I have a bunch of questions about Rudy Giuliani. I would like factual answers to my questions so I thought about posting in General Questions. The are political though, so maybe this thread belongs in Elections. That said, the questions I am asking are really legal questions, so I decided to put this in Great Debates. In no particular order:
[ul]
[li]Is Giuliani the President’s personal attorney (i.e. Trump’s attorney), or is he a government employee (like the White House Counsel) that serves the office of the President of the US?[/li][li]Does he have security clearance and does it matter?[/li][li]Has he been doing the work of (or for) the State Department (i.e. conducting diplomacy)? Is it legal for a private individual to conduct diplomacy for the US? Does it matter?[/li][li]How about the Justice Department, has he been working for them?[/li][li]If he has been conducting diplomacy or investigations for the US Government, can he really be said to have attorney/client privilege on his actions? If his actions are official (i.e. countenanced by the President or Attorney General), does this make a difference?[/li][/ul]
[quote=“Happy_Fun_Ball, post:1, topic:841181”]
I have a bunch of questions about Rudy Giuliani. I would like factual answers to my questions so I thought about posting in General Questions. The are political though, so maybe this thread belongs in Elections. That said, the questions I am asking are really legal questions, so I decided to put this in Great Debates. In no particular order:
[LIST]
[li]Is Giuliani the President’s personal attorney (i.e. Trump’s attorney), or is he a government employee (like the White House Counsel) that serves the office of the President of the US?[/li][/quote]
I believe he is the president’s personal attorney. No professional attorney would be able to act like Giuliani and still maintain his job. This also means more professional staff cannot control him.
[quote]
[li]Does he have security clearance and does it matter?[/li][/quote]
The president has the ultimate say in what is considered classified and what isn’t. In essence, he could retroactively declare something classified, or non-classified, to save Giuliani’s skin. It doesn’t matter. As Giuliani is not a government employee, he doesn’t have to get vetted, so he wouldn’t have an official security clearance. If the president insists on discussing something classified with Giuliani in the room, then it happens. His staff can’t complain, they can only quit. (Professional staff would not tolerate this situation.)
[quote]
[li]Has he been doing the work of (or for) the State Department (i.e. conducting diplomacy)? Is it legal for a private individual to conduct diplomacy for the US? Does it matter?[/li][/quote]
There’s lots of organizations that conduct diplomacy, and intelligence, for the United Sates. Presidents do this, despite having the State Department that’s supposed to do this for them. Some of their non-State Department staff (such as Jared Kushner) do this. The Department of Defense does this to some extent, and whoever does trade missions (is that Commerce?). Giuliani is doing diplomacy, though not officially. I don’t see how that’s illegal, merely extremely problematic. (So what happens when Giuliani and Pompeo say different things?) It’s not problematic for Giuliani because there are no professionals who could control him, or tell Trump to put a stop to Giuliani’s nonsense.
[quote]
[li]How about the Justice Department, has he been working for them?[/li][/quote]
There is simply no way the Justice Department would tolerate him. Although the current Attorney General seems okay with it.
[quote]
[li]If he has been conducting diplomacy or investigations for the US Government, can he really be said to have attorney/client privilege on his actions? If his actions are official (i.e. countenanced by the President or Attorney General), does this make a difference?[/li][/quote]
I don’t think it matters if he has being doing diplomacy or not (in terms of privilege). Giuliani has been so open, acting as Trump’s lawyer and agent in … non-legal things… that privilege should not apply. His actions aren’t official but are countenanced by the president. If the president says “that guy gets to visit me whenever he wants” that’s not official, but it is countenanced.
I hear in politics many people like lawyers as their chiefs of staff because they can try to claim every communication was privileged. So what happens if the chief has been breaking the law for the boss? The privilege should be suspended.
I don’t think the President can just share classified material with somebody without a security clearance, can he? I agree that he can make a judgement on what is and what is not classified, but he can’t just share everything he wants without there being consequences, right? What are the consequences?
Pretty much everyone you listed here is a employee of the US government, where Giuliani is not. Commerce, Defense, the President, are all representatives of the US Government and I believe that Kushner is on the payroll. I don’t know if any non-governmental contractors (think Lockheed Martin) interface with foreign governments, but if they do they would also be “on the payroll”. If Giuliani is working for Trump the person, then he is not working for the US government in any capacity, right? Isn’t this different?
First: IANAL. Now then:
The President is the ultimate source of all information classifications; although innumerable bureaucrats, officers and employees actually do the classifying, it is because the President has delegated that authority to them (or to their superiors, who have in term delegated it to them; or to those superiors’ superiors; and so on). So yes, the President does have the ability to classify or declassify information at will, and even in real time. Two examples that come to mind were Trump telling the Russian Ambassador and Russian Foreign Minister about intel received from “a partner nation” (Israel, as it happens) regarding an ISIS plan to use laptop computers as a means to smuggle bombs onto passenger airliners, and Trump tweeting out a Keyhole satellite photo of an Iranian launch site. Consequences? Well, the Israeli intelligence agent (“spy,” in the vernacular) who had spent months infiltrating ISIS-controlled areas in Syria had to be extracted immediately, and the whole world got the chance to figure out what our Keyhole satellites are capable of. Also, many people around the world and in the US Intelligence Community (and the US electorate) learned something (more) about Trump’s nature.
Now, de/classifying information can be an overt act that’s part of a High Crime or Misdemeanor, even though it’s the President’s prerogative. Performing an official act for a corrupt purpose is a corrupt act. So if, f’rinstance, Putin paid Trump to tweet that satellite photo so that Russian intelligence could study it, that would be Bribery and, arguably, Treason. (Capitalized as the Founders did.) Or if, I dunno, Sec’y Devos had him classify her communications with <fill in the blank> because otherwise she’d go to prison, then that would also have consequences, including violation of the Executive Order authorizing classification. But it’s the corrupt purpose that bears consequences, not the de/classification itself.
