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The Rudy Giuliani Warrants Likely Go Up To the Andrii Derkach Meeting

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For a variety of reasons, I’d like to look at the probable scope of the Rudy Giuliani warrants. I believe the warrant obtained on April 21 probably goes up to, but not far beyond, the meeting Rudy had with Andrii Derkach on December 5, 2019.

This post is based in part on what Rudy Giuliani, Victoria Toensing, and Lev Parnas have telegraphed about these warrants. None of these people are reliable, but Rudy and Toensing, at least, are clearly trying to share information with potential co-conspirators and therefore would want to be accurate. And whether or not the redaction fail in Parnas’ letter was intentional, I believe Parnas was trying to maximize the discomfort that these warrants might pose to powerful people (Parnas knows the targets and dates of the warrants, but it’s not clear whether he knows the date ranges). The post also includes claims from the government response to Parnas’ request for access to the Rudy and Toensing content; the government is reliable but still obviously hiding stuff.

Per Parnas, he knows of three warrants targeting Rudy:

  • A November 4, 2019 warrant targeting Rudy’s iCloud and email accounts
  • An April 13, 2021 warrant obtaining historical and prospective cell site information from Rudy (and Toensing)
  • An April 21, 2021 warrant targeting what ended up being 18 devices from Rudy

Here’s what these letters claim about the warrants:

  • The November 4, 2019 warrant “commences when Mayor Giuliani began to represent Donald Trump”
  • The start date of the November 4, 2019 warrant was “the commencement of Giuliani’s representation of former President Donald Trump”
  • Rudy believes the iCloud warrant obtained “communications with, and on behalf of, the sitting President, containing material relating to the impending impeachment”
  • The date range for the April 21, 2021 warrant began “three months later than the iCloud account”
  • The end date for the April 21, 2021 warrant went “56 days” later than the iCloud warrant
  • The warrant required Apple turn over “subscriber and payment information, device information and settings, transactional records, address book information, call history and voicemails, text message content, email content, photos and videos, documents, search and web histories, third-party application data, location date and iOS device backups” (this is boilerplate, but most people don’t understand how comprehensive a cloud warrant, to Apple or Google, can be)
  • The government showed probable cause that the iCloud account included evidence of “22 USC §§612 and 618 [FARA], 18 USC §951 [Foreign Agent], 18 USC §2 [Abetting], and 18 USC §371 [Conspiracy to defraud the US]”
  • Two days after the warrants targeting Rudy and Toensing, SDNY obtained a warrant targeting Yuri Lutsenko; later warrants targeted two other Ukrainians, Roman Nasirov and Alexander Levin
  • The treatment of information pertaining to someone Toensing represents (possibly, but not definitely, Dmitro Firtash) was more limited in her later warrant
  • Parnas believes that some of the information (though he doesn’t specify whether from the November 2019 or the April 2021 search) would include information “that may have been deleted”
  • Parnas believes that the warrants obtained “the communications immediately following the defendants’ arrest” on October 10, 2019
  • The 2019 returns do not contain any evidence relating to Parnas’ campaign finance charges and no non-duplicative statements from Parnas about Fraud Guarantee

Particularly given the way DOJ removed Parnas and Igor Fruman’s influence peddling for Yuri Lutsenko in their September 17, 2020 superseding indictment, it is virtually certain that this investigation involves, at a minimum, the ultimately successful Lutsenko-backed efforts to get Marie Yovanovitch fired in 2019.

This JustSecurity timeline is enormously helpful for reviewing the entanglements between Parnas and Fruman with Lutsenko (as well as the other events that SDNY is likely interested in). Rudy formally became Trump’s lawyer in April 2018, though there were discussions about him (and Toensing and her spouse Joe DiGenova) joining the team in March 2018, after John Dowd quit. Parnas and Fruman made their first pitch to Trump to fire Yovanovitch on April 30, 2018. In May and June, Parnas and Fruman heavily lobbied Pete Sessions to help get Yovanovitch fired. Then in August 2018, Fraud Guarantee hired Rudy. That puts the likely start dates of Rudy’s warrants sometime between March 20 and April 17, 2018 (for the iCloud warrant), and between mid-June and July or August 2018 (for the device warrant).

Depending on how narrowly the investigation is scoped on Yovanovitch, there are three likely end dates for the iCloud warrant: sometime between April 25 and May 6, 2019, when the effort to fire Yovanovitch succeeded, on October 10, when Parnas and Fruman are arrested, or on November 4, or whatever “present” day Apple complied with the warrant (the gag was issued days later so there may have been a delay in obtaining that approval).

