rigorousintuition.ca

A Republican Conspiracy Theory About a Biden-in-Ukraine Scandal Has Gone Mainstream. But It Is Not True.
https://theintercept.com/2019/05/10/rum ... rmer-says/

I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down.
https://theintercept.com/2019/09/25/i-w ... side-down/

PAY DIRT
Rudy’s Ukraine Henchmen Made Big Donation to Pro-Trump PAC
http://archive.is/UuquW#selection-535.0-716.0

Russia’s Fingerprints Are All Over Trump’s Ukraine Whistleblower Scandal
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russias-f ... ia=desktop

Barry Blitt’s “Whack Job”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover ... 2019-10-07

“Do Us a Favor”: The Forty-eight Hours That Sealed Trump’s Impeachment
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-f ... mpeachment

How Rudy Giuliani’s Ukraine Operation Backfired
He was sent on a mission to clear the president’s name. In the process, he pursued a shadow foreign policy that led to an impeachment inquiry.

October 3, 2019
Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device:
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In 2018, President Trump hired Rudolph W. Giuliani, his longtime friend and the former mayor of New York City, to defend him against the special counsel’s Russia investigation. So how is it that Mr. Giuliani helped get the president entangled in another investigation, this time involving Ukraine?

Our colleague investigated the remarkable behind-the-scenes campaign, encouraged by Mr. Trump and executed by Mr. Giuliani, to gather and disseminate political dirt from a foreign country.

[For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on “The Daily” podcast come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Read the latest edition here.]
Kenneth P. Vogel, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
http://archive.is/rDUfx

Belligerent Savant » Thu Oct 03, 2019 4:29 pm wrote:.

What you are posting are NOT FACTS.

PRESS PLAY
Biden Dirt File Has Private Email Between John Solomon and Rudy Allies
The email was then included in part of a misinformation dossier that the State Department Inspector General delivered to Congress.
Erin Banco
National Security Reporter
Maxwell Tani
Media Reporter
Updated 10.03.19 10:05AM ET / Published 10.02.19 9:03PM ET

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty
A controversial right-leaning reporter at the center of the Trump-Ukraine scandal emailed a copy of one of his stories—before it was published—to a top ally of Rudy Giuliani, as well as two pro-Trump investigators attempting to dig up negative information on the Biden family.

In March, The Hill's investigative reporter John Solomon published a story claiming that the U.S. government had pressured Ukrainian prosecutors to drop a probe of a group funded by the Obama administration and liberal billionaire George Soros. The story was published at 6 p.m., according to a timestamp on the paper’s website. Solomon himself didn’t share it on his Twitter account until 6:56 p.m. that night. The earliest cache of the story in the Internet Archive is from 7:42 p.m. Eastern time.


But hours before that, at 12:52 p.m. Eastern time, Solomon appears to have sent a version of the article to Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas and the Trumpworld lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. The email was titled “Outline of Soros reporting, including embedded documents” and included the headline and the text of his piece.


Natasha Bertrand
✔
@NatashaBertrand
Here’s the page from the packet that @ErinBanco shared yesterday (with emails blacked out by me) https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1179564577845104640 …
View image on Twitter
Lachlan Markay
✔
@lachlan
So @ErinBanco and @maxwelltani got a page from the State Department oppo dossier that Rudy fed to Pompeo. It appears to show John Solomon sending an advance copy of one of his Ukraine stories to Joe diGenova, Victoria Toensing, and Lev Parnas https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-ukr ... udy-allies …

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8:57 AM - Oct 3, 2019
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Two congressional sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that Solomon’s email was part of a roughly 50-page package of material that was turned over to lawmakers on Wednesday by the State Department’s Inspector General’s office. Reuters was the first to report the email’s inclusion in the packet.

That material, according to congressional sources, appeared to be a “misinformation” effort meant to smear the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and the Bidens. CNN reported on Wednesday that Giuliani had conceded that the information in the package originated, at least in part, with him.

WHILE WE’RE AT IT
Rudy and Bannon Try a Whole New Way to Slime Biden

Lachlan Markay,
Asawin Suebsaeng

“They told me they were going to investigate it,” Giuliani said to CNN, referring to a call he got from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Neither Solomon nor The Hill responded to request for comment from The Daily Beast. But in a series of tweets Wednesday night, Solomon said he sent the email “as a reporter fact-checking my work”—although the email contained the text of a fully drafted story, not isolated items that needed vetting.

