‘The most powerful man in the world came after our family’

‘I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now,’ former New York mayor’s daughter writes in Vanity FairRudy Giuliani’s daughter has endorsed Joe Biden for president in an essay for Vanity Fair, writing that in this historic election “none of us can afford to be silent”.“My father is Rudy Giuliani,” Caroline Rose Giuliani said in the magazine. “We are multiverses apart, politically and otherwise. I’ve spent a lifetime forging an identity in the arts separate from my last name, so publicly declaring myself as a ‘Giuliani’ feels counterintuitive, but I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now.”The younger Giuliani, a director, actor and writer who lives in Los Angeles, endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and voted for Barack Obama in 2012. She writes that since childhood she has engaged in debates with her father about LGBTQ rights, policing and other issues.“It felt important to speak my mind, and I’m glad we at least managed to communicate at all. But the chasm was painful nonetheless, and has gotten exponentially more so in Trump’s era of chest-thumping partisan tribalism. I imagine many Americans can relate to the helpless feeling this confrontation cycle created in me, but we are not helpless. I may not be able to change my father’s mind, but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office.”Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is a personal lawyer to Donald Trump and has been one of the president’s loudest endorsers, whether during the Russian investigation, the president’s impeachment or the coronavirus crisis.With less than a month before the 3 November election, Giuliani is back in the spotlight with claims to have found incriminating evidence on a discarded computer of Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Twitter and Facebook have been restricting the dissemination of the New York Post’s article reporting the unlikely and unsubstantiated claim.“If being the daughter of a polarizing mayor who became the president’s personal bulldog has taught me anything, it is that corruption starts with ‘yes-men’ and women, the cronies who create an echo chamber of lies and subservience to maintain their proximity to power,” his daughter writes.“We have to stand and fight,” she argues. “The only way to end this nightmare is to vote. There is hope on the horizon, but we’ll only grasp it if we elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”

The Biden campaign Wednesday rejected a New York Post report about Joe Biden and his son Hunter that the nation's leading social media companies deemed so dubious that they limited access to the article on their platforms.The report, appearing just three weeks before the election, was based on material provided by Republican allies of President Donald Trump who have tried for months to tarnish Biden over his son. It claimed that the elder Biden had met with an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden served.A spokesman for the Biden campaign, Andrew Bates, said that Biden's official schedules showed no meeting between Biden and the adviser, Vadym Pozharskyi."We have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place," Bates said.The Post story cited an email Pozharskyi allegedly sent to Hunter Biden thanking him for "giving an opportunity to meet your father" and to spend "some time together." The authenticity of the email correspondence cited by the Post could not be independently verified.Hours after the Post published its article, Facebook said on Wednesday that it had decided to limit the distribution of the story on its platform so it could fact-check the claims. Twitter said it was blocking the article because it included people's personal phone numbers and email addresses, which violated its privacy rules, and because the article violated its policy on hacked materials.Facebook's and Twitter's actions immediately provoked strong reactions from Republicans that the social media platforms were censoring them, an outcry that grew louder later Wednesday when the Trump campaign said the personal account of the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, had been locked because she had posted the New York Post story. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., a staunch Trump ally, called Twitter's action "despicable" and termed it "the real election interference."Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been under fire from Trump and other Republicans for years for allegedly censoring their views. The companies, located in liberal Silicon Valley, have denied those claims.Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings have been a subject of intense Republican focus over the last year, including his ties to a Ukrainian company, Burisma, while his father, as vice president, worked on Ukraine policy. Both Bidens have said that the two did not discuss Ukraine with each other. An investigation by Senate Republicans -- and significant scrutiny of the issue over the last year -- found no evidence that Biden, the former vice president, engaged in wrongdoing over his son's business dealings.Asked about the prospect of even a brief encounter with Pozharskyi, a Biden campaign official said that was "technically possible" but very unlikely. The official said that there was "no indication at all" that such an interaction had happened and that regardless, Biden would not have discussed anything tied to Burisma.Trump, who trails Biden in many key battleground states, has struggled for months to negatively define Biden. The president has careened from making baseless attacks on Biden's mental acuity to casting him as an enemy of law enforcement personnel and even of the suburbs.Trump's criticisms of Hunter Biden, however, have been a constant throughout the election cycle and usually featured discredited claims about the elder Biden's activities. Trump's debate-stage attack last month on Hunter Biden's struggles with addiction was one of the most viciously personal of the campaign. And Trump was impeached in connection with encouraging Ukraine's leader to investigate Biden.At a rally Wednesday night in Des Moines, Iowa, Trump opened his remarks by describing the Post article and making a string of unsubstantiated claims against Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, and