Romania on the grifter radar
by digby
Trump’s EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland is quite a guy. He has been credibly accused of some disgusting sexual harassment (which doesn’t surprise me at all) and it appears that his dirty work for Trump in Ukraine wasn’t his only messy involvement in things he didn’t understand:
Even before Gordon Sondland’s work in Ukraine set off alarm bells, senior U.S. officials were raising concerns about his communications with officials from Romania—including his efforts to get White House access for a politician with a history of pushing back against anti-corruption reforms.
That’s according to two individuals with knowledge of the situation who say that Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union who is now a major figure in the House impeachment inquiry, often hosted meetings with Romanian officials without consulting the National Security Council (NSC). His increasingly close relationship with one of those officials, former deputy prime minister Ana Birchall, generated significant concerns within the NSC, according to those same sources.
Birchall graduated from Yale Law School and has long had ties to the U.S.. Her husband, Martyn Birchall, is an investment banker who has held positions at international financial firms in New York, London and Hong Kong. In Romania, Ana Birchall has a history of opposing anti-corruption measures in her country and for years supported Liviu Dragnea, a Romanian politician who was recently convicted of corruption, according to two senior U.S. officials. Dragnea served as the head of Romania’s Social Democratic Party (PSD)—a party known to publicly fight back against western pressure for corruption crackdowns—before being indicted for procuring fake jobs at a child protection agency for two members of his party. He was also barred from becoming prime minister because of a 2016 conviction for vote-rigging.
Rudy GIuliani to Sean Hannity: “I want you to keep your eye on Romania. Just watch Romania.” pic.twitter.com/DtcOsdQrjg— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) October 10, 2019
President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani just added another country — and possibly two! — to the list of places where he’s possibly drumming up bogus allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
During a segment on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show Thursday night, Giuliani sounded off on the Ukraine scandal spurred by Trump’s now-infamous July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump pressured Ukraine into manufacturing dirt against the Bidens.
Then Giuliani pivoted to an entirely new country. The former New York mayor urged Hannity to keep an eye out on Romania.
“Sean, I want to keep your eye not just on China,” Giuliani said. “I want you to keep your eye on Romania. Just watch Romania.”
Last week, Trump called on China to investigate Biden, in addition to his Ukraine pressure campaign.
Giuliani’s latest Fox News appearance comes a day after the White House issued a letter to House Democratic leaders rejecting Congress’ impeachment inquiry.
On Thursday, TPM reported that two Giuliani associates who were tied to the Ukraine pressure campaign were arrested Wednesday on campaign finance charges.
At the end of his appearance Wednesday, Giuliani teased that he’s “got another country” on “the list” to keep an eye on.
“We go to China, told you about Romania, I got another country that we have on the list and then we go back to all the stealing [Biden] did when he went back to the Senate,” Giuliani said.
By the way, Rudy has his own Romanian scandal. And yes, it has to do with the same corrupt Romanians that Sondland is mixed up with:
President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is pushing a debunked conspiracy theory about former Vice President Joe Biden. But he himself appears to have intervened in a foreign anti-corruption effort while being paid by Trump…
The Washington Post reported last August that Giuliani intervened in an anti-corruption push in Romania, possibly on behalf of a party whose leader is now in prison for corruption.
Giuliani sent a letter to the country’s leaders criticizing their anti-corruption efforts, accusing them of “excesses” under the “pretext of law enforcement.”
Giuliani’s letter came in direct opposition to the State Department, which joined with 11 other countries just months earlier to warn Romania not to take any measures that would hurt its “ability to fight crime or corruption.”
The letter “surprised” the White House, the Post reported. After Giuliani’s letter, the State Department quickly issued a statement praising Romania for “considerable progress in combating corruption and building the effective rule of law” and urged leaders to “continue on this path.”
“Rudy Giuliani does not speak for the U.S. government on foreign policy,” a State Department official told the Post.
I am sure that nobody overseas believes that. He has been Trump’s closest confidante. Here’s that same crook Sondland’s pal is accused of backing, extolling Giuliani:
Liviu Dragnea, chief of Romania’s ruling Social Democratic Party, fought hard to have anti-corruption chief Kövesi fired. The party leader has been barred from serving as prime minister due to a suspended jail sentence for an attempt to rig a referendum in 2012.
Dragnea publicly welcomed the letter, portraying Giuliani as a representative of the U.S. “The bitter conclusion of this letter is that trust in the Romanian justice system is seriously shaken when it comes to foreign partners and foreign investors,” he wrote in a statement. But the letter has drawn sharp pushback from officials in both Romania and the U.S.
I know it’s hard to keep all this straight. But really the only thing you have to keep in mind is the fact that this greedy lunatic was going around the world meddling in both foreign and domestic politics selling access to the highest reaches of the American government while working on behalf of his “client” Donald Trump.
And apparently he’s not the only one. The corruption in this administration is overwhelming. They’ve turned the worlds only superpower into a full fledged, third-world, banana republic-style low-rent kleptocracy. The leaders of the rest of the world have got to be meeting privately to work up some contingency plans to contain this rogue military behemoth.
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