I think one of the later dates is far more likely. That’s because Rudy continued to chase the same effort in Ukraine after Yovanovitch was fired. Plus, the most likely explanation for how SDNY was able to get warrants and a non-disclosure order for the November 2019 warrants against Rudy and Toensing is that they had proof, obtained on October 21, 2019, that Parnas had unsuccessfully attempted to delete information from his own iCloud account. And Rudy, who knows the date ranges of the warrant, claims that it obtained information, “containing material relating to the impending impeachment,” which, if true, would entirely rule out a May 6 end date.

Parnas believes the first warrant extended beyond his October 10 arrest. But it’s not entirely clear whether he knows the date range of the warrants. The government response explained they gave him material from him they had been withholding under a non-disclosure order relating to the investigation in which Rudy is a subject (that is, the Lutsenko campaign) on January 28. But in response to Parnas’ request for materials “immediately following” his arrest, the government got coy about whether they exist in the November 2019 returns (the only ones they have reviewed yet).

For similar reasons, the request for communications by Giuliani and Toensing “immediately following the defendants’ arrests” and “subsequent to” Parnas’s provision of information to the House Intelligence Committee are not subject to disclosure. (Def. Letter at 3.) Not only do these communications have nothing to do with the Government’s case-in-chief, but even if Parnas was entitled to discovery relating to his selective prosecution claim—and he plainly is not—these communications would not even be relevant to such a defense because, to the extent they exist, they post-date the defendants’ arrest.

Besides, there’s a more logical reason to expect that the November 2019 warrants ended on the day of Parnas’ arrest, October 10: because that’s consistent with SDNY’s investigation being limited to its original scope and the entirety of the investigation into Andrii Derkach being at EDNY, as NYT reported is the case.

On December 3, 2019, Rudy met in Budapest with Lutsenko. On December 4, he flew to Kyiv to meet with Derkach, the meeting that begins the relationship that EDNY has ownership of.

A 56-day extension on an end date in response to a November 4 warrant would be December 31, a logical end date for a warrant, but one that would encompass the aftermath of the Derkach meeting scoped to EDNY. Whereas a 56-day extension to an October 10 end date would take you to December 5: through the Derkach meeting associated with the Lutsenko one, but not any further.

That would also be inclusive of communications relating to the pending impeachment (which Rudy says would have been included in the iCloud return), but would be more protective of Rudy’s conversations with Trump as impeachment drew nearer.

Lev Parnas’ Gamble: The Three Nested Investigations

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As I noted the other day, Lev Parnas has inserted himself, along with his co-defendants, in the middle of the presumed Special Master review of Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing’s seized devices. He’s doing so as part of a strategy he has pursued since shortly after he was arrested to either make his prosecution unsustainable for Donald Trump (that strategy has presumably failed) or to bring a whole lot of powerful people — possibly up to and including Trump — down with him. The Special Master review will be critical to this strategy, because it will determine whether material that might otherwise be deemed privileged can be reviewed by the Southern District of New York as evidence of a cover-up of crimes that Donald Trump committed.

In this post, I will lay out how there are two — and if Lev is successful, three — sets of crimes in question, each leading to the next.

1a, Conspiracy to donate money: 18 USC 371, 52 USC 30122, 18 USC 1001, 18 USC 1519 and 2, and 18 USC 371, 52 USC 30121.

The first set of crimes pertain to efforts by Parnas, Igor Fruman, and two co-defendants, to gain access to the Republican Party with donations prohibited by campaign finance law. They were first charged — as Parnas and Fruman were about to fly to Vienna to meet with Victor Shokin — on October 9, 2019. The charges relate to allegations that they used their company, Global Energy Partners, to launder money, including money provided by a foreigner, to donate to Trump-associated and other Republican candidates.

These charges almost certainly arose out of a complaint and then a follow-up by Campaign Legal Center.

The overall motive of these crimes, as described, was basically grift: to improve their connections to facilitate a fairly dodgy business proposition. One prong of the business, explicitly funded by a Russian businessman, involved funding recreational marijuana efforts.

But along the way, one of their alleged acts was to give Pete Sessions $20,000 in a way that associated that donation with an effort to get rid of Marie Yovanovitch, possibly on behalf of Yuri Lutsenko.

