Has Anyone Seen Ghouliani Sober?

[GreyhoundFan]

9 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I liked her as Jeff Sessions, but she’s absolutely masterful at impersonating Rudy!

I also love her take on Elizabeth Warren. She's one of the best at impersonations.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another of Rudy's associates has been arrested. "Fourth defendant in Giuliani associates’ case arrested at New York airport"

Spoiler

David Correia, the fourth defendant in a campaign finance case involving business associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, was arrested Wednesday morning at a New York City airport, officials said.

Correia has been charged with participating in a scheme to use foreign money to build political support for a fledgling recreational marijuana business in Nevada and other states, according to an indictment unsealed last week that also charged Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman with conspiracy and making false statements to campaign finance regulators.

The other defendants were quickly arrested by the FBI, but Correia had been traveling in the Middle East, and returned to the United States to surrender to authorities at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Correia made a brief court appearance Wednesday, where a judge ordered him released on $250,000 bond. He and the other person charged in the case, Andrey Kukushkin, are due back in court Thursday.

Parnas and Fruman were originally expected to appear in court Thursday, as well, but their hearing has been pushed back to next week. Fruman was released on bond Wednesday, but Parnas remains in jail.

Parnas and Fruman, who had been helping Giuliani investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, were arrested a week ago at Dulles International Airport, outside of Washington, where they had one-way tickets on a flight out of the country, officials said.

Giuliani’s business dealings with the men are part of the federal investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Ken McCallion, a New York lawyer who represents clients in Ukraine, said Wednesday that FBI agents reached out to him early this year, asking whether he knew whether Giuliani was connected to Fruman and Parnas — an indication of just how long federal agents have been interested in the former New York mayor’s interactions with the two Florida men.

A grand jury subpoena has been issued to former congressman Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, who interacted with Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman. Parnas and Fruman are accused of violating campaign finance laws by making donations to Sessions’s campaign that exceeded federal limits.

The indictment says Parnas met with the ex-congressman in 2018, seeking his “assistance in causing the U.S. government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine,” the indictment alleges. “. . . Parnas’s efforts to remove the Ambassador were conducted, at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.”

Giuliani and Sessions have denied wrongdoing. Parnas and Fruman have not formally entered pleas to the charges.

The arrests mark the first criminal charges to emerge from the U.S. government’s suddenly controversial relationship with Ukraine — a complex web of financial and political interactions linking diplomacy to alleged violations of campaign finance law.

The indictment does not allege wrongdoing by the president or his campaign, but the charges of political donations made for the secret benefit of foreign interests adds to the growing legal and political pressure on Trump and his attorney as they try to fend off Democrats’ impeachment efforts.

Correia is charged with conspiracy as part of an alleged scheme involving donations to Nevada politicians in the hopes of winning support for a marijuana business secretly backed by an unidentified Russian businessman. Kukushkin, from California, was arrested last week, according to authorities.

Correia is not charged in the part of the case involving Sessions, but he has significant ties to the companies under scrutiny. He has been identified as chief operating officer of a company called Fraud Guarantee that he co-founded with Parnas. Giuliani has said he was paid $500,000 for work he did for Fraud Guarantee in 2018 and 2019.

Correia is also listed as an officer at Global Energy Partners. According to the indictment, Parnas and Fruman disguised the source of a $325,000 donation made in 2018 to America First, the main pro-Trump super PAC, by giving that money in the name of GEP. Federal prosecutors say that the company was a front used to disguise the funds’ true source and that the money came from “a private lending transaction between Fruman and third parties.”

Giuliani has also said Parnas and Fruman have been assisting Giuliani in his efforts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden and his son, as well as Giuliani’s claim that Democrats conspired with Ukrainians in the 2016 U.S. election.

 

[smittykins]

Randy Rainbow takes on Rudy!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love The Onion:

 

[onekidanddone]

22 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I love The Onion:

 

Hold the phone! Are you telling me the ghoul has been alive all this time? Here I was thinking he was undead. Sheesh ? you think you know somebody!

[fraurosena]

The brazen temerity...

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Let me get this straight. Giuliani acts as Trumps lawyer, but is paid by Parnas (not Trump!), who in turn is paid by Firtash -- a wanted criminal with known ties to the Russian mob, whom the US is trying to extradite from Austria (the very country Parnas and Fruman were going to fly to when arrested). And now Parnas is saying he works for Trump's legal team, and because of that falls under executive privilege? 