“The email released to the public appears to omit the opening line of my originally sent email,” Solomon claimed in the tweets. “Here is the passage that preceded the summary of my reporting. ‘Appreciate eyeballing for accuracy. Want to be fair and accurate.’ That’s not scandalous. It’s good journalism.”

ADVERTISING


John Solomon
@jsolomonReports
Today I understand the State Department IG released a private email I sent as a reporter fact-checking my work before I published a story back in March. I typically spend a long period of time before any column or news story fact-checking information with numerous people.

17.2K
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Emails sent to the addresses Solomon used for Parnas, diGenova and Toensing did not bounce back but were not returned.

Solomon’s email to Parnas, diGenova, and Toensing suggests even stronger ties between the Hill columnist and the Trump team tasked with digging up dirt on Biden abroad. And it raises questions about the degree to which pro-Trump figures were working directly with sympathetic journalists to try and dig up and spread dirt on Biden and like-minded Democrats.

Solomon’s March 29 story about the U.S. embassy in Ukraine makes no direct mention of Parnas, diGenova, or Toensing—instead, the piece cites a letter about the probe from U.S. embassy official George Kent, and claims by former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko that the U.S. pressured him to halt an investigation into the Soros- and U.S.-backed group. But the three individuals have emerged as key players in the lead-up to Trump’s request for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to investigate the Bidens.

Parnas, a Giuliani friend and golf buddy, was a key player in connecting the former New York City mayor to former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, whom Biden and other top Western government entities and officials had hoped to push out because of his perceived inaction tackling corruption.

RELATED IN POLITICS

Fox News: Frequent Guests Helped Giuliani on Ukraine-Biden

Anatomy of a Smear: How Trump’s Ukraine Conspiracy Got Going
"Rudy Giuliani, Former Mayor of New York City speaks to the Organization of Iranian American Communities during their march to urge \"recognition of the Iranian people's right for regime change,\" outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York on September 24, 2019. - They urged recognition of the Iranian people's right for regime change and declared their support for the leader of democratic opposition, Maryam Rajavi. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Photo credit should read ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images)"
Giuliani, diGenova Rage at Fox Bombshell on Ukraine Plan
DiGenova and Toensing have been some of the president’s most trusted outside allies for years. During Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation last year, the duo was briefly mentioned as possibilities to join the president’s legal defense team. On Sunday, Fox News reported that diGenova and Toensing had been working alongside Giuliani to dig up dirt on Biden—a revelation that the New York Times had noted months prior.

‘I AM DISTURBED’
Leaked Memo: Colleagues Unload on Journo Behind Ukraine Mess

Maxwell Tani,
Justin Baragona

Solomon’s work has come under intense scrutiny following the revelation that a series of his stories about Ukraine may have helped spark events leading to Trump’s request that President Zelensky team up with Giuliani to investigate the Bidens.

On March 20, Solomon published an interview with Lutsenko in which the ex-prosecutor accused the former vice president of having pressured the then-Ukrainian president in 2016 to fire Lutsenko’s predecessor, Shokin. The insinuation, according to Lutsenko, was that Biden hoped to quash an investigation into a Ukrainian gas company connected to his son Hunter Biden. Despite Lutsenko’s retraction of some of the claims, and conclusion that Hunter Biden “did not violate any Ukrainian laws,” the incident was cited in a U.S. government whistleblower’s complaint as one of the circumstances that eventually led to Trump’s call with Zelensky.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported new details Wednesday night about Giuliani’s dirt-digging on another front: He’s been consulting via a lawyer with Trump's imprisoned former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort to inquire about the so-called black ledger that reportedly revealed a Ukrainian political party had funneled millions to Manafort. Giuliani believes the ledger was part of a conspiracy by Ukrainians to interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-ukr ... udy-allies

Belligerent Savant » Thu Oct 03, 2019 4:29 pm wrote:.

What you are posting are NOT FACTS.

Rudy Giuliani Is at the Center of the Trump Impeachment Investigation
The former prosecutor’s legal risks are tied to his ambiguous role in the administration.

More stories by Stephanie BakerOctober 3, 2019, 3:00 AM CDT
Giuliani
Giuliani
Illustration: Christine Cornell for Bloomberg Businessweek
LISTEN TO ARTICLE
Congress’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump is going to look a whole lot like an investigation of Rudy Giuliani. The president’s personal lawyer, public attack dog, and shadow diplomat is at the center of the storm brewing over Trump’s attempt to pry damaging information about Vice President Joe Biden out of Ukraine. Whatever happens, Giuliani will play a pivotal role.