[T]hese contributions were made for the purpose of gaining influence with politicians so as to advance their own personal financial interests and the political interests of Ukrainian government officials, including at least one Ukranian government official with whom they were working. For example, in or about May and June 2018, PARNAS and FRUMAN committed to raise $20,000 or more for a then-sitting U.S. Congressman [Sessions],

[snip]

At and around the same time PARNAS and FREEMAN committed to raising those funds for [Sessions], PARNAS met with [Sessions] and sought [his] assistance in causing the U.S. Government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.

1b, Conspiracy to donate money: 18 USC 371, 52 USC 30122, 18 USC 1001, 18 USC 1519 and 2, and 18 USC 371, 52 USC 30121, 18 USC 1349.

The campaign finance indictment was superseded on September 17, 2020 to add a fraud charge associated with Parnas and David Correia’s Fraud Guarantee, which literally was a fraud claiming to insure people against losses from fraud. They got a bunch of investors to invest in the business based on false representations, which Parnas (and to a lesser degree, David Correia) allegedly spent on his personal expenses. The superseding indictment took out the charge related to Yovanovitch.

Shortly after this superseding indictment, Correia flipped, entering into a plea agreement.

2, Foreign influence peddling: 22 USC §§612 and 618, 18 USC §951, 18 USC §2, and 18 USC §371

As you can see already, the first indictment against Parnas and Fruman pertained to an effort — to get Yovanovitch fired — that they were undertaking with Rudy Giuliani. And the superseding indictment adds fraud associated with the Fraud Guarantee they used Rudy’s name to help sell. So Rudy was bound to get dragged into this.

According to a letter submitted by Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, he is being investigated for a bunch of influence-peddling crimes: FARA, acting as an unregistered Foreign Agent, abetting, and conspiracy.

This investigation may have come out of the way that the whistleblower complaint that launched Trump’s first impeachment magnified an OCCRP profile of Parnas and Fruman’s influence-peddling (which incorporated the profile), and the way that impeachment magnified the influence-peddling that Rudy and the grifters were involved with. The letter that failed to redact the targets of the warrants associated with Rudy listed two of the key players in the OCCRP profile, Yuri Lutsenko and Alexander Levin (Roman Nasirov is the one other person, in addition to Rudy and Victoria Toensing, who was targeted).

Indeed, even as impeachment was rolling out, during the period where Parnas was discussing cooperating with SDNY, he was refusing to admit that some foreigner — likely Lutsenko — was behind all this.

And it seems pretty clear that Parnas and Fruman are subjects of this investigation, too. The government’s response to Parnas’ request for discovery describes that he was notified of search warrants targeting him in January of this year (shortly after Joe Biden’s inauguration).

3. Parnas’ hoped for obstruction investigation

From the start, Parnas has been alleging — credibly — that at least the timing of his arrest was an effort to protect the President and maybe even to shut him up. From early on, he used impeachment as a way to share materials obtained in discovery showing Rudy’s central role in it all. In January 2020, Parnas filed a letter he sent to Billy Barr requesting his recusal, based in part off a claim that DOJ delayed production of discovery past the time he could share it with the impeachment inquiry (in reality, the delay was partly due to the time it took to crack the password to Parnas’ phone). In December, Parnas filed a motion to dismiss his indictment, alleging selective prosecution. He focused closely on the events leading up to impeachment (and falsely suggested these events started in 2019, not 2018). Amid a list of all the times Barr corruptly intervened to protect the President, Parnas described how, just as HPSCI was asking for his testimony, he and Fruman were arrested.

Later that day, Dowd wrote to HPSCI, 6 as he had indicated he would in his e-mail: Kindly refer to my letter of October 3, 2019. This is an update. We continue to meet with Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman to gather the facts and documents related to the many subjects and persons detailed in your September 30 letter and to evaluate all of that information in light of the privileges we raised in our last letter. This effort will take some additional time. Accordingly, Messrs. Parnas and Fruman will not be available for depositions scheduled for October 10, 2019. The following day, October 9, 2019, Mr. Parnas met with Mr. Giuliani at the BLT Steakhouse in the Trump Hotel, Washington DC. Mr. Parnas was scheduled to travel later that evening to Frankfurt, Germany, and then on to Vienna, Austria, to meet with the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Victor Shokin, to prepare him for an appearance on FOX News’ Shawn Hannity Show to discuss Joe Biden. Although Mr. Giuliani, along with Victoria Toensing and Joseph DiGenova, had originally been scheduled to travel to Vienna with Parnas, Toensing and DiGenova had cancelled several days earlier, and Mr. Giuliani cancelled that day.

