In July, Buma sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a 22-page statement full of eye-popping allegations, and the document leaked and was first reported last month by Insider (after a conservative blogger had posted it online). According to Buma’s account, Giuliani was used as an asset by a Ukrainian oligarch tied to Russian intelligence and other Russian operatives for a disinformation operation that aimed to discredit Joe Biden and boost Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Moreover, Buma says he was the target of retaliation within the bureau for digging into this.
Buma’s statement highlights Giuliani’s relationship with Pavel Fuks, a wealthy Ukrainian developer, who in 2017 hired Giuliani and paid him $300,000. Fuks once told the New York Times that he had retained Giuliani to lobby in the United States for the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, where Fuks then lived. Giuliani has denied that he was paid to lobby for Kharkiv, insisting he only provided advice regarding security to the city. And Fuks has changed his tune. Through a spokesperson, he told Mother Jones that Giuliani’s work was limited to advising the city.
In his statement, Buma says that the FBI assessed Fuks to be a “co-opted asset” of Russian intelligence services, meaning a person who Russian intelligence used to advance its goals. Buma’s complaint does not name a specific Russian intelligence agency, but a person who spoke to agents involved in this investigation says that the FBI believes Fuks worked for the FSB, the successor to KGB. All this raises the possibility that Giuliani, a former Republican presidential candidate who became a close adviser to Trump, received a large payment directly from a Russian asset.
Buma alleges that Fuks has carried out various tasks for Russian spies, including laundering money for them. Fuks also reportedly paid locals to spray-paint swastikas around Kharkiv in the weeks before Russia’s invasion. Buma says Fuks did so to bolster Vladmir Putin’s claim that the invasion aimed to achieve the “de-Nazification of Ukraine.”
Nice to get some high level confirmation but this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying close attention to Ghouliani for the last 10-20 years. Dude has always been corrupt and doing the bidding of one mobster or another.
It was not one mobster or another. He made his name prosecuting the Italian mob so that the Russians could move into NYC.
Trump and Giuliani are the high watermark tests. If they don’t spend the rest of their lives in prison cells for committing treason at the highest levels, that’s a clear cut signal that certain people can get away with anything, and that American justice has failed.
“certain rich people” or just “rich people”?
There is one thing rich people never get away with, and that’s stealing from other rich people.
Are we sure about this. We have a whole investment industry set up to steal from everybody.
As long as the rich people you’re Sterling from aren’t more rich than you, you’ll be fine.
Sorry but user blocked due to animated avatar.
K bye
… you guys get avatars?
Lol. The entire Republican Party is on the Russian payroll, even if they don’t know it.
I would be much more surprised if Trump and Co. weren’t all Russian assets
Pretty wild how all these Republicans hated Russia more than anything else up until the last few years, and now they suddenly love Russia
Remember when the Democratic Party’s emails were hacked and it was all over the news? Remember when the same thing happened to the Republic Party emails? Except that there was much less press attention…
I wonder why so many Republicans are publicly pro Russia now.
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I love the name! I’ve seen a lot of Good Place references here on Lemmy. Personally, Chidi is my favorite.
What up, forknut!
Ahh yes. The notoriously right-wing mass media.
Faux News? That checks out
Pretty wild how all these Republicans hated Russia more than anything else up until the last few years, and now they suddenly love Russia
They hated specifically the Soviet Union, and did so because it was communist. Now that it’s gone and Russia is a kleptocratic oligarchy instead, they love it. Republicans admire Russia because it is everything they want the US to be.
Well then I guess they want their government to force them to die in battle. I’m okay with that.
If anything, they want their government to force us to die in battle for them.
Those who start wars, never fight them. And those who fight wars, they never like them
While this is true, dictators have historically faced some pretty grisly ends so at least there’s that. The older they get, the more time they spend in utter fear. People who are hungry for power never think about the consequences of their actions and it’s not like they could possibly enjoy their lives once their house of cards begins to tighten around them, they’re just compelled to start and then once they start they can’t stop, because stopping means brutal death.
Well, when it comes to republicans, the thing they hate most is usually who they are: Russians, gays, child molesters. You get the point.
Also medical frauds, tax cheats, benefits cheats, drug abusers, …
What they hate most is people paying attention to their crimes so they’ll just spun up the next drama… Hunter Biden! Hillary! Some embassy somewhere! Pizza gate! Look there, look there! Do t look at what I’m doing, don’t look at me passing bills that will make me slightly richer and fuck you over good!