Among the questions House Democrats are asking: What is the extent of Giuliani’s involvement in Trump’s effort to dig up dirt on a potential political rival? Already, House Democrats have called several of Giuliani’s business partners and government contacts to testify, and demanded that he produce documents related to his communications with a range of associates in Kiev and within the U.S. Department of State. “He could claim an attorney-client privilege and refuse to testify,” says John Barrett of St. John’s University School of Law. “And I’m not sure it would be worth the House’s time and trouble to challenge such claims in court.”

Giuliani has flip-flopped publicly on whether he’ll cooperate. Reached by phone on Oct. 1, he declined to comment on whether he’d comply with the subpoena. By then he’d also hired his old friend Jon Sale, an assistant to Watergate Special Prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski, to represent him in the subpoena fight. Sale says he can’t say yet whether Giuliani will comply. “It’s a complex issue,” he says. “A lot of potential privileges.”

The crusading prosecutor who took down dirty financiers and dirtier organized crime lords as a U.S. attorney in the 1980s and became known briefly as “America’s Mayor” after the Sept. 11 attacks now faces several forms of legal jeopardy, all stemming from his unofficial, ill-defined role within the Trump administration. Before Giuliani began working as Trump’s unpaid personal lawyer in the probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, he was a prominent Trump campaign surrogate and briefly thought to be a contender for secretary of state.

“If Trump directed Rudy’s activities, then he’s criminally responsible for them”

As the House barrels ahead with its impeachment inquiry, Senate Democrats have zeroed in on Giuliani’s private consulting business and whether he’s broken federal lobbying laws by selling his services to foreign leaders, including prominent clients in Ukraine. Since Trump took office, Giuliani has earned fees from Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk and advised the mayor of the eastern city of Kharkiv in a contract paid for by Pavel Fuks, another Ukrainian oligarch. On Sept. 25, seven Democratic senators wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice, renewing a demand for an investigation into Giuliani’s contracts with foreign clients originally made a year earlier.

At the same time, former prosecutors say, Giuliani could be in violation of the Logan Act, a rarely enforced federal statute that forbids private citizens from conducting unauthorized negotiations with foreign governments that have disputes with the U.S. In early May, the State Department unexpectedly recalled Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, whom Giuliani falsely accused of helping bring to light secret payments made by the party of Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

According to a whistleblower complaint made public on Sept. 26, Giuliani also spent months reaching out to Kiev through back channels in an effort to persuade officials to dig up dirt on Biden and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings. Giuliani’s claim, which has been debunked by officials in the U.S., Ukraine, and European Union, is that Biden pushed for the ouster of Ukraine’s prosecutor general in 2016 to quash a probe into Burisma.

The whistleblower’s allegations principally concern a July 25 phone call between Trump and newly elected Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. According to a summary of the call released by the White House, Trump asked Zelenskiy to do him a “favor” and investigate a conspiracy theory that fixes blame for interference in the 2016 election on Ukraine instead of Russia. Then Trump asked his counterpart to investigate the Bidens, saying twice that he’d have Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr follow up. On Oct. 1, Zelenskiy stated at a press conference that he’d had no contact with Giuliani by phone or in person.

Giuliani has said his overtures to Ukrainian officials were sanctioned by the State Department, but the whistleblower complaint makes the situation appear otherwise. The document describes efforts by former U.S. Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, to help Ukrainian officials make sense of the different messages they were getting from Giuliani and through official channels.

Volker, who resigned as the investigation into Trump’s behavior began to gain momentum, didn’t respond to a request for comment. He was scheduled to appear before the House Intelligence Committee to give a deposition on the matter on Oct. 3, which could help clarify whether Giuliani was acting on behalf of the government or Trump. At press time, it wasn’t clear when that testimony would be made public, if at all.

“Whatever Rudy was doing, the question was, what did Trump know about that, and did Trump direct it?” says Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor and frequent presidential critic. “If Trump directed Rudy’s activities, then he’s criminally responsible for them.” Trump’s Justice Department is unlikely to pursue an investigation of Giuliani, especially given that Barr’s own conduct is being questioned as part of the whistleblower complaint.

