U.S. – I mean really, WTF? Will some dirt finally stick to our teflon Don?
That’s just it though, in this piece Giuliani claims he was working on behalf of the President of the United States, not a foreign government. I don’t think he realizes it but by taking that position, Giuliani is implicating the President in those crimes. You know it’s bad when Trump starts to distance himself from from his own lawyer, again. 
Re:
The investigators are examining Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to undermine the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, one of the people said. She was recalled in the spring as part of Mr. Trump’s broader campaign to pressure Ukraine into helping his political prospects.
The investigation into Mr. Giuliani is tied to the case against two of his associates who were arrestedthis week on campaign finance-related charges, the people familiar with the inquiry said. The associates were charged with funneling illegal contributions to a congressman whose help they sought in removing Ms. Yovanovitch.
But also
Ms. Yovanovitch told impeachment investigators on Friday that Mr. Trump had pressed for her removal for months even though the State Department believed she had “done nothing wrong.”
It looks like the investigation is to find out if Giuliani worked with these goons to get rid of the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. Something we just found out Trump wanted.
So there’s another criminal in the mix. @dragonfly9 posted about this yesterday, referencing a Rachel Maddow segment. Here are more details from Reuters:
One of the two Florida businessmen who helped U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney investigate his political rival, Democrat Joe Biden, also has been working for the legal team of a Ukrainian oligarch who faces bribery charges in the United States, according to attorneys for the businessmen and the oligarch.
Lev Parnas, one of the two associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, served as a translator for lawyers representing oligarch Dmytro Firtash. Parnas was arrested on Thursday along with the other Florida businessman, Igor Fruman, on unrelated charges that included illegally funneling $325,000 to a political action committee supporting pro-Trump candidates.
Both men had worked in an unspecified capacity for Firtash before Parnas joined the Ukrainian’s legal team, according to a person familiar with the Florida men’s business dealings with Firtash.
The Floridians’ connection to indicted oligarch Firtash injects an intriguing new character into the rapidly unfolding drama surrounding the effort to impeach Trump.
…
Firtash, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen, is battling extradition by U.S. authorities on bribery charges from Vienna, where he has lived for five years.Federal prosecutors in Illinois said in court papers in 2017 that Firtash was an “upper-echelon” associate of Russian organized crime. He was indicted in 2013 and charged with bribing Indian officials for access to titanium mines. Firtash has denied any wrongdoing.
Firtash was “financing” the activities of Parnas and Fruman, the source familiar with their business dealings said. The source did not detail their specific work for the oligarch or how much money he had paid them and over what period.
U.S. lawmakers have sought to question the pair about their involvement in Giuliani’s investigation as part of the impeachment inquiry. Giuliani told Reuters in an interview that Parnas and Fruman - U.S. citizens who were born in Ukraine and Belarus, respectively - had helped “find people for me in Ukraine.”
In recent months, Parnas was working for Firtash’s legal team, Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing. The firm worked on Firtash’s criminal and extradition cases.
“Mr. Parnas was retained by DiGenova & Toensing, LLP as an interpreter in order to communicate with their client Mr. Firtash, who does not speak English,” the Washington-based firm said in a statement.
A spokesman for the firm said Fruman was not retained in any capacity. DiGenova and Toensing did not comment further on Firtash’s business dealings with the two men in response to questions from Reuters.
John Dowd, the lawyer representing Parnas and Fruman, confirmed to Reuters that Parnas had worked for Firtash’s legal team as an interpreter. But Dowd also told the U.S. Congress that both men worked for DiGenova and Toensing.
On Oct. 3, Dowd wrote Congress to say the two men could not provide certain information about Ukraine because they were partially covered by attorney-client and other legal privileges. Dowd based the privilege claim on the fact that the two men assisted lawyers DiGenova and Toensing; that they had worked for Giuliani; and that Giuliani had previously represented them in their personal and business affairs.
Dowd’s letter did not mention Firtash. He declined to respond to a request to clarify whether one or both of his clients worked for Firtash’s legal team.
…FLIGHTS TO VIENNA
The person familiar with Parnas and Fruman’s business affairs told Reuters that both men had been working for Firtash for several months before Parnas joined the Ukrainian mogul’s legal team, and that Firtash has paid their expenses in the past. Their costs include private jet charters in the United States and foreign travel to Vienna, according to the source, who is familiar with their finances.
Giuliani told Reuters the two men had been to Vienna - where Firtash lives - three to six times in the last two months. Giuliani declined to comment on the reasons for their travels. He said he did not know about any business relationship between Firtash and the two men that helped him investigate Biden.
“They could be involved in business with each other,” Giuliani said. “It’s possible. I don’t know. They may be involved in his defense.”
Firtash is a former supporter of Ukraine’s ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich. He made a fortune selling Russian gas to the Kiev government. An Austrian court in June cleared the way for his extradition to the United States, but Firtash’s legal team continues to fight it. …
Let’s review:
-
Bankers close to Putin have helped Ukranian oligarch Dmytro Firtash make billions on gas deals. Firtash is wanted in the U.S. on bribery charges.
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Firtash employed Lev Parnas (now indicted for funneling campaign money to Republicans) – see article above.
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Parnas employed Giuliani, paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Giuliani represented Trump in Ukraine, pressing the government to produce (fabricate?) dirt on Trump’s political opponent.
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Trump also pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate his opponent – while withholding military aid – the grounds for the current impeachment inquiry.
What a den of thieves and traitors!
Additional food for thought: Firtash was a business partner of Paul Manafort.
