Why Giuliani singled out 2 Ukrainian oligarchs to help dig up dirt
VIENNA — They were two Ukrainian oligarchs with American legal problems. One had been indicted on federal bribery charges. The other was embroiled in a vast banking scandal and was reported to be under investigation by the FBI.
But interviews with the two Ukrainian oligarchs — Dmitry Firtash and Ihor Kolomoisky — as well as with several other people with knowledge of Giuliani’s dealings, point to a new dimension in his exertions on behalf of his client, Trump. Taken together, they depict a strategy clearly aimed at leveraging information from politically powerful but legally vulnerable foreign citizens.
In the interview, Firtash said he had no information about the Bidens and had not financed the search for it. “Without my will and desire,” he said, “I was sucked into this internal U.S. fight.” But to help his legal case, he said, he had paid his new lawyers $1.2 million to date, with a portion set aside as something of a referral fee for Parnas.
But Chuck Rosenberg, a legal expert and a United States attorney under President George W. Bush, said the “solicitation of information, under these circumstances, and to discredit the president’s political opponent, is at best “crass and ethically suspect.” Giuliani spoke with Ukrainian officials like Viktor Shokin, the former prosecutor general who suggested, falsely, that Biden had had him fired for looking into Burisma, as well as with Shokin’s successor, Yuriy Lutsenko. And he enlisted Toensing and diGenova, trusted colleagues since their days together in the Reagan Justice Department, to help interview and potentially represent anyone willing to come forward with dirt.
But the meeting did not go according to plan. In an interview, Kolomoisky said the two men came “under the made-up pretext of dealing liquefied natural gas,” but as soon as it became clear that what they really wanted was a meeting between Giuliani and Zelenskiy, he abruptly sent them on their way. The exchange, he said, went like this:“They said, ‘No.
There was a brief discussion about Giuliani’s taking on that role himself, but Giuliani said he decided against it. According to Parnas’ lawyer, that is when Giuliani charged Parnas with persuading the oligarch to replace Davis with Toensing and diGenova. The men secured the June meeting with Firtash in Vienna after a mutual acquaintance, whom Firtash declined to name, vouched for them.
In hopes of blocking that order, Firtash and his Vienna lawyers had filed records showing that a key piece of evidence — a document known as “Exhibit A” that was said to lay out the bribery scheme — had been prepared not by Firtash’s firm, but by the global consultancy McKinsey & Co. But Firtash’s legal team had been unable to persuade federal prosecutors to withdraw it. McKinsey has denied recommending “bribery or other illegal acts.
While Firtash declined to say whether anyone linked to the dirt-digging efforts had asked him for information, he was adamant that he had not provided any. Doing so might have helped Giuliani, he said, but it would not have helped him with his legal problems. Firtash continues, however, to have faith in Toensing and diGenova’s ability to work the Justice Department angle. Their contract was just extended at least through year’s end.After Toensing and diGenova came on board, confidential documents from Firtash’s case file began to find their way into articles by John Solomon, a conservative reporter whom Giuliani has acknowledged using to advance his claims about the Bidens. Solomon is also a client of Toensing.
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