After finishing meeting with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman took a car to Dulles International Airport, where they waited in the Lufthansa lounge for approximately two hours before beginning to board their flight. Unbeknownst to Messrs. Parnas and Fruman, they had been indicted in the SDNY earlier that day.

Parnas also described others involved in his illegal campaign finance activities who were not indicted, including America First Action PAC and Kevin McCarthy.

Among the things Parnas asked for was evidence that was already being collected in the second, influence-peddling investigation.

All internal documents, including memoranda, notes, e-mails, and text messages that, in any way, reference the reasons why individuals and entities including but not limited to, America First Super PAC, [redacted], Rudy Giuliani, President Donald J. Trump, Victoria Toensing, Joseph DiGenova, and John Solomon, were not arrested or charged with Mssrs. Parnas and Igor Fruman;

The government dismissed Parnas’ claim as lacking evidence but also said that some of the materials he was asking for would be covered by various privileges.

Because Parnas’s claim is meritless, the Court need not consider the contours of his discovery request (Parnas Mot. 32-33), but multiple of his requests seek materials that, if they exist, appear to be attorney work product, covered by the deliberative process privilege, and/or are outside of the scope of what would be reasonably necessary to try to advance his asserted claims rather than to gain a strategic advantage at trial.

Judge Oetken has not yet ruled on Parnas’ selective prosecution claim (or a bunch of other pre-trial motions from all defendants).

But as I noted, just the other day, Gordon Sondland provided more evidence of a corrupt cover-up pertaining to impeachment.

In his redaction fail letter, Parnas addressed very specific things he believed to exist to show a cover-up just before the influence peddling warrants got sent out, including emails he deleted.

The seized evidence will also likely contain a number and variety of communications between Giuliani and Toensing and Parnas that are directly discoverable under Fed. R. Crim. P. 16, evidence of any conversations between Giuliani, Toensing, and others, including Parnas, that may have been deleted, communications between Giuliani, Toensing and others about the defendants and how to address their prior relationships, the arrests, and the unfolding investigation, communications between Giuliani and Toensing and others with potential Government witnesses, including communications about the defendants, the offenses charged, and the witnesses’ potential disclosures and characterizations of alleged fraud-loss computations.

If Rudy and Toensing didn’t delete these materials, then they are now in US government custody. And Parnas is doing all he can to make sure the government looks at them.

The Government’s Coy Dance on FISA and Rudy’s Grifters

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As I noted last month, one of the guys indicted along with Rudy’s grifters, Andrey Kukushkin, asked the government for notice of any of several kinds of surveillance, including FISA. The government responded today with the kind of non-denial that all-but confirms that one of the grifters, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, their co-conspirators, or their funders were implicated in a FISA order.

It starts by stating, “the Government has repeatedly informed the defendants, it does not intend to use any information that was obtained or derived from FISA or other forms of surveillance identified by Kukushkin,” meaning under FISA they have no obligation to notify defendants of its use. It then reviews the requirements of statute, which state that the government only has to provide notice if it plans to use evidence obtained via FISA. It asserts it has met the requirements of FISA.

The Government has complied with its discovery and disclosure obligations, and Kukushkin’s motion fails to set forth any legal basis to require anything more.

With respect to FISA, the Government has complied with its obligations under Section 1806 in this case. On December 1, 2019, the Government notified defense counsel that it did not intend to use any FISA-obtained or FISA-derived information against the defendants at trial.

It’s basically a legalistic way of saying, “yes, yes, yes, but no.” All the more so given that the government corrects a Kukushkin claim that the government had stated they had not obtained FISA collection.

Kukushkin incorrectly states that the Government has “denied procuring evidence pursuant to Title III or FISA warrants.” Dkt. 45 at n.1. The Government has told the defense that it did not obtain or use Title III intercepts in this investigation. The Government has not made any representations about the use of FISA warrants.

And the government  provided Judge Oetken an ex parte filing, which is the kind of thing you’d do to be very transparent to the judge when asked about FISA.

The Government is separately submitting a supplemental letter to the Court ex parte and under seal.

Again, all this is legally uninteresting but factually intriguing given how open the government is about the likelihood they did use FISA in this case.

Especially given how they note that the representations the government makes in this letter apply to all the defendants, including Fruman and Parnas.