Giuliani isn’t the first Trump fixer to come under fire since he’s been in office. His predicament recalls the one that confronted Michael Cohen, who once served as Trump’s personal lawyer and factotum. Cohen’s hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election served as the basis for a wide-ranging federal investigation of his financial records and tax returns, resulting in multiple felony convictions and a three-year prison sentence. Cohen eventually flipped on the president, testifying before Congress that Trump had directed him to pay off Daniels. During that unfolding drama, Giuliani became the president’s cudgel on TV, slamming Cohen as an “incredible liar.”

So far, Giuliani has given no indication that he’ll abandon the president to save himself. In this, he may be like another former presidential aide who once came under fire from Congress, G. Gordon Liddy. An operative on President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, Liddy refused to testify before the Senate on his role in the Watergate break-in. He was eventually convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping and served 52 months in prison. —With David Voreacos
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... estigation

Belligerent Savant » Thu Oct 03, 2019 4:29 pm wrote:.

What you are posting are NOT FACTS.

Rudy Giuliani consulted Paul Manafort to bolster his Ukraine theory
By Yaron Steinbuch
Rudy Giuliani and Paul Manafort Getty Images
Rudy Giuliani reached out to President Trump’s imprisoned former campaign chairman Paul Manafort through the federal inmate’s lawyer in efforts to bolster his theory that Ukraine backed Hillary Clinton in her 2016 White House bid, according to a report.

Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, contacted Manafort several times in recent months to dig up information about a secret “black ledger” obtained by a Ukrainian anti-corruption bureau, according to the Washington Post.

The ledger recorded $12.7 million in cash payments from former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s political party to Manafort, the New York Times reported in August 2016.

The revelation led Manafort to resign from Trump’s campaign.

Manafort, 70, is serving a 7½-year term in a federal prison in Pennsylvania for federal tax fraud, bank fraud and other crimes stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

His crimes are related to Manafort’s work in Kiev for the political party of Yanukovych, according to the Washington Post.

Manafort has continued to express support for the president, who has never ruled out giving him a pardon.

Giuliani said he wanted to consult with Manafort through the latter’s lawyer to ask whether a black ledger ever existed.

“I said, ‘Was there really a black book? If there wasn’t, I really need to know. Please tell him I’ve got to know,’” Giuliani told the Washington Post regarding what he asked of Manafort’s lawyer.

“He came back and said there wasn’t a black book,” he added.

Giuliani joined the president’s legal team in April 2018 to help defend him against Mueller’s probe — and the former New York City mayor said he launched his own investigation into Ukraine last year, which led him to consult with Manafort.

He said he has not spoken directly to Manafort in two years.

“It was that I believed there was a lot of evidence that the [Democratic National Committee] and the Clinton campaign had a close connection to Ukrainian officials,” Giuliani said, adding that he was never calling for a Manafort pardon.

“It was all about Trump. I don’t think I could exonerate Manafort.”

Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Post.

Adrienne Watson, press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement that “the White House has been pushing this narrative to distract from Donald Trump’s gross abuse of power in pressuring a foreign country to interfere in our elections.”
https://nypost.com/2019/10/03/rudy-giul ... ne-theory/

Belligerent Savant » Thu Oct 03, 2019 4:29 pm wrote:.

What you are posting are NOT FACTS.

The Rudy Dossier
Josh Marshall

Warsaw, Poland, 13/02/2019 - A press briefing held prior to the rally of the Iranian community in Europe on the prospects for establishing a sustainable and lasting peace in the Middle East and the Iranian regime's d... MORE
Good TPM Readers, I was in the midst of writing out a post explaining how there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that that packet of pro-Trump conspiracy theories the State Department Inspector General brought up to the Hill was actually Rudy Giuliani’s work product: the packet of information he’d assembled in his trips abroad. Rudy likely piped it into the State Department. It got circulated through the Department by State appointees (this part we know). The IG had had it since May. But when he heard the events of the last week, especially Pompeo going on the warpath, the IG decided he wanted to get it out of his hands and into the hands of Congress as soon as possible.

Well, I’m robbed of my genius reconstruction of the evidence! Because now Rudy has admitted that, yeah, it’s his stuff.

Here’s the key passage from a late report from CNN …

Giuliani told CNN on Wednesday evening that some of the documents provided to Congress by the State Department’s inspector general had originated with him.

Giuliani said that in late March, he had “routed” what he called an “outline” of allegations against Biden, as well as Yovanovitch, to the office of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He said he also had sent details of his interviews from earlier in the year with the incumbent and former top prosecutors in Ukraine, who helped provide him with the information in his outline.

Giuliani said he received a phone call shortly thereafter from Pompeo, who told Giuliani he would be referring the documents for investigation.