Am I the only one who thinks that is just a little... strange?

[mamallama]

The stupid is mindboggling.  I'll have to sit down later and try to figure out the what this all means but clearly Trump has only the best people.

Quote

Rudy Giuliani butt-dials NBC reporter, heard discussing need for cash and trashing Bidens

“The problem is we need some money,” Giuliani says to unidentified man during accidental call to NBC News writer.

Spoiler

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rudy-giuliani-butt-dials-nbc-reporter-heard-discussing-need-cash-n1071901?fbclid=IwAR1R18ZPAHb_sbLeiukhIXjHrMzIdu077ACahtFBFdv9IBaeEqcOA-yn38Y

 

Edited October 25, 2019 by mamallama
still trying to make spoiler function work

[AnywhereButHere]

Well, I guess there is something to be said for talking out of your ass...

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"One idea has shaped Giuliani’s whole career: Everyone is wrong but me"

Spoiler

‘Our glorious political history abounds with payoffs, bribes and bought state legislatures,” a columnist named Rudy Giuliani once wrote in his college newspaper. New York Mayor Robert Wagner was “selfish, self-centered, power hungry.” Barry Goldwater was “an incompetend [sic], confused and sometimes idiotic man.”

The future mayor’s youthful writings revealed more than just his politics at the time. His scolding tone betrayed a confidence in his fitness to arbitrate right from wrong — a confidence that would steer him toward a stratospherically successful career and then toward its potential collapse. Giuliani’s tendency to see people as either good or evil often served him well in his crusades to destroy the mob, fight crime and rescue a crippled city from terrorists. But that same moral certitude has now led him, and the country, to the precipice of disaster. How could the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” a fearsome champion of principle, end up in the embrace of a swarm of shadowy bad guys and a brazenly dishonest president?

A man who once considered entering the priesthood, Giuliani didn’t fight battles as much as launch moral crusades. He first became famous as a heroic U.S. attorney, decapitating the leadership of New York’s mob families, locking up Wall Street’s insider traders and exposing corruption in city government. “I don’t think there’s anybody much worse than a public official who sells his office, except maybe for a murderer,” the prosecutor said in 1987. Later, as a transformative, if divisive, mayor of New York, he held that the city’s inhabitants had a right to safe, hassle-free streets, his justification for his police department’s policy of indiscriminately frisking young, low-income men of color. Zero tolerance wasn’t just a policy — it was his view of the world.

I was a political reporter for NY1, the city’s all-news television channel, when the planes struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. My boss sent me to find the mayor, and I located Giuliani standing on a street corner with a clutch of aides three blocks from the twin towers, one of which had just imploded. They were covered in ash. He waved me over, and we trekked as a group in search of shelter. In that journey up Church Street, I witnessed an act of leadership unlike anything I had ever seen in an elected official. When the second tower collapsed behind us in a thunderous explosion, we bolted up the street, trying to outrun a mushroom cloud chasing us north. I was covered in sweat and feeling more than a little shaken. Giuliani, one of the most hot-tempered figures I’d ever covered, was noticeably calm. He proceeded to game out the situation with the commissioners and advisers walking alongside him, beginning his long, methodical effort to bring the anarchy under control. More than anything else, he telegraphed the message that there was no reason to be afraid, because he knew the right things to do.

In the days that followed, the public saw a born leader rising to the challenge of a terrifying situation. The city was under virtual lockdown, air travel was suspended, and thousands of people were searching desperately for missing family members. While the politicians who would join up with him offered useless platitudes about America’s greatness, Giuliani provided a candid running narrative of the efforts to find survivors, reestablish vital services and reopen institutions. He exuded calm, competence and compassion. His stature grew by the hour. In the following weeks and months, he was proclaimed a hero by heads of state, bestowed an honorary knighthood by the Queen of England, invited to address the United Nations General Assembly and named Time’s Person of the Year. He became a best-selling author and a political superstar. For years to come, he could barely walk into a New York restaurant without receiving a standing ovation. The universe had blessed him with validation.

