Posts tagged with "Rudy Giuliani"

Above, District Attorney for Fulton County Fani Willis. (Photo source: Dustin Chambers for USA Today)

Witnesses in Georgia Trump probe suspected of ‘testi-lying’

February 16, 2023

A Georgia grand jury is concerned witnesses lied to them during their investigation of former President Donald Trump and his allies’ efforts to interfere in the state’s 2020 election—raising the specter of potential charges, reports USA Today.

Descriptions of the alleged lies could be unveiled on Thursday, February 16, when parts of the grand jury’s long-awaited report on the Trump probe are made public. Indeed, although the witnesses won’t be identified and no one has been charged, prosecutors could pursue perjury charges as leverage to broaden the investigation, according to legal experts.

Charges for lying to investigators or perjury are rare because they can be difficult to prove and peripheral to the main case, according to legal experts. But federal prosecutors have convicted witnesses in recent years of lying to authorities during previous investigations of Trump.

“That expands the scope of potential defendants quite a bit,” said Clark Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University. “It also opens up the possibility for the district attorney to proceed immediately with perjury indictments, which would be pretty straightforward.”

A perjury charge in Georgia, which carries a maximum ten-year prison term, could be used to leverage testimony for more serious conspiracy charges carrying a maximum 20-year term, according to legal experts. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis hired an expert in conspiracy cases against Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations and legal experts said she may pursue RICO charges in this case.

A RICO charge alleges the suspect participated in at least two crimes, as part of a pattern of criminal activity. State and federal prosecutor—including Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani—have wielded RICO laws in recent decades to combat organized crime and drug dealing. Dozens of charges qualify to build a RICO case, including perjury, bribery and tampering with witnesses or evidence.

Willis has brought RICO cases against Atlanta school officials and alleged gang members, which is why some legal experts expect her to use the statute in the Trump investigation.

Tom Morgan, a criminology professor at Western Carolina University and a former district attorney in DeKalb County, Georgia, said he probably wouldn’t pursue stand-alone perjury charges from a grand jury because those cases are difficult to prove. But he said perjury felonies could become part of a broader RICO case.

“It makes the other counts stronger in the RICO case because it shows a pattern of covering up,” Morgan said. “Juries don’t like that.”

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said that the part of the report to be released on Thursday “discusses the concern that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony to the grand jury.”

Defenses against perjury charges include witnesses thinking they were telling the truth or making a false statement without knowing it was a mistake.

An average of fewer than 30 people per year during the last decade have been charged with perjury in Georgia and fewer than ten per year have been convicted, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Yearly convictions twice peaked at 17 during the last decade and there were none last year, according to the agency.

“In my career, I’m not aware of a perjury indictment based on grand jury testimony,” said Morgan, a former 12-year prosecutor. “It’s very rare.”

Samuel Gross, a law professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, said perjury is common, but prosecution of it is rare. Anecdotally, in civil cases, witnesses sometimes lie in response to questions they consider unrelated to the point of the case, Gross said. In criminal cases, police might lie about the justification for a search or defendants might lie to avoid being found guilty, he said.

“Perjury is really, really, really common,” said Gross, referring to a phrase he doesn’t like: “testi-lying.”

Federal prosecutors have charged witnesses with lying to investigators, either as stand-alone charges or in combination with broader cases.

In Fulton County, Willis asked the special purpose grand jury to investigate attempts to interfere with the 2020 election. The inquiry covered Trump’s call January 2, 2021, to state Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” enough votes for Trump to win the state. Trump has denied wrongdoing and described the call as “perfect.”

Another aspect of the inquiry deals with the Trump campaign recruiting an alternate slate of presidential electors, in an attempt switch Georgia’s results from President Joe Biden to Trump.

The 75 witnesses who were summoned included Trump advisers such as Giuliani; Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina); and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia).

Giuliani, who has been told he is a target of the investigation, testified to state lawmakers about alleged voter fraud. Graham called Raffensperger and his staff in the weeks after the election. Gingrich advocated a strategy to have the House decide the election, which Trump would have won because a majority of state delegations were Republican.

Giuliani, Graham, and Gingrich each have each denied wrongdoing. No charges have been filed and their testimony hasn’t been revealed.

