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.

  • hogunner@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    85
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • chaogomu@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      44
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It was not one mobster or another. He made his name prosecuting the Italian mob so that the Russians could move into NYC.

  • NegativeLookBehind@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    63
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Syldon@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    41
    ·
    1 year ago

    Wow. Compromising giuliani must have been hard. I mean you need a bottle of vodka and a girl. Where are you going to find that?

    Borat compromised him FFS

  • theodewere@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    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…

    • n0m4n@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • RunningInRVA@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • theodewere@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          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…

          • googlrr@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            1 year ago

            We still gotta see receipts. If it was reported on it will be on the internet. Rudy is a shit bag but we don’t gotta make up stuff if there’s no proof there’s plenty there already for us to go on

        • n0m4n@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

  • Techmaster@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    32
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • FoundTheVegan@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.”

  • nkat2112@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    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?

    • CryptoRoberto@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • TechyDad@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        They call it a hoax because, like any conspiracy theorist, they deem that any evidence against their theory is faked or part of the conspiracy. If the conspiracy is “we never landed on the moon,” then any evidence showing that we did was “planted by NASA to fool the gullible.”

        In the case of Trump’s Russia connections, the conspiracy theorists (who claim that it’s all a hoax), simply label any evidence as “part of the Deep State hoax.” Once that evidence is explained away like so, they can continue to believe that there’s no evidence and it’s all a hoax.

        At this point, Trump could appear on TV with Putin himself and admit to working with Russia to undermine the US and a significant number of right wingers would declare that video faked. Another portion would declare it true, but somehow come to the conclusion that this is actually helping America and that Trump is really playing 12D chess to outmaneuver Putin.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Oppo research is standard operation procedure, so not sure how that is relevant. Also, what part was disproved?

  • LiquidMastering@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    Is this suprising to anyone? Its clear as day a lot of the GOP is compromised by Russian interests.

  • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.