“They told me they were going to investigate it,” Giuliani told CNN.

So it’s a mix of memos, planted newspaper articles and summaries of the interviews Giuliani conducted in Ukraine. Helpfully (to Congress) Giuliani says Pompeo was receptive to the documents and said he’d make sure they were investigated. The key point here is that the documents not only push the anti-Biden conspiracy theories. They also include attacks on the then-US Ambassador to Ukraine, as well as claims of a Mueller conspiracy against Trump, framing of the Russia, etc. etc. So they apparently got Pompeo to turn against the US Ambassador to Ukraine, who was subsequently dismissed.

Where specifically did the packet come from?

According to a statement released this evening from Chairs Engel, Schiff and Cummings, the State Department IG interviewed Pompeo’s Counselor Thomas Ulrich Brechbuhl.

Here’s the key passage …

“The Inspector General stated that his office interviewed Secretary Pompeo’s Counselor, Thomas Ulrich Brechbuhl, who informed the Inspector General that Secretary Pompeo told him the packet ‘came over,’ and that Brechbuhl presumed it was from the White House.

“Earlier this week, Pompeo attempted to block Brechbuhl, Ambassador Yovanovitch, and other State Department employees from testifying before Congress.

Needless to say, it’s quite clear that Pompeo is deeply implicated in these abuses of power. Meanwhile Rudy Giuliani is happy to provide more evidence of Pompeo’s involvement. Once Pompeo received them, they were circulated within the State Department. It doesn’t say specifically that Pompeo circulated them. But that seems consistent with all the other information we’ve learned.

It seems pretty clear why Inspector General Linick thought this was an urgent matter.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-rudy-dossier

Belligerent Savant » Thu Oct 03, 2019 4:29 pm wrote:.

What you are posting are NOT FACTS.

Former Ukraine Envoy Says Rudy Giuliani Was 'Warned' About 'Unreliable' Biden Claims
Illustration for article titled Former Ukraine Envoy Says Rudy Giuliani Was Warned About Unreliable Biden Claims
Photo: Kurt Volker (Getty)
Former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker abruptly resigned last weekend after Rudy Giuliani threw him under the bus in the snowballing whistleblower scandal. On Thursday, Volker appears to have gotten his revenge.

In closed-door testimony given earlier today, Volker reportedly told investigators of the House Oversight, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs committees that he personally warned Giuliani that he was “receiving untrustworthy information from Ukrainian political figures about former vice president Joe Biden and his son,” according to the Washington Post. The Post reports:

Kurt Volker, who resigned last week after being named in a whistleblower complaint that sparked the House impeachment inquiry of Trump, said he tried to caution Giuliani that his sources, including Ukraine’s former top prosecutor, were unreliable and that he should be careful about putting faith in the prosecutor’s stories, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed door meeting.

[...]

Volker also said that he and other State Department officials cautioned the Ukrainians to steer clear of U.S. politics. Getting involved, he said he told them, would open the nation up to allegations that they were interfering in an election and could be detrimental to Ukraine long-term, according to these two individuals.

It appears no one heeded that advice!

We don’t know exactly everything that was said during the closed hearing, but congressional Republicans are already predictably spinning it as nothing big. “Nothing he has said supports the narrative you’ve been hearing from Mr. Schiff and the Democrats,” Oversight ranking member Jim Jordan told reporters, on the same day that House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy called for an end to the impeachment probe. “Nothing.” Jordan also complained about the process:

Meanwhile, we now know that Trump has encouraged at least three different world leaders to investigate either the Bidens or the origins of the Mueller report in private phone calls, and today he just walked out in front of a bunch of cameras and publicly asked Ukraine and China to start investigating the Bidens on the White House lawn, before standing in front of a bunch of boomers and claiming Big Pharma is out to get him, presumably for all of that incredible work he’s done to stop drug prices from increasing.

And earlier today, CNN reported on a bipartisan letter from 2016 that a bunch of Republican senators signed—including Sens. Ron Johnson and Rob Portman, and former Sen. Mark Kirk—imploring the Ukrainian government to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary.” (Trump continues to allege that Biden got that prosecutor fired in order to take some heat off of Biden’s admittedly sketchy son.)

So the investigation continues, but it seems like it’s only a matter of time before either of these old dummies—Trump or Rudy—have an episode where they go on Fox & Friends and just spit it out themselves.
https://splinternews.com/former-ukraine ... 1838752856