In the wake of a Washington Post report detailing Rudy Giuliani's "shadow diplomatic effort" to engineer "a negotiated exit to ease President Nicolás Maduro from power and reopen resource-rich Venezuela to business, according to people familiar with the endeavor," the Post's Aaron Blake argues that not only are Giuliani's exploits in Venezuela similar to his exploits in Ukraine, they are actually more problematic.
"As with many of Giuliani’s foreign exploits, the question is whether he’s using his role as Trump’s personal lawyer to advance his own personal interests," Blake writes, adding that Giuliani's attempts at diplomacy are illegal since he's a private citizen.
"In Ukraine, Giuliani was pushing for specific investigations that Trump favored and could help him politically, but the former mayor of New York emphasized he was doing it on behalf of his client, Trump, and not the government. ... Giuliani has also represented a wealthy gold trader in Turkey with ties to top government officials and has been pushing Trump and his Cabinet to take pro-Turkey actions," Blake continues. "In Venezuela, though, it’s more difficult to pass this off as just working for a client. It’s one thing to push for foreign investigations as a private attorney or to lobby your own government on behalf of a foreign businessman; it’s another to try to negotiate a transfer of power for the leader of a country."
Read the full piece over at The Washington Post.
