President Trump’s lawyer, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is accused of trying to have US-exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen deported to Turkey and delivered into the hands of his sworn enemy President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The allegation that Giuliani sought to persuade Trump to extradite Gulen, head of the movement that Erdogan claims tried to overthrow him in the failed July 2016 coup, are being investigated by the US Justice Department. Giuliani’s principle offence would be to have acted on behalf of Turkey without previously registering as a foreign agent.
It is also being alleged that 2017, Giuliani pushed Trump to drop federal charges against Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader accused of helping a state-owned Turkish bank funnel $10 billion to Iran in defiance of US sanctions.
In the event, Trump did not react in either of these Turkish-related cases. Zarrab later pleaded guilty to evading sanctions and directly implicated Erdogan in the scheme. After a plea-bargaining deal Zarrab testified at the 2017 trial of Mehmet Hakan Atilla of state-run Halk Bank, that he paid over $50 million in bribes to Turkey’s finance minister to help the sanctions-busting scheme flourish. Atilla was later found guilty and sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment.
Giuliani is also alleged, once again without registering as a foreign agent, to have lobbied Trump on behalf of Ukrainian oligarchs and is also suspected of working with Ukrainian interests to find incriminating material on the Beau Biden, the son of then presidential candidate Joe Biden, who had had business dealings in that country.
Giuliani, who had not reported his influence activity in public filings, has denied lobbying for foreign interests. A lawyer for Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by Bloomberg who broke the story.
In April FBI agents raided Giuliani’s home and unusually, his law offices and seized phones and computers.
Giuliani, who was Republican New York mayor on 9/11 when the twin towers were hit, was later hailed for his response to the tragedy and dubbed “America’s mayor”.
He originally cut his political reputation in the 1980s as the Manhattan US attorney, successfully going after organised crime bosses and prosecuting and jailing the “junk-bond king” Michael Milken. His achievements were not however sufficient to win him the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
Now 76, he spoke earlier this year of running again for New York mayor but has since become embroiled in multiple law suits, thanks to his relationship with Donald Trump.
He is under intense legal pressure from at least three civil defamation lawsuits seeking to collect billions in damages over his false claims that Trump won the 2020 election, not Democrat Joe Biden.
Source: Arab Weekly