Clark Cunningham said that, if he were Willis, he wouldn’t charge Trump immediately—even if he could—because the former president has numerous defenses that could slow down the case. Instead, Cunningham said people charged with perjury could become cooperating witnesses against higher level conspirators.

“That puts the district attorney in a position to immediately start working with defendants who might become cooperating witnesses and could really open things up,” Cunningham said.

Research contact: @USATODAY

Above, Rudy Giuliani. (Image source: Alicia Tatone for GQ)

Special counsel Jack Smith slaps Rudy Giuliani with grand jury subpoena

January 11, 2023

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has subpoenaed Donald Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani—asking him to turn over records to a federal grand jury as part of an investigation into the former president’s fundraising following the 2020 election, reports CNN.

The subpoena, which was sent more than a month ago and has not been previously reported, requests documents from Giuliani about payments he received around the 2020 election, when Giuliani filed numerous lawsuits on Trump’s behalf contesting the election results, a person with knowledge of the situation told CNN.

Prosecutors also have subpoenaed other witnesses who are close to Trump, asking specifically for documents related to disbursements from the Save America PAC, Trump’s primary fundraising operation set up shortly after the 2020 election.

Taken together, the subpoenas demonstrate prosecutors’ growing interest in following the money after the 2020 election as part of their sweeping criminal probe around Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss of the presidency.

Save America was part of broader fundraising efforts by Trump and the Republican Party that raised more than $250 million after the election. Since then, the political action committee has compensated several lawyers who now represent Trump and his allies in January 6-related investigations.

The subpoenas to other witnesses in addition to Giuliani were sent in late December, according to other sources. The information that the prosecutors are seeking still is being collected, the sources said. With Giuliani, the investigators have prioritized getting financial information from him, one person said.

The inquiry to Giuliani came from David Rody, a former top prosecutor in New York who specializes in gang and conspiracy cases and is assisting Smith with examining a broader criminal conspiracy after the election, according to some of the sources.

In response to being informed of CNN’s reporting on Giuliani’s subpoena and asked for a statement, Ted Goodman, his adviser, said, “The mayor is unaware of the specific claims by this so-called ‘anonymous source,’ and therefore is not in position to respond.”

A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment and a representative for Trump has not responded to a request for comment.

CNN previously reported that the Justice Department in September subpoenaed witnesses for financial details about the Save America PAC, and that a portion of Smith’s office would dig into possible financial and campaign contribution crimes. The Giuliani subpoena and other December subpoenas represent a new round of inquiry, now from Smith’s office, which took shape over the holidays.

After the election, Trump and the Republican National Committee raked in millions of dollars as they told supporters the election was being stolen, marketing the fundraising effort as election defense. At the time, some officials working on the fundraising effort knew that Joe Biden’s electoral win was legitimate, despite Trump’s insistence it was fraudulent, the House Select Committee found in its own investigation.

Giuliani is likely to be a central figure in any probe of Trump’s close political circles after the election. After serving as Trump’s private attorney during the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the former chief federal prosecutor and mayor of Manhattan dove into Trump’s attempts to claim electoral victory. He unsuccessfully argued a case before a federal judge in Pennsylvania—where Trump sought to throw out the popular vote—and connected with state lawmakers as he tried to convince them of election fraud.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Giuliani also held freewheeling press conferences, repeating allegations that he never could prove.

In addition to the financial inquiry, Smith’s office is pursuing possible criminal cases around the Trump campaign’s use of fake electors in battleground states; and the pressure on Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election’s result. In all of those schemes, Giuliani was a central player.

In his House select committee testimony, Giuliani explained that his team working with Trump pivoted to focus on state legislatures that could block the election result after his attempts failed in the courts. The New York state bar suspended him from practicing law because of his 2020 election efforts, and he’s also facing an attorney discipline proceeding in Washington, DC.

He declined to answer some questions the House asked about his work for Trump after the election, citing attorney confidentiality. Giuliani could try to make similar claims in the federal investigation, although the Justice Department has legal mechanisms with which it can try to overcome witness refusals to answer questions.

