Tag: Rudy Giuliani

TAKING NAMES – Rod Blogojevich

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Source

— Blagojevich accused of ‘moral turpitude’ at hearing on his law license: “In a 90-minute hearing, attorneys for the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission took a three-member panel that will decide the status of Blagojevich’s license through his worst hits as governor, including his convictions for attempting to sell a U.S. Senate seat, shaking down the CEO of a children’s hospital for campaign cash and lying to the FBI,” by Tribune’s Jason Meisner.

— INSIDE BLAGO’S CLEMENCY CAMPAIGN, by WSJ’s Jess Bravin: “Rod Blagojevich’s release from federal prison last week culminated a nearly two-year campaign to put the once-prominent Democrat’s case on President Trump’s agenda, orchestrated by a volunteer adviser who once worked for the former Illinois governor’s political opponents. …

“[Mark] Vargas helped get Mr. Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, onto Fox News Channel shows likely to be seen by Mr. Trump. He enlisted the aid of a former National Rifle Association president, David Keene, the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and one of his legal advisers, Alan Dershowitz. He wrote newspaper columns accusing federal prosecutors of excess and sent them to people in the president’s circle.

“But people close to the president say it was Mr. Vargas’s successful effort to enlist support from African-American leaders — notably the Rev. Jesse Jackson — that made the difference.”

Adding my own notes/thoughts:

Black Illinois Dems cheer Blagojevich’s freedom, still shun Trump

“Everyone knows 14 years was way beyond the sentencing norms,” said Delmarie Cobb, a longtime political operative who served as Hillary Clinton’s Illinois press secretary in 2016 and worked on Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign.

Jackson’s team declined to comment Tuesday, but Democratic state Rep. Kam Buckner was among those to praise Blagojevich’s release while slamming Trump.

Blagojevich, a Democrat, was convicted in 2011 by a federal jury on more than a dozen counts, including an attempt to sell the Senate seat vacated when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, and was often used to lampoon the machine politics the state has long been known for. But Trump senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has internally championed pardons and commutations, reportedly suggested pardoning Blagojevich would appeal to Democrats.

Trump Just Comes Out and Admits to Entire Ukraine Scam

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

How are Republicans feeling right about now?
— Read on www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/trump-just-comes-out-and-admits-to-entire-ukraine-scam-rudy-giuliani

“In the new interview, Trump defended the decision to “use” Giuliani, even though U.S. diplomats previously testified that Giuliani had undermined long-standing U.S. policy toward Ukraine…. Multiple witnesses described how Giuliani met with former Ukrainian officials in search of dirt against Joe and Hunter Biden. Other key players described how Giuliani and his allies pressured Ukraine to announce investigations into the Bidens. Trump’s past denials came in November, when the House of Representatives was investigating the president’s conduct with Ukraine.”

‘It’s creepy’: The secretive company co-founded by an Australian that might end privacy as we know it

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

In addition to Ton-That, Clearview was founded by Richard Schwartz — who was an aide to Rudy Giuliani when he was mayor of New York — and backed financially by Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist behind Facebook and Palantir.
— Read on www.theage.com.au/technology/it-s-creepy-the-secretive-company-co-founded-by-an-australian-that-might-end-privacy-as-we-know-it-20200119-p53sod.html

Robert Hyde, a new character in impeachment drama, is a Trump devotee with checkered past

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Candidate financial disclosures filed last month shed some light on the source of Hyde’s wealth. The records describe multiple assets and sources of income amounting to well over $1 million, and Hyde lists work in public relations for three entities, including LightStone Group, whose website identifies it as a real estate investment firm. ABC News reached out to both LightStone and did not immediately hear back.

He also lists public relations work he conducted for Cheng Gao, whom Mother Jones described as a “mysterious Trump donor from China.” In 2016 and 2017, Chen Gao donated a total of $150,000 to Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.

MORE: House committees release new texts for use in upcoming impeachment trial
Hyde also names himself as “consultant/president” of a company called A10 Associates, a state and federal political lobbying firm active in Washington, DC, Indiana, and Massachusetts. Jessica Tocco, the CEO at A10, disputed Hyde’s claim and said she had been in the FEC about filing a complaint.

“We hired [Hyde] as a consultant for three weeks before we fired him” in November 2018, Stucco said. “He was absolutely not president of our company.”
— Read on abcnews.go.com/Politics/robert-hyde-character-impeachment-drama-trump-devotee-checkered/story

[2018] Who is the Iranian group targeted by bombers and beloved of Trump allies?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Djavad Khadem, a co-founder of Unity for Democracy in Iran (UDI), an umbrella group of exiled Iranian opposition groups, said MeK’s “collaboration with Saddam against Iranian people will never be wiped out from the memory of Iranian people”.

Khadem said Bolton’s appointment by Trump may have looked liked a coup for the MeK, but argued that Bolton was bound to act more responsibly in administration. “But Bolton will use them as an instrument of pressure on the regime,” he said. “This is bad tactics, because the Islamic regime will use it to frighten the middle class in Iran, as they have done for the last 40 years.”
— Read on www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/02/iran-mek-cult-terrorist-trump-allies-john-bolton-rudy-giuliani