The tangled web of Rudy Giuliani's associations with questionable characters in the Ukraine scandal
Washington Post political analyst Philip Bump has created a link analysis of the tangled web President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani finds himself caught in.
According to the report, Giuliani isn't only linked to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the two associates indicted and arrested after lunch with them a few weeks ago. Giuliani is linked to a chorus of people now outed for being involved in the Ukraine scandal.
Bump's analysis doesn't seem to take into account that Parnas got a personal letter from Trump, linking him directly to the president. However, Trump said he didn't know the men and that he takes photos with "a lot of people," which is why he was seen pictured with the two men. Parnas was also referred to as "a friend of Trump's" during an election night party in 2016.
Their lawyer, John Dowd, once worked as the president's personal lawyer as well. In a letter, Dowd outlined the links between the relationships.
"Fruman and Parnas assisted Giuliani in his work for Trump while also enjoying his representation in their own business interests. The neat effect? They had attorney-client privilege with Giuliani and, potentially, with Trump. (Dowd recently stopped representing Fruman)," the report said.
For some reason, Dowd also connected the two men to another set of lawyers, known for their appearances on Fox News, who nearly became Trump's lawyers. Husband and wife legal team Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing had work done by the two men as well. The couple's son, Brady Toensing, is working for Bill Barr's Justice Department. The younger Toensing previously served as the chief of the Vermont Republican Party, where he pressed for an investigation into Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) wife Jane.
DiGenova and Toensing are also serving as the lawyer for Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who was shipped to Austria to face corruption charges. For some reason, Barr and the Justice Department can't manage to get him extradited to the United States to face corruption charges in another case.
He is one of the many people working to uncover "dirt" on former Vice President Joe Biden, who is still seeking support to become the Democratic Party nominee for president in 2020. Firtash's previous lawyer, Lanny Davis, was a former attorney to Trump and Michael Cohen.
"Giuliani’s debunked assertions about former vice president Joe Biden having been involved in untoward activity center on the 2016 firing of Ukraine’s then-general prosecutor, Viktor Shokin," wrote Bump. "Shokin claims that he was fired because he was investigating a company for which Joe Biden’s son Hunter was working, though Shokin is the only official making that claim."
Bloomberg reported that Firtash got a sworn statement from Shokin making the allegations against Biden.
But he’d also made "similar claims previously, including to The Washington Post, and he’d met with Giuliani before, as well. Nonetheless, Giuliani ended up with a copy of the statement, which, Bloomberg reports, was not intended for public consumption," the report explained.
Bump posted a series of graphics showing the pathways between Trump, Giuliani and the group of those linked in the Ukraine scandal.
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"The issue isn’t finding a stream connecting Giuliani to the Firtash probe — it’s isolating the correct one," wrote Bump. "An interesting development for Trump’s attorney given that, when Firtash was represented by Davis, Giuliani argued that Firtash was tied to organized crime in Russia."
But Lanny Davis denied any links.
“Mr. Giuliani gets everything wrong, which is his custom,” Davis said in a statement to The Post, “as we’ve seen over and over again when he lies about Donald Trump.”
Read the full report and see the additional charts and graphs at The Washington Post.
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