Research contact: @CNN

Above, the report recommended that Congress consider whether to bar former President Donald Trump from ever holding office again. (Photo source: Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times)

January 6 panel issues final report, placing blame for capitol riot on ‘one man’

December 26, 2022

Declaring that the central cause of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was “one man,” the House select committee investigating the insurrection delivered its final report on Thursday, December 22—describing in extensive detail how former President DonaldTrump had carried out what it called “a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election” and offering recommendations for steps to assure nothing like it could happen again, reports The New York Times.

The report—released late on Thursday night—revealed new evidence about Trump’s conduct, and recommended that Congress consider whether to bar Trump and his allies from holding office in the future under the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists.

“The central cause of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed,” the report said. “None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”

The release of the full report was the culmination of the panel’s 18-month inquiry and came three days after the committee—as it referred him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution—voted to formally accuse Trump of:

  • Inciting insurrection,
  • Conspiracy to defraud the United States,
  • Obstruction of an act of Congress, and
  • One other federal crime.

While the referrals do not compel federal prosecutors to take any action, they sent a powerful signal that a select committee of Congress believes the former president committed crimes.

“Our institutions are only strong when those who hold office are faithful to our Constitution,” Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee, wrote in the report, adding: “Part of the tragedy of January 6 is the conduct of those who knew that what happened was profoundly wrong, but nevertheless tried to downplay it, minimize it or defend those responsible.”

The report contains the committee’s legislative recommendations, which are intended to prevent future presidents from attempting a similar plot. The panel  already has endorsed overhauling the Electoral Count Act, the law that Trump and his allies tried to exploit on January 6 in an attempt to cling to power. The House is scheduled to give final approval to that overhaul on Friday.

Among committee recommendations were a possible overhaul of the Insurrection Act and strengthening the enforcement of the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists holding office.

The panel also said Congress should consider legislation to bolster its subpoena power and increase penalties against those who threaten election workers. And it said bar associations should consider whether any of the lawyers who aided Trump’s attempts to overturn the election should be punished.

In addition to its focus on Trump’s actions, the report went into great detail about a supporting cast of lieutenants who enabled him. Mark Meadows, his final chief of staff, and the lawyers John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro were named as potential “co-conspirators” in Trump’s various attempts to cling to power.

Trump bashed the report on his social media site, Truth Social, calling it “highly partisan.”

The committee already had released the report’s executive summary, a lawyerly, 154-page narrative of Trump’s relentless drive to remain in power after he lost the 2020 election by seven million votes.

The report that follows the summary was largely an expanded version of the panel’s widely watched set of hearings this summer—which routinely drew more than 10 million viewers—with its chapter topics mirroring the themes of those sessions.

Those included Trump’s spreading of lies about the election, the creation of fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states won by President Joe Biden; and the former president’s pressure campaign against state officials, the Justice Department and former Vice President Mike Pence. The committee’s report documents how Trump summoned a mob of his supporters to Washington and then did nothing to stop them as they attacked the Capitol for more than three hours.

The committee’s report is the result of an investigation that included more than 1,000 witness interviews and a review of more than one million pages of documents, obtained after the panel issued more than 100 subpoenas.

Research contact: @nytimes

Above, protesters outside the U.S. Capitol. (Photo source: AFP-JIJI0)

DOJ issues 40 subpoenas in a week—expanding its January 6 inquiry

September 14, 2022

Justice Department officials have seized the phones of two top advisers to former President Donald Trump and blanketed his aides with about 40 subpoenas in a substantial escalation of the investigation into his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the inquiry, reports The New York Times.

The seizure of the phones—coupled with a widening effort to obtain information from those around Trump after the 2020 election—represent some of the most aggressive steps the department has taken thus far in its criminal investigation into the actions that led to the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

The extent of the investigation has come into focus in recent days, even though it often has been overshadowed by the government’s legal clash with Trump and his lawyers over a separate inquiry into the handling of presidential records—including highly classified materials, the former president kept at his residence in Florida, the Mar-a-Lago Club.

Federal agents with court-authorized search warrants took phones last week from at least two people: Boris Epshteyn, an in-house counsel who helps coordinate Trump’s legal efforts; and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign in 2020, people familiar with the investigation said.