(I really must get better at hitting the edit window. :o)
This is Wiki, so take it cum grano salis, but it’s the best straightforward narrative I’ve found in the last few minutes: Donald Trump's disclosures of classified information - Wikipedia
Thanks for the warning, but it does look like classic fake news. A claim being made there that "Israeli officials were “boiling mad and demanding answers” is clearly a lie.
Israel named a town square and a future settlement in honor of Donald Trump, as well as a proposed train station near Western wall.
Those are not the actions of anyone who’s “boiling mad”.
Golly – since there’s only one department in the Israeli government, I guess that’s a good point. :rolleyes:
Here, try this: Israeli Intelligence Furious Over Trump’s Loose Lips – Foreign Policy
You know, Israeli government officials are human beings, and are allowed to have their own opinions and their own emotions. The fact that their Prime Minister happens to like the taste of Donald Trump’s dick doesn’t mean they do, too.
In all seriousness, I believe he is more demented and deluded than his boss. “What’s up” is that he is mentally incompetent.
I have heard this nearly exact same terminology “just because he [Bibi] likes DT’s dick in his mouth, it doesn’t mean the rest of us Jews like it at all” from a person that moved to my area from Tel Aviv.
I had asked him if the POTUS was as popular in Israel as it would seem on some US media.
Also, his friends back home used to call Bibi… Boobie.
My wife and I have decided if Rudy is on tube about something, it should be put on mute and we have to decide what he is saying in the Crypt Keeper voice. Try this out yourselves, friends. It makes it so much better. Even if you use the words he using verbatim.
This probably belongs in its own thread, but… Israelis have a bit of a self esteem issue. We’ve lived for so many years with the conviction that the whole world is against us, that the moment some foreigner says something nice to us, we immediately declare them our “friend” and swear undying loyalty. Add to that the fact that most Israelis don’t know much about foreign politics (seeing as we have so much politics of our own), and let’s just say that far too many Israelis like Trump far more than he deserves. The way they see it, he may a weirdo, but he’s *our *weirdo.
That said, I think many of my countrypeople are starting to awaken to the fact that Trump may be a bit of an idiot and a bit of an asshole, and worse, that he may be untrustworthy. I also suspect that people who’ve actually dealt with him - such as intelligence officials - have known this for a while. We’ll see how things develop.
Good question about Rudy’s security clearance. My suspicion is that he has one but who knows? There are no rules in the White House anyway.
My real questions about Rudy are: Is he a psychopath? Is he an idiot? Is he senile? Is he on drugs? Is he a racist? None of these are mutually exclusive, it could be any or indeed all of them. This guy shouldn’t be entrusted to run a gas station, let alone be at the seat of power.
So, on one hand we have public actions of Israel government, praising Donald Trump (well, no surprise there, after anti-Semitic gatherings, held by his predecessor), and on the other hand we have unnamed officials at unnamed departments, who are “boiling with rage”.
Yeah, fake news.
What the fuck are you talking about (“anti-Semitic gatherings “)? Please explain for those us us who don’t have access to Russia Today broadcasts.
That’s … an interesting accusation, coming from someone who cited a deceptively-edited YouTube video as a source earlier this week. <smh>
I only wonder: Do you realize that you’re promulgating pernicious nonsense, or are you actually taken in by it? Chutzpah, or credulity?
Enough; you have become tiresome. Иди и не беспокой меня больше.
The consequences for the President while he is President is that he can be impeached or censured by congress, and people can refuse to continue working for him. There isn’t some committee or boss higher up the chain that he answers to on a casual bases. Traditionally the desire to be seen by history as respectable, a sense of tradition, and a desire to maintain functional relationships with other people in government have checked the president from playing fast and loose with classified information without resorting to impeachment.
Obama invited to the White House a vile racist and a man, who openly called for murder of Jews, “reverend” Al Sharpton.
Not once. Not twice. Dozens of time.
What did they discuss? Not surprisingly, the White House never revealead the transcripts, but it’s not difficult to guess.
The good “reverend” is known mostly for 3 things:
- Tax evasion.
- His active participation in anti-white Tawana Brawley hoax.
- Calls to murder Jews in the early 90s. According to sworn testimony of one the witnesses: “Then we had a famous man, Al Sharpton, who came down, and he said Tuesday night, kill the Jews, two times. I heard him, and he started to lead a charge across the street to Utica.”. Of course, a few days later, Sharpton repeated his call for murder of the Jews, by leading an anti-Semitic march on the streets of Brooklyn, with the connivance of that other Democratic imbecile, “mayor” Dinkins (if you think De Blasio is a scumbag, you probably forgot Dinkins. If anyone knows how to run a city to the ground, it’s the Democrats, thank God Rudi saved NYC just in time).
But we digress…
So, since the White House never released the transcripts of conversations between Obama and Sharpton ( and keeping in mind Sharptons’ areas of expertise outlined above), it’s a safe guess that 33% of their time was dedicated to anti-white hoaxes, 33% to discussion on murder of Jews, and, if they had any time left, the rest was dedicated to the best ways to evade taxes.
Do you realize that for 8 long years we had a President who warmly welcomed anti-Semites like Al Sharpton to the White House? Изучи фактишки-то, потом вякай, дятлок.
It doesn’t seem to get a lot of press but Rudy has a couple of big (Ukrainian-American) friends/clients - Lev Parma’s and Igor Fruman - who are looking for LNG contacts from Ukraine. They are rumored to be paying him and helping Trump by trashing Biden might just be a side hustle.
It is always about Energy and Money…