The Government writes in response to defendant Andrey Kukushkin’s December 12, 2019 letter motion, which is made “on behalf of all defendants,” seeking the Court to direct the Government to affirm or deny, under 18 U.S.C. § 3504, whether the defendants were the subject of any Government surveillance, including under Executive Order 12333 or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”). [my emphasis]

If Kukushkin were targeted with a FISA order, it would mostly implicate some Nevada Republicans — that’s the side of the grift Kukushkin got charged under.

But if Parnas or Fruman were targeted, it might implicate Pete Sessions, Ron DeSantis, Devin Nunes, the other members of Congress Adam Schiff intimated were also included in the Parnas call records obtained by HPSCI, the President’s lawyer, and possibly even the President himself.

And if any of the grifters were personally targeted, it would probably mean that Bill Barr (who has been personally involved in the case since early last year) had agreed that someone in direct communication with all these Republicans was or is probably an Agent of a Foreign power.

On the Potential Viability of Foreign Agent Charges for Rudy Giuliani

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Since the NYT revealed that SDNY is investigating Rudy Giuliani for what they call “lobbying” laws,

Mr. Lutsenko initially asked Mr. Giuliani to represent him, according to the former mayor, who said he declined because it would have posed a conflict with his work for the president. Instead, Mr. Giuliani said, he interviewed Mr. Lutsenko for hours, then had one of his employees — a “professional investigator who works for my company” — write memos detailing the Ukrainian prosecutors’ claims about Ms. Yovanovitch, Mr. Biden and others.

Mr. Giuliani said he provided those memos to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this year and was told that the State Department passed the memos to the F.B.I. He did not say who told him.

Mr. Giuliani said he also gave the memos to the columnist, John Solomon, who worked at the time for The Hill newspaper and published articles and videos critical of Ms. Yovanovitch, the Bidens and other Trump targets. It was unclear to what degree Mr. Giuliani’s memos served as fodder for Mr. Solomon, who independently interviewed Mr. Lutsenko and other sources.

Mr. Solomon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lobbying disclosure law contains an exemption for legal work, and Mr. Giuliani said his efforts to unearth information and push both for investigations in Ukraine and for news coverage of his findings originated with his defense of Mr. Trump in the special counsel’s investigation.

He acknowledged that his work morphed into a more general dragnet for dirt on Mr. Trump’s targets but said that it was difficult to separate those lines of inquiry from his original mission of discrediting the origins of the special counsel’s investigation.

Mr. Giuliani said Mr. Lutsenko never specifically asked him to try to force Ms. Yovanovitch’s recall, saying he concluded himself that Mr. Lutsenko probably wanted her fired because he had complained that she was stifling his investigations.

“He didn’t say to me, ‘I came here to get Yovanovitch fired.’ He came here because he said he had been trying to transmit this information to your government for the past year, and had been unable to do it,” Mr. Giuliani said of his meeting in New York with Mr. Lutsenko. “I transmitted the information to the right people.”

And since the WSJ reported that Pete Sessions — named as Congressman 1 in the Lev Parnas/Igor Fruman indictment — was cooperating with a grand jury subpoena targeting Rudy,

A grand jury has issued a subpoena related to Manhattan federal prosecutors’ investigation into Rudy Giuliani, seeking documents from former Rep. Pete Sessions about his dealings with President Trump’s personal lawyer and associates, according to people familiar with the matter.

The subpoena seeks documents related to Mr. Giuliani’s business dealings with Ukraine and his involvement in efforts to oust the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, as well as any interactions between Mr. Sessions, Mr. Giuliani and four men who were indicted last week on campaign-finance and conspiracy accounts, the people said.

Mr. Sessions’ knowledge of Mr. Giuliani’s dealings is a primary focus of the subpoena, the people said.

There has been a closer review of whether it would be possible to indict the President’s personal lawyer under foreign agent laws, with broad consensus that what Rudy is doing is actually covered by FARA — and not just his work for Ukraine, but also (among other places) for Turkey.

But there have been a number of claims that, I think, have been too pat about how easy or hard this is going to be.

Greg Craig, Tony Podesta, Vin Weber, and Bijan Kian are not apt precedents

First, a number of people have looked at how SDNY considered — but did not charge — Greg Craig, Tony Podesta, and Vin Weber under FARA, suggesting the same considerations would hold true with Rudy. Others have looked at Greg Craig (who was prosecuted but acquitted in DC for FARA after SDNY decided not to charge it) and Bijan Kian (who was convicted but then had his conviction thrown out by Judge Anthony Trenga based on the legal theory DOJ used) to suggest these cases are too difficult to charge to get Rudy.

