TWGB: So, Guaranteed Frauds, Right?

There is a limit, I think, to how much news a person can freaking absorb in a damn day. Two associates of Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, were arrested at Dulles with one-way tickets to Vienna.  They had travelled to Vienna on business all the time, apparently. It's where Dmitry Firtash is residing. Why, it's completely normal to go to Vienna! Rudy Giuliani was just about to go there himself! It's probably something that came up in conversation when Giuliani met with them the Day before when they had lunch at the Trump Hotel in Washington. You know, the day before they got arrested at the airport! For campaign finance violations. Could happen to anyone! 

It was just a bad day for Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. They made it all the way to the airport! And SDNY wouldn't have had to have even rushed everything if they weren't apparently attempting to flee the country? The rotten luck!

So, what kind of campaign finance violations? The kind where so much foreign money is pouring into a Trump SuperPAC and also to GOP politicians and it seems to have influenced the removal of the US Ambassador to Ukraine. You could say they're the type of people who like to give in a world where so many people like to receive. How influential were these guys? Well, it seems like they dined with the president and met all kinds of people. (Trump says he doesn't know them, but he says that about a lot of people he tries to distance himself from.)

Anyway, it's the funniest thing. Giuliani was working for Mr. Parnas' company, Fraud Guarantee,* to provide legal advice and stuff, but Parnas was also kind of working for Giuliani to get information that "proved" Ukraine was behind the DNC hack and to also dirty up Hunter Biden. It sounds all very symbiotic. You know, like intestinal flora. 

It's really striking that all this has such a Ukrainian flavor, what with Trump's completely perfect phone call still reverberating in the news and all (who really knew a little old phone call could be so alarming!) but I don't know.  It really seems to hammer home that the attempts to get the information on Ukraine involvement in the 2016 election and to investigate Biden were very serious (not joking) and that Trump considered removing the ambassador a favor to his good friends in Ukraine. 

Because that's the thing with Trump's "jokes"--they can be acted on by people in, say, Ukraine or maybe China, and it's hard to say he didn't have a constructive intent to collude with them in accomplishing goals favorable to himself. 

Naturally, because of the impeachment inquiry, there guys are so subpoenaed, as is Energy Secretary Rick Perry regarding Naftogaz. I'm guessing Giuliani should consider himself also under investigation. The neat thing about the arrest and the subpoena for Fruman and Parnas though is that they were asked nicely to turn over some documents to the House regarding what they've been doing with Giuliani, and their lawyer (a former lawyer of Trumps!) John Dowd, sent a letter explaining that the House was getting squat. It claims attorney-client privilege, maybe?

I mean, they were working with a lot of attorneys, right? A lot of attorneys were working for them.  (Weirdly enough, Paul Manafort's lawyers represented them Thursday). And the work they were doing for Mr. Giuliani was in connection with his representation of President Trump. I dunno. I think they will have to comply with the subpoenas but I am not a lawyer myself nor do I like to play one on the blog. I hear there may be some crime-fraud exception to the whole attorney privilege thing anyway. But heck, if they can't say they were helping with Trump's "case" maybe they can claim executive privilege since they seem to have been advising the "shadow policy" on Ukraine that Fiona Hill is supposed to be testifying about next week. 

* This is such a good name for a company--Fraud Guarantee. Does it do what it says on the label? The mind reels.