Rudy Giuliani

According to a deep dive by Jonathan Swan for Axios, right after the election former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani became a daily visitor to Donald Trump's campaign headquarters where he spouted tales of "deep state" interference in the presidential vote counts that eventually drove staffers from the room.

The report notes that Giuliani -- who has now been accused of accepting cash from wealthy felons to lobby the president for pardons -- was accompanied by attorney Sidney Powell for meetings that included some of the president's most trusted advisers.

As Swan reports, "On the day after the election, Nov. 4, top staff including Stepien, Clark, Miller, general counsel Matthew Morgan and Jared Kushner had gathered at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. They believed this would be a serious search for a path to 270 electoral votes through credible legal challenges. Then Giuliani, Sidney Powell and a swelling conspiracy crew marched into the room — literally."

What followed was Giuliani and Powell expounding at length about how they believed the "deep state" was behind the president's loss to former Vice President Joe Biden, which led staffers to start filtering out of the room after hearing some of their theories for days in a row.

"A bizarre routine set in," Swan explained. "These meetings would begin with official staff raising plausible legal strategies. Then Giuliani and Powell, a lawyer with a history of floating 'deep state' conspiracy theories, would take over, spewing wild allegations of a centralized plot by Democrats — and in Powell's view, international communists — to steal the election. Bewildered campaign aides would look around the table at one another, silently asking what the hell was going on. One would invariably shuffle out of the room, followed by another a few minutes later. Then another. Then another. The professional staff would reconvene in Stepien's office, about 20 yards down the hall."

The report goes on to note that the former New York City mayor would notice that the room had emptied and was forced to go see where everybody was,

"Eventually, Giuliani would realize that he and his crew were alone in the conference room. He'd walk down the hall and knock on the glass outside Stepien's office, where about eight aides had squeezed onto a pair of couches. 'You guys, where did you go?' Giuliani would say. "This is serious!'" the Axios report states.

According to Swan, for days after the election some of Trump's top advisers, "spent many hours trying to stop the former New York mayor from running to the press or the president and muddling the campaign's legal approach."

You can read more here.

According to a report from the New York Times, close associates of Donald Trump have been raking in tens of thousands of dollars from wealthy felons seeking a presidential pardon before the president steps down next week.

In his waning weeks in office, the president has been pardoning close associates who were either facing criminal charges tied to his 2016 election or were already serving time.

According to the latest report from the NYT's Michael Schmidt and Jonathan Vogel, based on documents and interviews with more than three dozen lobbyists and attorneys, the market for pardons has increased ever since it became apparent the president would be leaving office.

"The pardon lobbying heated up as it became clear that Mr. Trump had no recourse for challenging his election defeat, lobbyists and lawyers say," the report states. "One lobbyist, Brett Tolman, a former federal prosecutor who has been advising the White House on pardons and commutations, has monetized his clemency work, collecting tens of thousands of dollars, and possibly more, in recent weeks to lobby the White House for clemency for the son of a former Arkansas senator; the founder of the notorious online drug marketplace Silk Road; and a Manhattan socialite who pleaded guilty in a fraud scheme."

The report also notes that Trump's former personal attorney, John Dowd has been "marketing" himself to potential clients seeking pardons and that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also has been implicated.

"A onetime top adviser to the Trump campaign was paid $50,000 to help seek a pardon for John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer convicted of illegally disclosing classified information, and agreed to a $50,000 bonus if the president granted it, according to a copy of an agreement," the Times is reporting. "And Mr. Kiriakou was separately told that Mr. Trump's personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani could help him secure a pardon for $2 million. Mr. Kiriakou rejected the offer, but an associate, fearing that Mr. Giuliani was illegally selling pardons, alerted the F.B.I. Mr. Giuliani challenged this characterization."

According to Margaret Love, who worked on clemency issues in the Justice Department from 1990 until 1997, "This kind of off-books influence peddling, special-privilege system denies consideration to the hundreds of ordinary people who have obediently lined up as required by Justice Department rules, and is a basic violation of the longstanding effort to make this process at least look fair."

The Times reported that the White House had no comment when asked about the allegations.

You can read more here.