The opportunities available to him were limitless. He could have followed the path of a war hero, assuming the presidency of a university, becoming the chairman of a corporation or perhaps forming a think tank dedicated to fighting terrorism. Or he could have run for office as a statesman, eschewing ideology for the higher principle of public service.

But because he was prone to framing his decisions in the starkest terms, he instead found his calling speaking out against the dangers of weak leadership and moral relativism in the age of Islamic terrorism. “There’s no moral way to sympathize with grossly immoral actions,” he argued in his U.N. speech, three weeks after the attacks. “We are right and they are wrong.” With that, he threw his lot in with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq.

His politics headed increasingly rightward. Much of what Giuliani defined as moral struck others as deeply immoral. In the years after his Sept. 11 leadership triumph, his security consulting firm made millions from a succession of questionable clients, such as Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. But few were up to denying “America’s Mayor” the right to enjoy the fruits of his success.

In 2008, he entered the race for president and was instantly the front-runner in the Republican primary contest, thanks to his sky-high name recognition. But it was an iffy proposition because of his pro-choice politics and his highly publicized marital infidelities. His strategy for maneuvering around those liabilities by skipping the first five contests and waiting for the Florida primary proved disastrous. In basing his candidacy around terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, he wildly overplayed the 9/11 card, leading Joe Biden to famously quip that all of Giuliani’s sentences relied on “a noun and a verb and 9/11.” In the end, he earned just a single delegate.

His rightward turn fundamentally changed his relationship with a public that had viewed him as a statesman. The applause died down, his security business dwindled as the 9/11 luster faded, and, according to his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Judith Nathan, he fell into a deep depression. Giuliani faced a question only a handful of people in history have had to confront: What happens when you’re beloved across the world — and then you’re not?

Slowly, Giuliani’s cocksure politics took on an angrier tone. He sought refuge in the friendly confines of Fox News Channel, whose viewers continued to revere him, and launched salvos at President Barack Obama, whom he disdained as a dithering liberal reluctant to call right from wrong. “I do not believe that the president loves America,” he told a gathering in 2015. Freed from the glare of the political press, he also focused on an international client roster that included autocrats, strongmen and assorted international men of mystery. He signed on as an “economic development advisor” to Aleksandar Vucic, a candidate for mayor of Belgrade who had once, as Slobodan Milosevic’s information minister, authored a law banning criticism of the Serbian government. He also engaged with Keiko Fujimori, a Peruvian presidential candidate and daughter of Alberto Fujimori, a former president serving time for murder and kidnapping.

Giuliani may one day explain why he felt it was appropriate to work for Ukrainian oligarchs, Turkish gold traders and Romanian real estate tycoons, many of whom he still represents even while he serves as President Trump’s personal attorney. The obvious explanation is that they paid well; he earned tens of millions of dollars by leveraging his Rolodex and good name. But I suspect that he also felt morally justified in representing each and every one of them. Today, even as he hangs from a legal and political precipice because of the scheme he ran to enlist Ukraine’s help in reelecting Trump, he hasn’t betrayed a whisper of doubt about the clients he chose. His moral certitude has never diminished.

The brazenness of this work, with all its conflicts and disregard for U.S. national interests, seems surprising. But it is in keeping with a lifelong pattern. If he thinks he’s right, he’ll boast about it unapologetically, regardless of the consequences. Most famously, as mayor, he announced his relationship with Nathan on live television while still married to Donna Hanover, then proceeded to appear in public with Nathan in the months that followed.

Giuliani is now in deep trouble, but he’s so confident of the appropriateness of his actions in Ukraine that he has spent weeks telling television news hosts and print reporters many of the details that now form the basis of the impeachment inquiry. When you know you’re right, what’s the harm?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another great satirical piece from Alexandra Petri: "The butt-dial heard round the world"

Spoiler

A story from the Civil War that I am too attached to to fact-check is that the Union General John Pope used to say he kept his headquarters in the saddle. His critics quipped that the trouble with him was that he kept his headquarters where his hindquarters ought to be. He appears not to be the only one who has these two areas mixed up.

I regret to announce that Rudy Giuliani’s butt has inserted itself into the discourse. On not one but two occasions, the rogue attorney’s posterior managed to telephone a journalist (NBC’s Rich Schapiro) and leave a long, unintentional recording of him railing against the Bidens (the first) or telling an unidentified figure about the need to get thousands of dollars from Bahrain (the second).

