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After all, Giuliani was a prominent member of the Trump campaign-and it’s the Trump campaign that is under investigation for potential collusion-and is a potential witness in the Mueller probe.
“As a prominent surrogate for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Rudy Giuliani was an active purveyor of pre-election leaks about the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails. As a member of Trump’s transition, he played a political role during a period central to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.”
But Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow says those details present no known obstacle to the former New York mayor joining Trump’s legal team
“There are no conflicts at all regarding the representation of the president by Mayor Giuliani that would impact anything involving this case,” Sekulow told POLITICO on Friday.
Sure-none at all-other than him being a lawyer and witness to the same federal case.
The big problem here is how likely is he to become a witness in the case, whether it be in a grand jury or otherwise,” said Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor. “You can’t be a witness and a lawyer in the same case. That’s the big sticking point.”
FN: But as usual Trump and Rudy didn’t let a piddly thing like legal ethics get in the way. There were recent reports that Giuliani may step down as Trump’s lawyer. These days his real job seems to be attempting to dig up dirt from the Ukrainian government about Joe Biden.
End of FN
While Giuliani didn’t hold a formal position in the Trump presidential campaign, he often opened for Trump at rallies in the final months of the race, a role which would have had him in contact with top campaign operatives. He’s acknowledged he was in touch with FBI officials during the 2016 campaign and said the bureau’s rank-and-file were “boiling” over about the Clinton email investigation. Shortly before the FBI director at the time, James Comey, reopened that investigation that October, Giuliani said the Trump campaign had “a couple of things up our sleeves that should turn things around.”
Indeed, what’s clear regarding Comey’s infamous October 28 letter is that his hand was forced-though he’s refused to characterize it that way; there was concern that if he didn’t release the letter there would be leaks. It’s believed that Giuliani was receiving information from the rogue agents involved in October, 2016.
There are other conflicts:
“Giuliani’s former law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, advised Trump’s data-mining contractor Cambridge Analytica on its obligations under U.S. campaign law.”
“After Trump’s victory , Giuliani was formally named as a vice chairman of Trump’s presidential transition team in late November 2016. However, his role in the transition is murky. Giuliani and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) were initially considered major players in the transition, but were shunted aside as it progressed. Giuliani has all but confirmed that he was hoping to be nominated as secretary of state, but Trump decided against it.”
“A lawyer for the Trump transition confirmed last December that Mueller’s prosecutors obtained access to the emails of at least 13 people working on the transition. There is no indication that Giuliani was among them, but the requests focused on personnel handling national security and policy issues, raising the possibility that Giuliani’s communications with Trump advisers could already be in Mueller’s possession.”
“Another issue of potential conflict: Giuliani’s effort to broker a deal to resolve the case of Turkish-Iranian gold dealer Reza Zarrab, who was accused of violating U.S. law by helping Iran evade economic sanctions related to its nuclear program. Giuliani revealed in an affidavit filed last April that he met with Turkish President Recep Erdogan in an effort to resolve Zarrab’s case as part of “some agreement between the United States and Turkey that will promote the national security interests of the United States.”
Because of Giuliani’s work on Zarrab’s behalf, he will right off the bat, have trouble regarding anything to do with Michael Flynn:
“NBC News reported last November that Mueller was investigating whether fired National Security Adviser Flynn was also involved in trying to end the U.S. prosecution of Zarrab. A few weeks after the NBC report, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and agreed to cooperate with Mueller. In the plea deal, Flynn admitted to making false statements about his work related to Turkey.”
“Trump’s legal team has concluded that Giuliani is not a witness in the Russia case, but legal ethics experts say one complication for the Trump lawyers is they can’t be sure of the exact bounds of what Mueller is investigating.”
It’s not at all clear how they know that; as the Trump campaign is under investigation for collusion and he was part of the Trump campaign, of course, he’s potentially a witness. And spare me the ‘minor player’ line. Don Segretti was technically a ‘minor player’ for Nixon. He still ended up having a very important role in helping Nixon drum Ed Muskie from the race.