It is absolutely the case that when powerful men with skilled lawyers have been pursued under FARA in recent years, DOJ has succeeded not in trial, but instead has gotten either plea deals or failed at trial (and that may have been one of the facts behind Mueller’s decision to strike a plea deal with Paul Manafort). That is sound evidence that SDNY is no doubt aware of.

But several things distinguish Rudy.

Most notably, all of those earlier cases came before DOJ’s newfound commitment to prosecuting FARA, with Mike Flynn prosecutor Brandon Van Grack taking over where a woman named Heather Hunt had been in charge before. At a minimum, that means a process that originally took place with Craig, Podesta, Weber, and Kian under an assumption that FARA would be treated solely as a registration issue may now be taking place under an assumption that violations of FARA — presumably to include both a failure to register and (what most charges have been so far) false statements under registration — can be prosecuted. That assumption would dramatically change the attention with which DOJ would document their communications, so prosecutors would not now be stuck going to trial (as Craig’s prosecutors were) without having DOJ’s documentation of a key meeting.

Notably, the same thing that triggered the FARA prosecution of Mike Flynn — concerns raised by Congress — happened last year when seven Democratic Senators wrote National Security Division head John Demers asking for a review. So there may well be documentation of Rudy’s claims about whether he does or does not need to register that SDNY is building a prosecution around.

Plus, one thing clearly distinguishes Rudy from all these other men. Rudy is not taking this investigation seriously, and does not have a lawyer reviewing his exposure. From reports, he may not have the ready cash to pay the likes of Rob Kelner (Flynn’s original, very competent, lawyer) or Robert Trout (Kian’s excellent lawyer). So he may be doing things now (not least, running his mouth on TV and making public statements about who he works for and how it gets paid) that put him at greater exposure.

Rudy G’s efforts to implicate State and DOJ (and the President) in his work

That said, another thing distinguishes Rudy from these past cases. Since the whistleblower complaint got made public, he has spent most of his time insisting that everything he did, he did with the awareness and involvement of — at least — the State Department. And in Trump’s July 25 call to Volodymyr Zelensky, he invoked Bill Barr’s name right alongside his nominal defense attorney.

Both foreign agent statutes (FARA — the one being discussed for Rudy, and 18 USC 951 — another one, with more flexibility, that Kian was charged under) require registration with the Attorney General. And while telling foreigners you’re negotiating with that the Attorney General will be by soon to pick up the disinformation demanded does not fulfill the requirements for registry (in part, the point of registering is to provide a paper trail so the public can track who is paying for what), it does change things that Rudy is suggesting that his work has the imprimatur of official policy to it.

That said, the assumption that implicating powerful government figures will keep you safe is a dangerous proposition. If the easiest way to end the Ukraine inquiry is to blame Rudy for it all (and if that’s still possible after several weeks of damning testimony), that may well come to pass.

And if Bill Barr needs to greenlight a FARA prosecution of Rudy as a way to minimize the damage to the Administration, and to himself, he may well do that (yet another reason why he should have recused long ago).

That’s all the more true given that most of Trump’s aides seem to recognize how damaging Rudy is for Trump’s exposure. If Trump won’t separate himself from Rudy, his lackeys might one day decide, then separate Rudy from Trump by prosecuting him, the same way they separated Michael Cohen from Trump.

That said, with Trump, loyalty is always transactional. And if he believes Rudy has dirt that can bring him down — and given the likelihood some of what Rudy is doing is the continuation of what Paul Manafort had been doing since August 2, 2016, that may be true — then Trump will defend Rudy’s work even if it means claiming everything he did operated under Article II authority.

The additional factor: ConFraudUs

The discussions about Rudy’s exposure under FARA, however, seem not to have considered another factor: that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman have already been charged with conspiracy in conjunction with actions Rudy had a key role in. The Ukrainian grifter indictment charges them with two counts of Conspiracy to Defraud the US for hiding what money was behind their influence campaign on Ukraine (count 1) and Nevada marijuana (count 4), as well as False Statements to the FEC (count 2) and falsification of records (count 3) tied to the Ukraine influence operation. Counts 1-3 all pertain to the Ukrainian grifters laundering of campaign funds through Global Energy Producers, a front that (SDNY alleges) they falsely claimed was “a real business enterprise funded with substantial bona fide capital investment,” the major purpose of which “is energy trading, not political activity.” Those funds went, among other places, to the Trump related Super PAC America First Action and to Congressman Sessions.