“Slightly” richer? ;)
I would be much more surprised if Trump and Co. weren’t all Russian assets
But I doubt Trump gets paid by Putler. It is probalbly more like the Russians have some nice and juicy bits on Trump somewhere in a safe place. Maybe a tape or two, or some documents that Trump really does not want the world to know about.
Man… the way Paul Ryan was walking in that… washington is so shady
some documents that Trump really does not want the world to know about.
Like his actual height and weight?
We all know he fucked kids in a Russian hotel and got recorded, right? That’s the only thing he can’t live down.
My, one would really need to be terminally dense to do that. But indeed, we are speaking of Trump here, and it would be 100% down his alley.
Everyone knows all Russian hotels come with hidden cameras. Well, everyone but him.
No0body ever accused him of being overly smart.
Yes, when the RNC and DNC were hacked by the Russians. Russia has tons of dirt on the GOP because the dumb fuckers have no problem putting all their crimes in email. Russia owns them.
There was also that story a few years back how a bunch of Republicans were in Moscow for the 4th of July, pretty normal American behaviour, right?
Yet when I mention this magically no one remembers because it wasn’t run on the news for days like obama’s tan suit.
It’s amusing how donnie’s offspring blurted out the truth about Russia and donnie’s family ages ago, Paul Ryan and McCarthy are caught on tape making a “joke” about Russia, and people are still calling their ties to Russia a “hoax”.
“He swore them to secrecy, like you would do if you’re joking”
I mean, the Russian thing is so obviously a hoax, as the “centrists”, the suspect “leftists” and of course the radicalized right wing and the bothsiderist media keep on saying to anyone that will listen…
And the base: reprogrammable meatbags. Even the ones that lived through the Cold War/Red Scare nonsense now embrace the likes of Putin trying to reify the USSR.
There is a lot of cooperation between the UK’s Tory party and the Republicans through a group called the national conservative group. There is also a lot of similarities with the stunts being pulled by the Republicans and the Tories with gerrymandering and general corruption of the process in government.
There has been some very credible links with the Tory party and Russian influence. We have a Russian in the Lords. Johnson performed some actions that were incredibly poorly judged. The Tories fought tooth and nail to stop sanctions being applied to certain Russian oligarchs that had money in the UK. Johnson’s government stopped the electoral commission from investigating Russian influence with the Brexit referendum. He then went further by pulling the electoral commission directly under government control.
There is now a bad smell about both the Republicans and our Conservatives when it comes to Russian influence. Don’t let Trump slide, make him pay for what he has done, and if that proves to have Russian influence then take everything from him. His kids should not benefit from this.
Lol, the Russians don’t need to pay them. They have all the compromat they need to keep the GOP in line.
Oh yeah they do. I’m sure it’s all child molestation. Like, Trump would fully admit to raping an adult and his base would be like “yeah grab it,” but no one can get away with raping a kid.
I remember reading court records that detailed settlements he paid out for rape. Some of those little boys were as young as 8 if I recall. I tried looking for the records a few weeks ago and couldn’t find them.
I mean, he can’t settle his way out of a criminal charge, and if criminal charges weren’t filed it could have been a shakedown.
I’m not saying he didn’t do it—but it gets sketchy when there isn’t a criminal charge for something to a kid.
Yeah. They go through so much effort to compromise an asset, they can’t let that asset go broke.
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“tHe bIdEn cRiMe fAmIlY”
lol it’s all projection with this mofos
Is he a politician?
Worse, he was the owner of a laptop.
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I’m at least partly convinced they convince themselves those things are true, and that in order to correct the wrong they are then justified in doing just as bad of things, or even worse.
They accuse others of what they’re doing so when they get caught they can shrug and go “everyone does it, it isn’t that bad” and their fan base then agrees with them
I can’t wait to find out that Trump and all his co-conspirators were all involved in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I just have this feeling that they have been involved in planning the whole thing all along, and the plan was for Trump to win a second term so he could allow it to happen or even deploy our military to help Russia. He was literally impeached for extorting Zelenakyy and refusing to send him military aid.
Shitcunt traitor republican. Like 99% of them.