Epshteyn and Roman have been linked to a critical element of Trump’s bid to hold onto power—the effort to name slates of electors pledged Trump from swing states won by Joe Biden in 2020 as part of a plan to block or delay congressional certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory.

Epshteyn and Roman did not respond to requests for comment. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

The names of those receiving the latest round of subpoenas in the investigation related to January 6 have dribbled out gradually, with investigators casting a wide net on a range of issues, including Trump’s postelection fund-raising and the so-called fake electors scheme.

One of the recipients, people familiar with the case said, was Dan Scavino, Trump’s former social media director who rose from working at a Trump-owned golf course to become one of his most loyal West Wing aides, and has remained an adviser since Trump left office. Stanley Woodward, one of Scavino’s lawyers, declined to comment.

Another was Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner. Kerik, who promoted claims of voter fraud alongside his friend Rudy Giuliani, was issued a subpoena by prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., his lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, said on Monday, September 12. Parlatore said his client had initially offered to grant an interview voluntarily.

The subpoenas seek information in connection with the fake electors plan.

For months, Trump associates have received subpoenas related to other aspects of the investigations into his efforts to cling to power. But in a new line of inquiry, some of the latest subpoenas focus on the activities of the Save America political action committee, the main political fund-raising conduit for Trump since he left office.

The fact that the Justice Department is now seeking information related to fund-raising comes as the House committee examining the January 6 attack has raised questions about money Trump solicited under the premise of fighting election fraud.

The new subpoenas encompass a wide variety of those in Mr. Trump’s orbit, from low-level aides to his most senior advisers.

The Justice Department has spent more than a year focused on investigating hundreds of rioters who were on the ground at the Capitol on Jan. 6. But this spring, it started issuing grand jury subpoenas to people like Ali Alexander, a prominent organizer with the pro-Trump Stop the Steal group, who helped plan the march to the Capitol after Mr. Trump gave a speech that day at the Ellipse near the White House.

While it remains unclear how many subpoenas had been issued in that early round, the information they sought was broad.

According to one subpoena obtained by The New York Times, they asked for any records or communications from people who organized, spoke at, or provided security for Trump’s rally at the Ellipse. They also requested information about any members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning or executing the rally, or tried to “obstruct, influence, impede, or delay” the certification of the presidential election.

By early summer, the grand jury investigation had taken another turn, as several subpoenas were issued to state lawmakers and state Republican officials allied with Trump who took part in a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in several key swing states that Biden actually won.

At least 20 of these subpoenas were sent out and sought information about, and communications with, several lawyers who took part in the fake elector scheme, including Giuliani and John Eastman.

Around the same time, federal investigators seized Eastman’s cellphone and the phone of another lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump had sought at one point to install as the acting attorney general. Clark had his own role in the fake elector scheme: In December 2020, he helped draft a letter to Governor Brian Kemp (R) of Georgia, saying that the state’s election results had been marred by fraud and recommending that Kemp convene a special session of the Georgia Legislature to create a slate of pro-Trump electors.

At least some of the new subpoenas also requested all records that the recipients had turned over to the House January 6 committee, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Research contact: @nytimes

Above, AG Bill Barr testified to the committee that the former president might have been 'detached from reality,' but in late 2020, he praised Trump's 'unprecedented achievements.' (Photo source: Doug Mills for The New York Times)

Striking contrast: Trump officials then and now

June 16, 2022

Many officials have told the January 6 committee that they tried to dissuade the former president from his bid to overturn the election. But in public at the time, their words were far different, reports The New York Times.

For example, when Bill Barr stepped down as attorney general in December 2020, he showered then-President Donald Trump with praise for his “unprecedented achievements” in a flowery letter and vowed that the Justice Department would continue to pursue the president’s claims of voter fraud “to ensure the integrity of elections.”

However, 18 months later, Barr sounded more than slightly different. In videotaped testimony played at the first two public hearings held by the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Americans have now learned what Barr avoided saying publicly about Trump at the time.

“I was somewhat demoralized,” Barr said in testimony played on Monday, June 13—describing his reaction to a monologue from Trump in December 2020 that the voting machines were rigged.