I understand that those in Trump World are eager to put journalists out of business, but I think this is taking it a little far. Really? You’re going to accidentally call and send a shady recording to a journalist who did not even have the courtesy to answer his phone? Here I thought you had to work and toil and keep longhand notebooks in order to really get dirt, and it turns out that all you really have to do is not pick up your phone when Rudy Giuliani calls. I could do that! I hate picking up my phone.

This is doing for the art of investigative journalism what those self-checkout machines do for the art of checking people out. Instead of having someone do this for us, competently, now people are just doing it for themselves, incompetently. What happened to the chase?

I guess I am a little insulted, just on behalf of journalism. For Pete’s sake, Richard Nixon also recorded himself ill-advisedly, but he did not then mail the recordings to the people trying to investigate whether he was wrong-doing or not. At least Anthony Scaramucci knew he was on the phone with a journalist when he, er, Scaramuccied. Next Donald Trump will accidentally FaceTime into “Fox & Friends,” and we will hear a loud thump and then his voice distinctly saying, “To be very clear, this is a quid pro quo, no matter what anyone says to the contrary, and it’s the bad kind.”

A theory I have also seen floating around on Twitter is that part of the president’s lawyer is trying to set itself up as a leaker (better than other ways this might happen) so it can get sympathy from the public generally, perhaps preparatory to seceding. I, for one, would buy a book by this anonymous source. It is silent but deadly. How would you feel after being sat on by Rudy Giuliani for all these years?

These are the masterminds of the Trump administration. These are the Best People, about whom we have heard so much. This is their brilliant strategy from the seat of power. They are incapable of sitting on a story, although they are capable of sitting on other things.

 

[fraurosena]

Rudy Giuliani needed Apple genius help to unlock his iPhone after named Trump cybersecurity adviser

Quote

Less than a month after he was named President Donald Trump’s cybersecurity adviser in 2017, Rudy Giuliani walked into an Apple store in downtown San Francisco.

He wasn’t looking for a new gadget. Giuliani was looking for help.

He was locked out of his iPhone because he had forgotten the passcode and entered the wrong one at least 10 times, according to two people familiar with the matter and a photo of an internal Apple store memo obtained by NBC News.

“Very sloppy,” said one of the people, a former Apple store employee who was there on the day that Giuliani stopped by in February 2017.

“Trump had just named him as an informal adviser on cybersecurity and here, he couldn’t even master the fundamentals of securing your own device.”

A forgotten password is among the most common missteps in the digital age.

But Giuliani’s handling of the situation calls into question his understanding of basic security measures and raises the prospect that, as someone in the president's inner circle, his electronic devices are especially vulnerable to hackers, two former FBI cyber experts told NBC News.

“There’s no way he should be going to a commercial location to ask for that assistance,” said E.J. Hilbert, a former FBI agent for cybercrime and terrorism.

Michael Anaya, a former FBI supervisory special agent who led a cyber squad for four years, reacted with astonishment when told about Giuliani’s Apple store visit.

“That’s crazy,” he said.

Anaya said someone in Giuliani’s position should never allow a person he didn’t know to access his device.

“You’re trusting that person in the store not to look at other information that is beyond what you’re there to get assistance for,” said Anaya, who now works as the head of global investigations for the DEVCON cybersecurity firm. "That’s a lot of trust you’re putting into an individual that you don’t know.”

Anaya said protocols should be in place so White House staffers, not random Apple store employees, are the ones who help Giuliani deal with any technical issues related to his phone.

“It’s unnerving to think that this individual has access to the most powerful person in the world and that sensitive communications could be disclosed to people who should not have access to them,” Anaya said.

The previously undisclosed episode adds a new chapter to the chronicles of Giuliani’s tech follies.

NBC News reported last week that Giuliani twice butt-dialed one of its reporters, leaving long voicemail messages in which he is heard discussing the Bidens, business in Bahrain and his need for cash.

Both of the accidental calls were made in the hours after Giuliani had spoken with the reporter.

In the first voicemail message left on Sept. 28, Giuliani can be heard bashing Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as recounting his effort to push Ukraine to launch an investigation into the Bidens. The second recording, left on Oct. 16, captured Giuliani talking to an unidentified man about Bahrain.