Rudy has equivocated about his relationship to the Ukrainian grifters (and claims it goes through Fraud Guarantee, not GEP). But John Dowd, writing as the grifters’ lawyer, already stated for the record that he does have ties and those ties relate to his representation of the President. That is, the grifters are working for him, even while he works for them.

That’s important because Sessions’ statements have denied any official action in response to meetings with the grifters, but he also had meetings with Rudy in the time period, official action in response to which he has not denied. In addition, Rudy (whom Sessions says he has been friends with for three decades) also headlined a fundraiser for Sessions. And on top of the straw donations the grifters gave Sessions directly, America First Action gave Sessions far more to him, $3 million, the indictment notes twice.

In other words, while Sessions has denied doing anything in response to the grifters’ meetings, he has not denied doing anything in response to Rudy’s communications with him. If he sent his letter calling for the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch in response to a request from Rudy — whose finances are inextricably tied to the grifters — then it may be fairly easy to add him to the conspiracy the (successful) object of which was to get Yovanovitch fired. The propaganda Rudy sent (as laid out by NYT, and which the State IG already sent to the FBI earlier this year) would then simply be part of the conspiracy.

A few more points. There’s a passage of the indictment included to substantiate the allegation that the grifters were affirmatively trying to hide their purpose.

Indeed, when media reports about the GEP contributions first surfaced, an individual working with PARNAS remarked, “[t]his is what happens when you become visible … the buzzards descend,” to which PARNAS responded, “[t]hat’s why we need to stay under the radar…”

The indictment doesn’t disclose a number of details about this communication: who the interlocutor is, how it was collected, and whether it involved a mere warrant (for stored communications such as email or texts) or a wiretap. But particularly given the seeming overlap between these activities and those of people we know were surveilled during the period in question, it’s a pregnant inclusion in the indictment. It suggests the Feds may already be privy to far more about this scheme and the reasons the grifters might want it suppressed. Add that to the fact that, as WSJ reported, the Feds already have Rudy’s bank records, which will show whether he really worked for Fraud Guarantee or whether that, like GEP, is just a front.

Cui bono

Finally, consider this. The indictment says that the grifters were pushing to oust Yovanovitch to benefit  particular unnamed Ukrainians’ interests.

[T]hese contributions were made for the purpose of gaining influence with politicians so as to advance their own personal financial interests and the political interests of Ukrainian government officials, including at least one Ukrainian government official with whom they were working.

[snip]

At and around the time PARNAS and FRUMAN committed to raising those funds for [Sessions], PARNAS met with [SESSIONS] and sought [his] assistance in causing the U.S. Government to remove or recall [Yovanovitch]. PARNAS’s efforts to remove the Ambassador were conducted, at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.

According to NBC, the Ukrainian in question was Yurii Lutsenko. But Lutsenko has since been ousted, and he has reneged on statements elicited by Rudy implicating the Bidens. More importantly, one of the promises Zelensky made in his July 25 call to Trump was to put in his own prosecutor who would pursue the two investigations — to trump up a claim Ukraine was behind the election tampering in 2016, and to invent evidence against Hunter Biden — that Trump wanted.

The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor bf New York Ci:ty, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The oteer thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son. that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.

President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell ·you about the prosecutor. First of all I understand arid I’m knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament; the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look. into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.

Which is what led to Lutsenko’s ouster.

Moreover, the prosecutor Biden shut down was not Lutsenko, but Viktor Shokin, who has written affidavits which then got fed to John Solomon on behalf of Dmitry Firtash, who is trying hard to avoid extradition (on bribery charges) to the US.

That — plus the financial and legal ties between Firtash and the grifters — suggests there may be other Ukrainians on whose behalf the grifters were working to get Yovanovitch withdrawn. Firtash is certainly one. A corrupt prosecutor with ties to Russian intelligence, Kostiantyn Kulyk, who had worked for all these guys — and who is behind a dossier on accusing Hunter Biden of corruption — may be another. That is, Yovanovitch may have been the impediment not to inventing dirt on the Bidens, which is a fairly easy ask, but instead on creating the pre-conditions for people like Firtash to go free (which would also explain the natural gas angle).

All of which is to say that it would be a fairly trivial matter to establish the evidence to charge Rudy in ConFraudUs along with the Ukrainian grifters, as SDNY already has a lot of the evidence it would need.