Barr’s thinking, he said, was that the president had “become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff. On the other hand, when I went into this and would tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”

Barr’s testimony, as well as that of several aides played at the hearing, represented candid, more brutal versions of what they were saying in public shortly after the election, the Times said.

Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, and Jason Miller, a top adviser, testified to the committee that they failed to keep Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, away from him on election night. Giuliani, whom Mr. Miller described as “definitely intoxicated,” told Trump that he should declare victory. “It was far too early to be making any calls like that,” Mr. Stepien testified.

Stepien also testified that it became clear after the election that Trump did not have any realistic avenue to overturn the election. But in the days immediately after the vote, he did not publicly challenge Trump or Giuliani. And two days after Election Day, Miller raised the idea on a call with reporters that mysterious bags of ballots were showing up in states where Trump was still contesting the results.

Both appeared to believe that there was an opportunity for challenges that passed in the middle of November. Both continued working with the campaign, but receded from the forefront as Trump put Giuliani in charge of the efforts to overturn the results.

The change for some of the aides reflects the legal consequences of lying to a congressional committee, and how much Trump’s grip on his former aides has loosened in the 17 months he has been out of office.

The testimony so far reflects only what has been released publicly, and it is unclear what else the committee may have. In books written about the election in the last year, Trump’s aides are portrayed as believing that the data showed a likely victory until the afternoon of November 5, when it changed.

Barr, who testified to the committee voluntarily, spoke on the record to Jonathan Karl of ABC News in 2021 about his exasperation with Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud. Barr also recounted tense private conversations with Trump in his memoir this year.

In other cases, people such as Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka began to look toward a life after the White House in Florida, while staying inside the Administration. They tried to solidify policy issues they had worked on and, according to their colleagues, said little to try to dissuade Trump from his bid to stay in power.

And yet they remained silent in public as the president, his advisers and political allies pushed the claims on Americans and used them for fund-raising for Trump.

“After the election, he’s advised by his own people not to go out and declare victory, that they needed time for the votes to come in,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, who led the questioning at the second committee hearing on Monday.

She added: “They directly told the president over and over again, they were false. These were his people. This is Trump World, telling the president that what he was saying was false. And he continued to say the same thing.”

Research contact: @nytimes

Photo source:@royalanimals/#foxnews/Instagram

Dominion Voting wins key decision in lawsuit against Fox News

December 20, 2021

A judge in Delaware has found that Fox News‘ coverage of election fraud after the 2020 election may have been inaccurate—and is allowing a major defamation case against the right-wing TV network to move forward, reports CNN.

Judge Eric Davis of the Delaware Superior Court declined to dismiss Dominion Voting Systems‘ lawsuit against Fox News in a significant ruling on Thursday, December 16.

The ruling will now allow Dominion to attempt to unearth extensive communications within Fox News as they gather evidence for the case, and the company may be able to interview the network’s top names under oath.

At this stage, CNN notes, the court must assume Dominion’s claims about Fox News are true. Still, Davis called out in the 52-page opinion that Fox News may have slanted its coverage to push election fraud, knowing the accusations were wrong.

Dominion alerted the network’s anchors and executives to information that disproved accusations of widespread vote-switching following Donald Trump’s re-election loss, the judge noted.

“Nevertheless, Fox and its news personnel continued to report Dominion purported connection to the election fraud claims without also reporting on Dominion’s emails … Given that Fox apparently refused to report contrary evidence, including evidence from the Department of Justice, the Complaint’s allegations support the reasonable inference that Fox intended to keep Dominion’s side of the story out of the narrative,” the judge wrote.

The court rejected Fox News’ claims that it was able to discuss Trump advisers’ election fraud conspiracies under principles of news reporting.

Fox News reacted to the ruling saying in a statement, “As we have maintained, FOX News, along with every single news organization across the country, vigorously covered the breaking news surrounding the unprecedented 2020 election, providing full context of every story with in-depth reporting and clear-cut analysis. We remain committed to defending against this baseless lawsuit and its all-out assault on the First Amendment.”