Regarding the Comey letter, Comey himself reveals he opened an investigation to see if Giuliani and others-like Erik Prince, Roger Stone, or Jeremy Corsi-received leaks from the rogue agents.
“Toward the end of the 2016 Presidential election, Donald Trump was running a beleaguered campaign, trailing in the opinion polls and operating under a cloud of scandal and outrage. Many Republicans had given up hope of him winning. Some, including Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, had explicitly distanced themselves from the candidate. Through it all, though, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, stuck with Trump. In the campaign’s closing days, Giuliani served as Trump’s warmup act at campaign events.”
On November 7, 2016, the day before the election, I caught their buddy routine at an evening rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. To get the crowd going, Giuliani focussed some of his remarks on Hillary Clinton, saying, “We have never had a person running for President who is so thoroughly corrupt.” The Trump supporters loved it. “Lock her up! Lock her up!” they chanted.
“According to some reports, rabble-rousing wasn’t the only service that Giuliani provided to the Trump campaign. Appearing on Rachel Maddow’s show on Thursday night, James Comey, the former director of the F.B.I., said that, under his leadership, the agency had looked into whether Giuliani received advance notice, from sources within the agency, of Comey’s controversial decision in October of 2016 to reopen the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while she was Secretary of State. Comey couldn’t say what the outcome of the inquiry was; he was fired before it was completed.”
FN: This is an investigation we still don’t know the status of-what did this investigation find is it still ongoing? If it’s completed why have we still not seen a report? This other part of the IG report was promised back in June, 2018. There’s been not a peep about it since.
Evidently, this is part of a narrative that Trump has been hoodwinked on where the Mueller investigation is almost over because, after all, Rod Rosenstein told him he’s not a ‘target of the investigation’-though, to be sure he is a subject, and subjects can become targets in zero seconds flat.
FN: In retrospect it’s less clear that Trump was hoodwinked that Mueller-in being bullied out of demanding a Trump interview and declining to charge Don Jr and Jared Kushner.
“The news about Giuliani came amid a raft of other developments related to the Russia probe and the Department of Justice—so many, in fact, that it was hard to keep up. On Thursday, Bloomberg News reported that Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, personally informed Trump last week, during a meeting at the White House, that “he isn’t a target of any part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation or the probe into his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen.” The Bloomberg story went on to say that Trump subsequently “told some of his closest advisers that it’s not the right time to remove either man”—Rosenstein or Mueller—“since he’s not a target of the probes.”
“The recruitment of Giuliani and the leaking of the news about Rosenstein’s statements to Trump looked like part of a White House effort to promote the narrative that Mueller’s investigation is entering its final stages, and that the President is largely in the clear. In an interview with the New York Post on Thursday, Giuliani said he that intended to contact Mueller, whom he has known for a long time, and request a list of what is needed to “comply” with the rest of the investigation. “I don’t know yet what’s outstanding,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s going to take more than a week or two to get a resolution. They’re almost there.” In yet another interview, with CNN, he described Mueller as fair and said firing him would be “counterproductive,” because it would delay the completion of the probe. “Bob is the best we can do,” he said.
Again-‘target’ vs. ‘subject’ is a mere technicality anyway.
The fact that Rosenstein informed Trump that he isn’t currently a target of the Mueller and Cohen investigations doesn’t necessarily mean very much, either. “Rosenstein’s message may have been based on a technicality,” the Bloomberg story said. “Trump may not officially be a target, but Mueller hasn’t ruled out making him one at some point in the future, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the unfolding investigation.”
It may well have just been Rosenstein again attempting to placate so-called ‘President’ Trump. Arguably Rosenstein has done too much of that already.
Placating the Trump defenders won’t save him anymore than it saved Andy McCabe.
FN: In retrospect quite to the contrary the correct take has been that Rosenstein is a survivor as Comey told Ben Wittes-which is not considered a compliment-apparently he was all along playing both sides in a way that kept himself on Trump’s good side-I so appreciated your courtesy and humor in our private conversations and I can land the plane.