In a headline that isn’t surprising, I find the most suprsing-thats-not-suprising thing is…
paid locals to spray-paint swastikas around Kharkiv in the weeks before Russia’s invasion. Buma says Fuks did so to bolster Vladmir Putin’s claim that the invasion aimed to achieve the “de-Nazification of Ukraine.”
Now, for some quotes not included in the post above:
Ukraine has sanctioned Fuks, and it is reportedly investigating him for fraud and tax evasion. Fuks now lives in London, according to recent media reports.
Nice!
In his statement, Buma says that he developed suspicions that Giuliani, through his relationship with Fuks, was “compromised by the RIS,” meaning the Russian Intelligence Services. That is a striking claim—an allegation that Russian spies may have obtained influence over a top adviser to the US president.
But I guess we all suspected as much. It’s still shocking to see it.
Buma reveals in his statement that he also probed whether Russian operatives or assets were involved in a 2020 Giuliani effort to make a film about Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Oh, no. Let’s find out how that went, shall we?
The anti-Biden film was to include commentary from Konstantin Kulyk, a former Ukrainian prosecutor who Treasury sanctioned in 2021 for working with Derkach to spread “fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations” about Biden. That is, this project was to feature information from sources who the US government later deemed were connected to a disinformation campaign linked to Russian intelligence.
D’oh!
Giuliani played a key role in trying to line up investors for the movie.
Hehe
The investors Giuliani did help find were two brothers, David and Kable Munger, who own a large blueberry producing company in California and have donated generously to GOP candidates.
Ok, so they got funding.
The movie never came close to being made, and people involved in the endeavor told Mother Jones the project was disorganized and incompetently managed.
I can laugh my rear off, but really, I shouldn’t be surprised. What a clown show - MAGAs shivving MAGAs:
The Mungers recently sued two GOP activists involved in producing the film, Tim Yale and George Dickson, along with a company they formed. Giuliani was not named as a defendant in the suit.
The Mungers say that Giuliani helped persuade them to invest $1 million by saying that they would receive a share of the film’s profits. The brothers also claim that Yale and Dickson told them the movie would be “more profitable than Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.”
Oh, really? They were going to out-do Mr. Moore?
Giuliani, Dickson, and Yale also said, according to the Mungers’ lawsuit, that they possessed “smoking guns” revealing Joe Biden was corrupt.
Smoking guns, folks, smoking guns!
Giuliani and his colleagues possessed no such material. The Mungers allege that Dickson and Yale stole their investment.
Ruh-oh! There was no smoking gun - not even one.
Giuliani, according to the lawsuit, was paid $300,000 for his participation in the film project. A lawyer and a spokesperson for Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment.
Of course not.
The icing on the cake for me, if I may say, is the following paragraph:
Buma’s revelations may only be the start. A source familiar with his work tells Mother Jones that other potential FBI whistleblowers who participated in the investigation involving Giuliani have consulted the same lawyer as Buma and might meet with congressional investigators in coming weeks. That attorney, Scott Horton, declined to comment.
Remember when little donnie, the lying liars networks, the Republicans, the “centrists”, a whole lot of the “liberal media” (lol) and even some supposed leftists were gaslighting and proclaiming that the Russia thing was a “hoax”?
How long will they keep that up, by the way?
There was so much evidence. I really didn’t get the amount of denial. Trumps been linked to Russia for decades in his business dealings.
Why would they stop? Just last week a user here who has his own sub (filled with Russian propaganda videos) commented on the “Russia hoax.” Of course this idiot knows nothing and doesn’t care about the reality of it, just like all of his room temperature IQ friends.
How long will they keep that up, by the way?
For fucking ever. They never retreat and never apologize.
Oppo research is standard operation procedure, so not sure how that is relevant. Also, what part was disproved?
I thought most of the Steele Dossier was inaccurate in the fullness of time? No issue with oppo research that is just part of politics
Rudy Colludy
Back in the 80s. Rudy cleared out the American mob to make way for his Russian mob associates.
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What city in a foreign country would hire Ghouliani to provide ideas for “updating security”? That seems like the dumbest excuse for a payoff ever.
They were opening up Ukraine for invasion? It kind of loosely fits in a really shitty way.
America’s mayor and Russia’s puppet.
Literally nobody is surprised about this after the Trump presidency. And people who know a little more seem to think he cleaned out the Italian mob only to hand NYC over to the Russian Mafia. Hmmm.