The lawsuit alleges Fox News personalities including Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, Sean Hannity and their on-air guests Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell spread lies about fraud in the 2020 election that hurt Dominion’s business. It is one of several lawsuits Dominion has brought related to right-wing claims after the election, and is a major win for the company.

The case will continue to move forward toward a final judgment, as both sides gather evidence. The judge still is considering whether Dominion can be considered a well-known entity, which could give Fox News some protection under the law.

Research contact: @CNN

Above, the seriousness of Rudy Giuliani’s misconduct ‘can not be overstated’, the New York court said. (Photo source: Michael Reynold/EPA)

Rudy Giuliani suspended from practicing law in New York over ‘Stop the Steal’ messaging

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June 25, 2021

A New York court on Thursday suspended Rudy Giuliani from practicing law in New York State because of his “false and misleading statements” about the election loss of former President Donald Trump, his client.

According to a report by CNBC, “The suspension is a stunning blow to Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who previously served as a top Justice Department official, and the head prosecutor for the federal Southern District of New York.”

Indeed, The Daily Beast reports, Giuliani and Trump have since last November made false claims about the legitimacy of the election of President Joe Biden–—leading a “Stop the Steal” movement among Republicans nationwide.

The New York Supreme Court Appellate Division’s grievance committee filed a summary of disciplinary proceedings on Thursday, June 24, outlining multiple “uncontroverted” instances of professional misconduct.

“[W]e conclude that there is uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020,” the five-member Attorney Grievance Committee said in its filing.

.“These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client. We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law, pending further proceedings before the Attorney Grievance Committee.”

All licensed attorneys in New York must abide by professional rules of conduct, which are upheld by judicial departments of the Supreme Court’s Appellate Divisions.

In its 33-page ruling, the grievance committee outlines—and then systematically debunks—a long list of statements Giuliani made during his months-long crusade to overturn Joe Biden’s election win, The Daily Beast notes.

For example, Giuliani claimed in several interviews and state legislature hearings that more absentee ballots came in during the election in Pennsylvania than were sent out before the election—a statement that the committee easily proved was “simply untrue.”

In response, Giuliani told the committee that an unidentified member of his “team” had “inadvertently” taken misleading information from Pennsylvania’s website.

In other examples, Giuliani repeatedly claimed that dead people voted in Georgia, at times quantifying it as 800;  6,000; or 10,515 dead people. (In truth, officials were investigating two potential cases of votes being cast in the name of dead people.) In Pennsylvania, he put the number at 8,021 dead people and then 30,000 dead people.

Public records “unequivocally show that respondent’s statement is false,” the committee said. (Giuliani argued during disciplinary proceedings that he didn’t know the statements were false but he failed to provide “a scintilla of evidence” to support his claim, the filing says.)

The probe was initiated in January, in the wake of the Capitol riot, when State Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Brad Hoylman urged the grievance committee to investigate Giuliani’s role.

“I will be filing a formal complaint with the Appellate Division of the Unified Court System asking them to consider revoking Rudy Giuliani’s license to practice law in New York due to rampant and egregious violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct related to his participation in a scheme to unlawfully overturn the results of a free and fair election and his complicity in inflaming a violent coup attempt in our seat of federal government,” Holyman said.

Separately, the New York State Bar Association launched an investigation into former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer after receiving hundreds of complaints about his role in the Capitol riot.

In a statement in January, NYSBA blamed the mob on Trump’s repeated false claims about the results of the 2020 election—but notes that the “president did not act alone.”

“Hours before the angry mob stormed the Capitol walls, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, addressed a crowd of thousands at the White House, reiterating baseless claims of widespread election fraud in the presidential election and the Georgia U.S. Senate runoffs,” the association, which counts 24,000 lawyers among its members, said.

While the grievance committee said it wanted to immediately boot Giuliani from practicing law, it said the suspension was only temporary pending a full formal disciplinary proceeding. Giuliani will be able to appeal to decision.

esearch contact: @thedailybeast

Above, Rudy Giuliani. (Photo source: Reset Era)

Hanging Rudy out to dry: Trump has blown off Giuliani’s pleas for help as feds circle

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May 18, 2021

In the weeks since the feds raided Rudy Giuliani’s apartment and office in late April, close allies have tried to ferry a slew of emergency requests to former President Donald Trump and his advisers.