“The problem is we need some money,” Giuliani says in the voicemail message. “We need a few hundred thousand.”

Giuliani’s effort to push Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden has made him a key figure in the impeachment inquiry playing out in Washington. Despite being the president's personal lawyer, Giuliani is not a White House employee and has said he doesn't have security clearance.

Spurred by the recordings, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a presidential candidate, is planning to send a letter to the State Department inspector general Thursday demanding an expanded investigation into Giuliani’s overseas activities, Harris’s office told NBC News.

Harris noted in a draft of the letter that Giuliani was “recently overheard discussing suspicious financial arrangements in Bahrain and Turkey.”

“These reports raise a number of serious concerns, especially given allegations that Mr. Giuliani is running a ‘shadow foreign policy,’” Harris added in the draft letter, obtained by NBC News.

Giuliani was named Trump’s cybersecurity adviser on Jan. 12, 2017, an informal position outside of the government.

“This is a rapidly evolving field both as to intrusions and solutions and it is critically important to get timely information from all sources,” the presidential transition office said in a statement on that day. “Mr. Giuliani was asked to initiate this process because of his long and very successful government career in law enforcement and his now sixteen years of work providing security solutions in the private sector.”

Exactly 26 days later, Giuliani was among a group of people standing outside the Apple store in San Francisco’s Union Square neighborhood before its doors swung open at 10 a.m., according to a former store employee.

“Stores send out a preliminary scout about 15 minutes before the store opens, in order to try to organize the queues for the day,” the ex-employee said. “Rudy G. came across. I forget if I heard it via walkie-talkie, word of mouth, or the software that organized the appointment system.”

The Apple store internal memo explained what happened next.

“Customer came in with an iPhone that had a forgotten passcode and the phone had been disabled,” reads the memo, time stamped 11:20 a.m. on Feb. 7, 2017.

“Proceeded with DFU (device firmware update) restore and will set up the phone again from a current iCloud backup.”

In less technical terms, Giuliani’s phone had to be erased and set up as new because it locked him out after the wrong passcode was entered multiple times.

An NBC News review of the metadata of the photo showing the internal memo — the time and location information embedded in most digital photos — confirmed that it was taken on Feb. 7, 2017, inside the Apple store in San Francisco's Union Square. In addition to the former store employee, a second person familiar with the matter confirmed that Giuliani came to the store that day to get help restoring his disabled iPhone.

The device is listed on the internal memo as an out-of-warranty iPhone 6.

The name on the memo is Rudolph Giuliani. The phone number is connected to his consulting firm Giuliani Partners. And the personal email address he gave to the Apple store includes elements of his personal life.

NBC News sent an email to that personal address Wednesday afternoon with the name of this reporter below a brief message: “Mr. Giuliani — Trying to get in touch with you.”

Two minutes later, a one-word message from the email account landed in the reporter’s inbox: “Why?”

A follow-up email — explaining the details of this article and asking for a response — was not returned. A text message to Giuliani’s cellphone also went unreturned.

Apple did not return a request for comment.

In interviews, the two former FBI cyber experts said the two incidents taken together — Giuliani’s butt dials and reliance on Apple workers to help him reboot his phone — indicate a lax approach to mobile phone security.

“I can understand if you’re an auto mechanic or even a lawyer that these issues are not first and foremost in your mind,” Anaya said. “But I would like to think that for somebody that close to the president, this would be something they would take seriously.”

Anaya said the possibility that Giuliani might be using a personal phone for sensitive communications with the president and others would make him a prime target for foreign hackers.

“If I were a nation-state actor and that information became available to me, one of the first things I’d do is try to install some piece of malicious software that would allow us to see everything that comes in and out of that device,” Anaya said.

Hilbert said he’s also troubled by the fact that Giuliani’s cellphone data is backed up to Apple's iCloud system, even if the former New York City mayor largely uses it as his personal phone.

“All of his stuff is literally sitting in Apple systems,” Hilbert said. “It makes him very vulnerable.”

“His argument could be: ‘This is my personal phone. It’s not a big deal. I don’t use it for work,’” Hilbert added. “My response to that would be in all my years of doing this I’ve never had a case where an individual says, 'This is my personal device and we didn’t find work stuff on it.'”