Yes, Rudy Giuliani is, by all appearances, in blatant violation of FARA. Yes, he may get away with that, in part because DOJ hasn’t yet figured out hard to charge it consistently (though knows what not to do given recent history), and in part because he has made sure to implicate Trump and his cabinet officials.

But there’s a larger question about whether those same financial ties expose Rudy for much uglier conspiracy charges.

DOJ Confirms that Trump’s Anti-Biden Propagandists Were in the Employ of a Russian

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Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested last night as they tried to flee the country in advance of Congressional subpoenas for their testimony. These are the men who, their recently hired attorney, former Trump personal attorney John Dowd, described how intertwined their actions were with the President’s in an effort to excuse them from testifying in the House impeachment inquiry.

Messrs. Parnas and Fruman assisted Mr. Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump. Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman have also been represented by Mr. Giuliani in connection with their personal and business affairs. They also assisted Joseph DiGenova and Victoria Toensing in their law practice. Thus, certain information you seek in your September 30, 2019, letter is protected by the attorney-client, attorney work product and other privileges.

The indictment charging Parnas and Fruman with multiple counts of conspiracy lays out how they pursued policies pushed by a Ukrainian politician (and, not coincidentally, Trump), in part by getting Congressman Pete Sessions’ help.

[T]hese contributions were made for the purpose of gaining influence with politicians so as to advance their own personal financial interests and the political interests of Ukrainian government officials, including at least one Ukrainian government official with whom they were working. For example, in or about May and June 2018, PARNAS and FRUMAN committed to raise $20,000 or more for a then-sitting U.S. Congressman [Sessions], who had also been the beneficiary of approximately $3 million in independent expenditures by [one of the PACs they ran] during the 2018 election cycle. PARNAS and FRUMAN had met [Sessions] at an event sponsored by an independent expenditure committee to which FRUMAN had recently made substantial contribution. During the 2018 election cycle, [Sessions] had been the beneficiary of approximately $3 million in independent expenditures by [their PAC]. At and around the same time PARNAS and FRUMAN committed to raising those funds for [Sessions], PARNAS met with [Sessions] and sought [his] assistance in causing the U.S. Government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine []. PARNAS’s efforts to remove the Ambassador were conducted, at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.

This, of course, is the recall of Marie Yovanovitch, that Trump discussed in his quid pro quo call with Volodymyr Zelensky.

What the indictment is less clear about is who the Russian bankrolling all this is. A key part of Parnas and Fruman’s crime is that they were laundering funds for “a foreign national Russian citizen and businessman.”

From in or about June 2018 through April 2019, LEV PARNAS, IGOR FRUMAN, DAVID CORREIA, and ANDREY KUKUSHKIN, the defendants, and others known and unknown, conspired to make political donations — funded by Foreign National-1 [the Russian] — to politicians and candidates for federal and State office to gain influence with candidates as to policies that would benefit a future business venture.

Putting together the Dowd letter and the indictment, it becomes clear that the John Solomon propaganda that Trump was pushing (and which Rudy sent to Mike Pompeo’s State Department as part of the effort to get rid of Yovanovitch and which Lindsey Graham just invited Rudy to come present to the Senate Judiciary Committee) was funded by an as yet unnamed Russian.

It was only a matter of time before Trump was implicated in ConFraudUs with Russia.

Update: Now add this passage from Trump’s call to Zelensky, and it becomes hard to see how Trump is not implicated in the charged conspiracy.

President Zelenskyy: Yes it is. very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and  have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation [into the source of the Russian investigation], I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you.

The Pre·sident: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York Ci:ty, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The otter thing, There’s a lot of. talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.

President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell ·you about the prosecutor. First of all I understand and I’m knowledgable about the situation. Since we have won· the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one. who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.

The President: Well, she’s going to go through some things.

At a minimum, this makes it clear that the withdrawal of Yovanovitch — which was done with the involvement of Rudy and Parnas –was tied up in the quid pro quo extorted on that call. Indeed, Trump’s suggestion she was “going to go through some things” suggests far worse.

But it is also at least likely that one of the two prosecutors Rudy was pitching was the Ukrainian involved mentioned elsewhere in this indictment.

All of which provides substantial evidence that the quid pro quo Trump engaged in on July 24 — the day after Mueller testified before Congress — is just a continuation of the conspiracy charged in the Parnas and Fruman indictment.