But according to three people familiar with the matter, Trump, as well as several of his legal advisers and longtime confidants, have been hesitant about swooping in to help the embattled Giuliani, who for years worked as Trump’s personal lawyer, a political adviser, and attack dog, The Daily Beast reports.

Indeed, Giuliani also served as a major player in the Trump-Ukraine scandal and as a key driver in the former president’s efforts to nullify Joe Biden’s clear victory in the 2020 election.

Team Trump’s reluctance to intervene comes at a time when federal investigators have ramped up their probe into whether Giuliani’s Ukraine-related work during the Trump Administration amounted to an unregistered and illegal lobbying operation on behalf of foreign figures. So far, no charges have been brought against the former New York City mayor as a result of this investigation, which began in 2019.

Trump’s silence has led to simmering frustrations among members of Giuliani’s inner orbit, who privately allege that the ex-president’s team is working to convince him to hang Giuliani out to dry in his hour of need, says The Daily Beast.

“It’s a question now of whether or not [the former president and his team] want to leave Rudy to fend for himself or if they’re going to take a stand against this,” one person close to Giuliani said last week. “Right now, we don’t know.”

Among Giuliani allies’ pleas, the three sources said, have been for Trump to issue a strong verbal or written statement saying Giuliani’s work during the Trump-Ukraine saga was done on behalf of then-President Trump—and therefore not part of an illegal foreign lobbying effort. In other words, Trump’s corroboration would be more than good public relations for Giuliani, it would back up a key pillar of Giuliani’s legal argument that he wasn’t lobbying and is innocent of the allegations.

Other asks have included having the ex-president sign on to a legal motion to have federal investigators throw out any seized communications that Giuliani and his lawyers argue are covered by attorney-client privilege. Further, there have been repeated requests that Trump and his team financially aid Giuliani’s ballooning legal defense and help cover the mounting, sizable expenses.

Two people close to Trump say they have urged the former president to lay low on the matter and to refrain from making too many statements or commitments on Giuliani and the federal probe.

These people have told Trump that it’s unclear what the feds have and that any statement could backfire both on him and on Giuliani. They have been trying to convince the former president for years that Giuliani has been too great a liability for him, and they have suggested that he cut the lawyer loose.

Many of them still blame Giuliani and his Ukraine shenanigans for getting Trump impeached the first time, and the attorney helped lead the Trumpworld and GOP charge in falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the 45th U.S. president.

In the aftermath of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, both Trump and Giuliani have been slammed with lawsuit after lawsuit over their roles in firing up the mob that committed the anti-democratic assa, The Daily Beast notes.

In recent weeks, Trump himself has argued behind closed doors that he wouldn’t want to say Giuliani was doing all of the Ukraine work—which included a trans-Atlantic dirt-digging expedition on the Biden family that led to Trump’s first impeachment—on Trump’s behalf, according to one of the people close to the former president. Trump’s reasoning, this source relayed, is based in the ex-president’s insistence that he didn’t always know what Giuliani was doing during the Ukraine effort or concocting with his Ukrainian pals, several of whom Trump has privately dinged

The two sources close to the former president each said Trump has repeatedly expressed sympathy for Giuliani’s ongoing woes but has not committed to overtly assisting his personal lawyer yet. Another person familiar with the situation told The Daily Beast that Giuliani has said he remains convinced that Trump won’t abandon him and will step up when the time is right.

Research contact: @thedauilybeast

Above, Michael Cohen. (Photo source: Al Jazeera)

Michael Cohen predicts Rudy Giuliani will flip on Trump

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May 3, 2021

On April 29, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer,” gloated on CNN about the FBI raid on Rudy Giuliani’s Manhattan home and office in New York City.

Having been through the experience, himself, Cohen had warned Giuliani—who replaced him as Trump’s personal attorney and fixer from 2016 through 2020 during his White House years—that he was likely to be the next fall guy.

