AN INVESTIGATION THAT GROWS LIKE A CANCER

…The President and Vice President with Giuliani and his two Russian associates, now in custody

Are Rudy Giuliani, and his two associates at the heart of major US crimes?

Let’s take a close look at one of the investigations that is going on, and that is not part of those involved with the presidential impeachment inquiry.

There is a federal investigation of the two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.  Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles International Airport, where they were preparing to escape to Europe on one-way tickets.  This investigation now also includes Mr. Giuliani as well.

Giuliani’s dealings with the two men are being investigated by federal prosecutors at the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). That office has already filed campaign finance charges against Parnas and Fruman and accused them of conspiracy and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.

This investigation of Giuliani, by the SDNY, an office that Giuliani had at one time personally run, includes a wide range of potential crimes including wire fraud, failure to register as a foreign agent.  The prosecutors are digging into the Parnes and Fruman’s interactions with the president’s personal lawyer and the main pro-Trump super Political Action Committee.

According to those familiar with the ongoing case, investigators are looking into Giuliani’s consulting business and looking at donations made to America First Action, the main pro-Trump ­super PAC set up by his advisers after his election.

But it doesn’t stop there.

As part of the probe, federal prosecutors are examining an additional list of other potential crimes.  These include foreign lobbying violations, destruction of, or alteration of documents, aiding and abetting federal crimes, plus foreign contributions to US candidates..

The long list of possible crimes under investigation shows that these prosecutors are casting a wide net for wrongdoing by the president’s personal lawyer and the two former Soviet business executives who have been assisting Giuliani.  Both of these individuals were assisting Giuliani in his efforts to dig up damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.  And all of this assistance was on the president’s behalf.

Parnas and Fruman have of course, pleaded not guilty, and the attorneys for both did not respond to a request for comment.  The indictment filed in October against Fruman and Parnas has charged that the two broke campaign finance laws amid their effort to get the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, removed from that post.

The Justice Department has charged that Parnas and Fruman disguised the source of a $325,000 donation made in 2018 to America First by giving the money in the name of Global Energy Producers (GEP), a purported liquefied natural gas company Parnas and Fruman controlled.  Federal prosecutors say GEP was a front company used to disguise the funds’ true source, and that the money for the political action committee came from “a private lending transaction between Fruman and third parties.”

Giuliani, who has yet to be officially accused of any crimes, he has also denied any wrongdoing, and of course, his attorney has declined to comment.

Kelly Sadler, a spokeswoman for America First Action, said the group reached out last month to federal prosecutors in New York, offering to cooperate voluntarily.  She said the group has received no subpoenas and follows the law.  She also declined to comment any further.  Of course, the spokesperson for the US attorney’s office also declined to comment.

The October indictment of the two men does not mention Giuliani or suggest he was connected to the alleged crimes.  But in the weeks after their arrest, prosecutors issued subpoenas to a number of people involved with Fruman and Parnas, asking for, among other things, any documents regarding Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners.  (It was the Wall Street Journal that first reported the SDNY’s interest in Giuliani’s firm.)

In 2017, the firm was hired by Pavel Fuks, a wealthy Ukrainian developer, to help update its emergency response system.  Giuliani had traveled to Ukraine that November to meet with top officials, including then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Parnas had previously told The Washington Post that Giuliani is a “very good friend” whom he got to know in 2016 while fundraising for President Trump’s campaign.  Giuliani has referred to Parnas and Fruman as his clients, and he said he was paid $500,000 to help advise a financial security company started by Parnas called, of all things, Fraud Guarantee.

After Parnas and Fruman were arrested, Giuliani denied any knowledge of wrongdoing on their part.  In an interview, he said that he had seen the two men “quite often” and had “no reason to believe that they are anything other than decent guys.”

A person with knowledge of the investigation has admitted that there is a particular interest in the interactions of these three key figures in Giuliani’s pursuit of dirt on Biden and his son Hunter:  There is also interest in the possible involvement of President Poroshenko and former Ukrainian prosecutors Yuri Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin.

In recent days, Parnas’s attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, has said that Parnas would be willing to testify before Congress and to explain what he knows about Giuliani.  But this is only if Parnas is given accommodations to avoid incriminating himself, which would probably require immunity.

But generally, Congress is wary about extending immunity to people under criminal investigation.  They are obviously fearful that public testimony could make their prosecutions more difficult.

The federal investigation into Parnas and Fruman is also looking into their efforts to secure business deals for themselves in the historically corrupt Ukrainian energy sector.  This was all occurring while they were assisting Giuliani’s work in that country.

Last week, federal prosecutors questioned a top executive of Ukraine’s state-owned gas company about his encounters with this pair as they pursued energy deals.

In the months leading up to the SDNY charges, the two has assisted Giuliani in his efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch an investigation of Joe Biden, the former vice president, and his son Hunter, over Hunter’s role while serving on the board of the Ukrainian energy firm called Burisma.

Those efforts raised alarms inside the US government, particularly at the State Department and National Security Council (NSC).  These government officials feared the president’s lawyer was conducting a kind of shadow diplomacy to generate attacks on Trump’s political rival.  This is all according to recent congressional testimony.

Those were witnesses that testified this month that Trump wanted the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to announce an investigation of the Bidens.  If the Ukraine president would make this announcement, President Trump would then host Zelensky at a White House meeting, which was very important for the new Ukraine president.  Some officials have confirmed that the Trump administration held up nearly $400 million in security assistance as part of the effort to get Zelensky to make the announcement.

So, was the president personally involved with any of the efforts of Parnas and Fruman and the money for his support?

Well, the America First Action, and its America First Policies, are an independent, big-money operation supporting Trump.  It has emerged as a center of gravity in Trump’s political world and it is a vehicles through which wealthy donors and top Trump aides have utilized since 2017.

Trump officially gave his approval to this operation earlier this year when his campaign released a statement saying it was the “one approved” group.

Copyright G. Ater 2019