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.
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.
I love the name! I’ve seen a lot of Good Place references here on Lemmy. Personally, Chidi is my favorite.
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.
Well, when it comes to republicans, the thing they hate most is usually who they are: Russians, gays, child molesters. You get the point.
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!
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.
We all know he fucked kids in a Russian hotel and got recorded, right? That’s the only thing he can’t live down.
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?
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”.
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.
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.
There is one thing rich people never get away with, and that’s stealing from other rich people.
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.
before Rudi was mayor, he was helping clean up the Italian mafia in NYC… the Russian mafia filled a bunch of the vacuum left behind, and Rudi and the Russians have been friends ever since for some reason…
It had been reported that the Russian mafia were feeding information to Giuliani on the Italian mob. It was how Guiliani was able to make his cases, build his reputation to become “America’s mayor”, AND also compromised him to become a Russian asset. The story was reported a long while ago, and I don’t remember which journalist(s) broke the story or who they wrote for, nor their reliability, anymore, but recall them as very highly rated as accurate in their facts.
Appreciate that but gonna need some facts to support that one. If nobody is reporting it (other than you) then it is hard to believe, as much as I would like to.
it is hard to believe
it’s anything but… in fact it’s really easy to believe about that slimeball piece of shit… when you think about it…
I tried to find my reading, but the post was too long ago for my searches to pull it up. Some supporting facts did turn up. 1 The Russian mob was warring with the Italian mob over turf at the time. 2 No Russians were indicted in NY at the time, though, by my search of records. 3 The KGB were looking for assets, and Giuliani would be a plum target. 4 The KGB’s MO is to find kompromat and keeps its victims ensnared, once they get compromising info. (Spy craft that all sides exploit.) 5 Giuliani needed money, even then, for his lawyer(s) and his first divorce settlement. These do not prove anything, but I find nothing that doesn’t raise more suspicions, either.