“Rudy, I told you so,” Cohen said on CNN, according to a report by HuffPost. “…What I told him was that Donald Trump doesn’t care about anyone or anything, that he will be the next one to be thrown under the bus. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

Federal agents seized electronic devices in the April 28 early morning raids on Giuliani’s properties —a major escalation in the investigation of his dealings with Ukraine. It’s believed to be linked at least in part to his involvement with the country when Trump was trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s son, who had been on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

“Who knows what Rudy was involved with,” Cohen said. “What we’re going to find out is there are text messages, there are emails, there are different types of communication apps that the FBI knows how to reestablish, even if Rudy, who I don’t think is technological, tried to delete or what have you.”

Indeed, HuffPost reports, Cohen speculated that investigators would be looking at conversations between Giuliani and his Ukrainian associates but might expand their search to others in Trump’s orbit who could be implicated by Giuliani’s correspondence.

Giuliani is notorious for his technological slip-ups and lack of cellphone security, having revealed sensitive information to multiple journalists via butt dials.

“Rudy’s an idiot,” Cohen said. “Rudy behaves in such an erratic manner that who knows what’s on those telephones or what’s on his computers.”

Cohen said he believed that Giuliani would turn on Trump, if necessary.

“Do I think Rudy will give up Donald in a heartbeat? Absolutely. He certainly doesn’t want to follow my path down into a 36-month sentence for something as innocuous as a hush money payment to a porn star … at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald J. Trump.”

Cohen, now one of Trump’s biggest critics, is under house arrest serving the remaining months of a three-year prison sentence. He pleaded guilty in 2018 for crimes that included lying to Congress during the Russia investigation; and campaign finance violations, including the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Research contact: @HuffPost

Above, Rudy Giuliani leaves the hospital this week. (Photo source: CNN0

Trump and friends got ‘special treatment’—COVID care that many Americans cannot access

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December 11, 2020

HUD Secretary Ben Carson, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and President Donald Trump are not the strongest candidates to survive the coronavirus: They are older, in some cases overweight, male, and not particularly fit. Yet all seem to have come through COVID-19—thanks to access to an antibody treatment that is in such short supply that some hospitals and states are doling it out by lottery, The New York Times reports.

Now RudyGiuliani, the latest member of President Trump’s inner circle to contract the coronavrius, has acknowledged that he received at least two of the same drugs the president received. He even conceded that his “celebrity” status had given him access to care that others did not have.

“If it wasn’t me, I wouldn’t have been put in a hospital frankly,” Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, told WABC radio in New York. “Sometimes when you’re a celebrity, they’re worried if something happens to you they’re going to examine it more carefully, and do everything right.”

According to the Times report, Giuliani’s candid admission once again exposes that COVID-19 has become a disease of the haves and the have-nots. The treatment given to President Trump’s allies is raising alarms among medical ethicists as state officials and health system administrators grapple with gut-wrenching decisions about which patients get antibodies in a system that can only be described as rationing.

We should not have Chris Christie and Ben Carson—and in the case of Carson, with intervention by the president—get access,” said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist who works with drug companies on how to ration scarce medicines, referring to the secretary of housing and urban development’s admission that the president “cleared” him for the therapy. “That is not the way to secure public support for difficult rationing systems.”

The treatments — a monoclonal antibody developed by Eli Lilly and a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies developed by Regeneron — won emergency use authorization, or an E.U.A., from the Food and Drug Administration last month for outpatients with “mild to moderate” disease who are at high risk for progressing to severe disease or for being hospitalized.

With cases soaring, the pool of potential patients is vast.

“One of the challenges is the E.U.A. criteria really are so broad, it could be half of the people with COVID could qualify, but there is clearly not enough,” Erin Fox, the senior pharmacy director for University of Utah Health, who has helped her state draft criteria to determine who is eligible for the drugs, told the Times. “Unfortunately, that leaves each hospital or each state to develop their own rationing criteria.”

Even some top officials at the F.D.A —both career employees and political appointee —have privately expressed concern in recent months that people with connections to the White House appeared to be getting access to the antibody treatments, according to three senior administration officials.

Giuliani, 76, appeared unaware of the scarcity issues, telling interviewers that politicians have taken masks and business closures too far now that COVID-19 is “a treatable disease.”

Research contact: @nytimes