Yes…great recapping @Keaton_James
Yes…always “Follow the money,” a phrase popularized by our Watergate investigators and who caught another President - Woodward and Bernstein. The phase itself was not used by Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat…but added by screenwriter Goldman for the movie adaption of their book" All the President’s Men."
Firtash is the BIG FISH who can and will funnel money to any and all of T’s keepers and ganstas - Manafort, Giuliani, these two clowns Igor &… Lev…but ultimately the Feds/SDNY must have a BIG DART aimed at T himself. 
Hope so…Book 'em Danno…Circle those wagons guys…Where there’s Smoke there’s Fire…You’re Going Down…Tick Tock
%!
AND we know Giuliani contacted Manafort via another lawyer since Manafort went to prison.
See this story 
AP breaks down the order of operations to produce a transcript of Trump’s calls to foreign leaders.
There were dozens of ears listening to President Donald Trump’s 30-minute phone call with the leader of Ukraine that is at the center of a House impeachment inquiry , and as many eyes that saw what he said.
White House staffers, working in the secure, soundproof Situation Room in the West Wing basement, listened in and chronicled the conversation . National Security Council personnel edited a memo written about the call. White House lawyers, according to a government whistleblower , directed that the memo be uploaded into a highly restricted classified computer network. And there were the staffers whose keystrokes on a computer made that happen.
This passage blew my mind,
The person said a six-page pre-brief with attachments was once prepared for Trump before a call to a foreign leader. But that turned out to be too long, as did a single-page version. Preparing pre-brief note cards that offered about three talking points for Trump to make on a call was the norm, according to this person, who feared retribution for describing this process and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The individual said that when Trump is done with the note cards, he often rips them up and tosses them in a burn bag. Staff who handle records have had to retrieve the burn bags from the residence, put the papers out on a table and tape them back together to preserve them as official presidential records, this person said.
Wow. His presidential library, if he gets one, will be full of copies of taped up bits of index cards with three handwritten talking points in what I’m sure is probably black sharpie. 
AND there’s the "Vienna Connection."
Firtash lives in Vienna and Giuliani himself has said the Parnas and Fruman visited Firtash there "three to six times in the last two months." When P & F were apprended at the airport on their way out of the country, they had one-way tickets to…Vienna. And Giuliani had previously announced he was traveling in the same time frame to…Vienna (posted originally by @Windthin ):
At least while the whole bunch is being hauled off, they’ll be able to say “We always had Vienna.”
BTW, does anyone know if Giuliani has confirmed or denied that he has ever met Firtash? If he hasn’t weighed in on that, it would be a killer question for his next zany interview.
AND there’s the "diGenova & Toensing connection."
This is the husband-wife legal team referenced several times in the above Reuters article – they are at the nexus of the relationship between Giuliani, Firtash, Parnas and Fruman. What the article doesn’t mention is that diGenova and Toensing also have close ties to Trump. They are one of Trump’s most vocal advocates on Fox News and, true to his penchant for drafting from the Fox bench, he almost hired them to represent him during the Mueller investigation, but deferred at the last minute due to a “conflict of interest” (as if that ever bothered him).
This duo appears to be as strong a candidate for indictments as Rudy is:
This connection was posted by @dragonfly9 yesterday – here are more telling details:
Fox News’ Chris Wallace reported Sunday morning that President Donald Trump has worked with two personal lawyers, in addition to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to pressure Ukrainian officials.
Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing are two former federal prosecutors who are now best-known for their pro-Trump media appearances. The husband and wife duo run a law firm in Washington, D.C.
Trump formerly tried to recruit the two for his legal defense in the Russia probe, but a conflict of interest prohibited them from joining the president’s legal team at that time.
Along with Giuliani, who previously denied that any other attorneys were involved, diGenova and Toensing worked with the president “off the books,” so as not to involve the White House, in trying to solicit damaging information about Joe Biden from Ukrainian officials.
"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace said Sunday morning that top US officials confirmed President Donald Trump was working with more than one personal lawyer “off the books” to pressure Ukranian officials for damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden.
Wallace reported that in addition to his known personal lawyer, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has publicly admitted to his involvement in the matter, Trump has been working with the controversial legal team and married couple Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who run a firm in Washington, D.C., to communicate with Ukraine.
Trump initially attempted to hire the two lawyers to represent him in the Russia probe investigation, but decided not to after it was revealed that the two attorneys had a conflict of interest in the case. Toensing had previously represented witnesses who had already communicated with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
DiGenova and Toensing have controversial reputations for pushing conspiracy theories about the Department of Justice and the FBI, including that officials within the FBI have tried to “frame” Trump for “nonexistent crimes.”
DiGenova also called for the firing of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, referred to Mueller’s team as “legal terrorists,” and called former FBI Director James Comey a “dirty cop.” In February, on conservative personality Laura Ingraham’s podcast, diGenova said the US is in a civil war, and suggested that people buy guns to prepare for potential combat between warring factions.
Lawyer and former US District Attorney Joseph diGenova has been a repeat guest on Fox News.
Just three days ago, diGenova appeared on Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s segment to deny that what the president said in the memo detailing his known call with Ukraine constituted a crime.
“Let me underscore emphatically that nothing that the President said on that call, or what we think he said on that call constitutes a crime,” diGenova said, without disclosing any involvement of his own. “And even if he had said, you’re not going to get the money, it would not be a crime.”
According to the US official who Wallace used as his anonymous source, only Trump knows the full details concerning diGenova and Toensing’s involvement in the Ukraine efforts, because the president worked with the two “off the books,” choosing not to involve people within his White House administration itself.
Giuliani has denied working with any other lawyers in Ukraine dealings multiple times in Fox News appearances – a narrative that the network itself contradicts with these latest developments.