 

[47of74]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Rudy Giuliani needed Apple genius help to unlock his iPhone after named Trump cybersecurity adviser

 

I was just coming here to remark on that. Benito Ghouliani and any technology made after 1957 really don’t mix. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm surprised he doesn't just have his password written on a post-it note taped to the back of his phone.

[47of74]

I'm surprised he doesn't just have his password written on a post-it note taped to the back of his phone.

His password is probably 12345.


https://youtu.be/a6iW-8xPw3k

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Nepotism rules.

What Does Rudy Giuliani’s Son Do?

Quote

It’s hard to turn on cable news or scroll through Twitter these days without catching the name “Giuliani.” Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, is a central character in the House’s impeachment inquiry. Meanwhile, Rudy’s third wife, Judith Giuliani, has commanded her own headlines as she’s aired details of the couple’s contentious, ongoing divorce proceedings. Scarcely mentioned, however, is Andrew Giuliani—the former New York mayor’s 31-year-old son—who works in the White House.

Rudy Giuliani told me his son’s hire “wasn’t the usual ‘hire my kid’ situation.” “He’s known the president since he was a baby,” Rudy said. “Now, did he know him in the first place because he was the mayor’s son? Sure, but they also had a relationship independent of me.”

The younger Giuliani has served in the Office of Public Liaison, beginning as an associate director, since March 2017, making him one of the longest-serving members of the Trump administration. According to White House personnel records from 2018, he earns a salary of $90,700. The public-liaison office deals with outreach to outside coalitions, and several of the current and former administration officials I spoke to for this story said Giuliani helps arrange sports teams’ visits to the White House. (Sergio Gor, who is deputy chief of staff for Senator Rand Paul and close to Giuliani, called him a “liaison to the sports community.”) But sports-team visits are more special-occasion than scheduling staple in the business of government, especially in this White House, where many title-winning teams decline invitations to visit or are simply not invited at all. (Trump has, however, given a large number of awards, such as the Medal of Freedom, to sports figures.) Steve Munisteri, who was principal director of the public-liaison office and Giuliani’s supervisor from February 2017 to February 2019, told me that Giuliani fills out his time by serving as the office’s representative at White House meetings about the opioid crisis.

Others who have worked with Giuliani offered a different take on his White House tenure. “He doesn’t really try to be involved in anything,” one former senior White House official told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid. “He’s just having a nice time.”

Yet for the differing opinions on the nature of Giuliani’s role, the officials I spoke to were certain that Giuliani had nabbed a White House post in the first place because of his father. A second former senior White House official plainly called it “a nepotism job.” But Munisteri said that anyone who frames it this way “has an ax to grind.” He added that Giuliani, a former professional golfer, was qualified on his own for this particular role, because “it’s the type of position where you need someone with an outgoing personality.” (Andrew Giuliani didn’t return a request for comment.)

Calling Giuliani’s hire a pure nepotism play may be too strong a declaration, but one need look no further than Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and self-appointed Middle East expert, to see how, in even the most senior ranks of this administration, the chasm between experience and responsibility can matter little with the right surname. And one can also look to Giuliani, perhaps, to see the benefits of that dynamic: a well-paying job with unparalleled access to the leader of the free world. But his father’s centrality to the Ukraine scandal could put it all in jeopardy.

Before joining the White House, apart from his golf career, Giuliani volunteered on Trump’s 2016 campaign and worked as a sales intern at a boutique investment bank. What Giuliani may have lacked in government experience, however, he made up for in having Trump’s trust. According to two former White House officials who were close with Giuliani during their tenures, Trump has long been a father figure to his personal lawyer’s son. Giuliani, those officials said, credits Trump with helping him navigate the period after his father’s divorce from his mother, Donna, when he was a teenager, and particularly with helping him repair his relationship with Rudy. “He loves POTUS, big time” for that, one of the officials said, and Rudy told me his own affection for the president stems in large part from helping bring him and his son back together.

From the beginning of Trump’s presidency, Andrew Giuliani, whom most officials I spoke with described as gregarious and kind, has been loyal to the president. It’s a quality that was especially rare in those early days of the Trump administration, when leaks flowed from the West Wing as if on tap. Having Trump’s trust meant that Giuliani, despite his low-level role, was given a West Wing pass, free to move in and out as he pleased. (Munisteri admitted it was “rare” that associate directors were given so-called blue badges.) And as the person with one of the better golf handicaps in Trump’s inner circle, Giuliani sometimes traveled with the president for the sole purpose of joining him for a round or two. Ultimately, Giuliani’s face time with Trump in that first year rivaled that of far more senior officials.

All of which made then–Chief of Staff John Kelly “grumpy,” as a fourth former White House official described it. When Kelly took over for Reince Priebus as Trump’s chief of staff in July 2017, the source said, “he couldn’t wrap his head around” Andrew Giuliani and the president’s relationship, in large part because of Giuliani’s father. Kelly took issue with Rudy’s frequent television appearances, many of the officials told me, griping that the president’s lawyer would go on shows to talk about one problem, but leave the set having created several more. Andrew, in Kelly’s eyes, appeared little more than an unhelpful extension of his father. “Kelly hated him because he didn’t like that there was this random guy … who played golf with Trump and whose dad was a problem,” the second former official explained.

Kelly revoked Andrew’s West Wing access, disrupting the staffer’s otherwise freewheeling setup. Giuliani “flipped out” about the downgrade, the third former official said. Four of the former officials said Giuliani’s father immediately spoke about it with Trump, who then ordered Kelly to restore Giuliani’s pass and promote him to special assistant to the president. “Kelly just wouldn’t,” the third former official said. “Trump would think it was done. Then it wasn’t … It was classic Kelly. Just ignore and assume Trump will forget.” Kelly, the source added, “said the staff reported to him, not Trump, so it was for him to decide.”

As is well known, Kelly was intent on closing off the circle of those in direct contact with Trump, demanding that even Kushner and Trump’s daughter Ivanka alert him to their every interaction with the president in their capacity as advisers. Kelly, as I’ve reported, resented the couple’s meddling in high-profile issues, like immigration, in which they had no experience. But Giuliani posed a different sort of problem for the chief of staff, in that he wasn’t meddling, or improperly inserting himself in major decisions, or going rogue on his own projects—in Kelly’s view, he just seemed, well, there. To Munisteri, however, any White House official’s problem with Giuliani’s access is simply a product of envy. “It’s a jealousy thing,” he said. “He’s known the president since he was a kid. That’s just gonna bother some people.”

With Kelly long gone, the professional life of Andrew Giuliani has been, in some ways, on the mend: Three of the former officials, as well as another person close to Andrew, told me that even in this radioactive moment for Rudy, Kelly’s successor, Mick Mulvaney, has restored his son’s West Wing access (it’s unclear whether he did so at Trump’s behest), has promoted him to special assistant to the president, and takes no issues with his golf outings with Trump. And yet one of the officials said that Giuliani, talkative like his dad, has seemed much quieter of late. It’s a change that anyone who spends time around Giuliani is bound to notice. (In 2009, when Giuliani was a contestant on the Golf Channel’s Big Break: Disney Golf, his fellow contestants often griped on camera about his chattiness. “Talking. That’s all he does,” said one. “I mean, he would talk to this door.”) “I think for the most part he’s trying to keep his head down and not make any waves,” the second former official said. “His dad is making that difficult right now.”

The challenge now for Giuliani, as more and more administration officials come to think of Rudy as the source of their current woes, is whether keeping his head down will be enough to safeguard his position. “You’ve got to wonder what happens if Trump decides he needs to distance himself from Rudy,” said the first official. “What happens to Andrew after that?”

Giuliani’s is a setup that one would think he has no interest in complicating—not when he’s finally gotten his blue badge back and he is, as the first official put it, having such a nice time. His father, for his part, doesn’t seem to be worried. “I can’t imagine anything happening,” he told me. “That would be ridiculous.”

Does anyone else think this looks like of those 'what if Giuliani and Trump had a baby' memes?

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[onekidanddone]

40 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Oh please he doesn’t have shit on the Bidens. 

[onekidanddone]

So who thinks it is really the Trump crime family Rudy Boy has dirt on and not the Bidens?

[RainbowSky]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Is whatever he's trying to say here even legal?

[AmazonGrace]

So he is saying that he is hiding evidence of criminal activity so he can blackmail people with it? 

And that he is paranoid and doesn't trust his security team ?.