he labeled the former vice president a "corrupt politician."The Post report described a circuitous and unusual path by which the newspaper had obtained the email correspondence that involved two of Trump's staunchest allies: Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer and a former New York City mayor, and Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser.The article said the emails were part of a trove of material on a laptop computer that was dropped off for repairs at a shop in Delaware, Biden's home state, and never retrieved. It said the store owner had made a copy of the correspondence and provided it to the lawyer for Giuliani.Bannon, who was arrested in August and charged with fraud, informed the Post about the hard drive, and on Sunday Giuliani -- who has been accused this election cycle of taking information from Russian agents -- provided a copy to the Post, the article said.Bates, the Biden spokesman, said the Post had not asked the Biden campaign about "critical elements of this story.""They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani -- whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported -- claimed to have such materials," he said in his statement.The report raises a host of unanswered questions, beginning with whether the email alluding to a meeting is real, and if it is, what Pozharskyi was specifically referring to when he is said to have thanked Hunter Biden for the "opportunity" to meet and spend time with his father.It is also unclear who dropped off the laptop at the repair shop. The Post reported that the FBI had seized the computer and the hard drive in December but did not specify what the authorities might be investigating.The article also does not explain any connection between the store owner and Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello, or why the owner would give a copy of the hard drive to him.In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Costello said that someone he described as "a source" had sent an email to one of Giuliani's companies in September, adding that he had damaging information on Hunter Biden. (Although Costello declined to identify the source, his description suggested it was the store owner.)Costello said that he had called the person, who agreed to send him the hard drive by overnight shipping. In the weeks that followed, Costello examined its contents, which he said contained text messages, photos, videos and emails.Initially, when no one came to retrieve the hard drive for 90 days, Costello said, the source examined the contents, believed they were troubling and then called the FBI.After the documents failed to emerge in the Trump impeachment hearings, the source grew agitated and began reaching out to lawmakers who failed to return his messages, Costello said. It's unclear why it would take over nine months, however, for the person to reach Giuliani in September.Some security experts expressed skepticism about the provenance and authenticity of the emails.The Times reported last January that Burisma had been hacked by the same Russian GRU unit that was one of two groups that hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Last month, U.S. intelligence analysts contacted several people with knowledge of the Burisma hack for further information after they had picked up chatter that stolen Burisma emails would be leaked in the form of an "October surprise."Among their chief concerns, according to people familiar with the discussions, was that the Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt Biden's candidacy -- as Russian hackers did when they dumped real emails alongside forgeries ahead of the 2017 French elections -- a slight twist on Russia's 2016 playbook when they siphoned leaked DNC emails through fake personas on Twitter and WikiLeaks.Facebook said that soon after the story was posted it noticed the controversy around the veracity of its claims and over how the Post had obtained the evidence. As the story circulated, the company said it had moved to tamp down its potential for virality.In essence, it meant that Facebook would show fewer instances of shared posts featuring the story in users' news feeds, the main way people view and share links and other stories across Facebook."I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact-checking partners," Andy Stone, a spokesman for the social media company, said in a tweet.Although Trump and his allies have been attacking Biden over his son's business dealings for many months, they do not appear to have dramatically changed how voters view Biden's integrity.In a Fox News poll conducted in October 2019, 48% of voters nationally said they thought Biden was honest and trustworthy. When voters were asked the same question in a Fox News poll in August, the share who held that view was the same: 48%.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Rudy Giuliani’s latest effort to push more dirt on the Bidens weeks before the 2020 presidential election had some important backers—chief among them, the president of the United States.In recent weeks, Donald Trump was made aware of an alleged secret trove of material about Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings and private life, and was keen on getting it out into the public domain as soon as possible, according to two sources familiar with the matter.“Have you heard about this [hard drive]?” one of the people recalled the president asking recently. The president made clear this latest salvo against the Bidens had his approval, as Trump has been consistently supportive of his lawyer Giuliani's efforts on the Joe and Hunter Biden—before, during, and well after the impeachment proceedings.On Wednesday morning, the New York Post began printing a series of stories, supposedly based on the contents of a hard drive from a laptop computer that Hunter Biden allegedly left at a Wilmington, DE repair shop.“The president knew [in recent weeks] that Rudy had something big coming on the Biden family,” one of these knowledgeable sources said. “I remember hearing…something about files, and corruption, and something about sex and drugs…It was evident that the president was interested and wanted it done before the election.”Multiple senior-level officials in Trumpworld, including some on the reelection effort, were aware of a secret dossier or a hard drive regarding salacious and potentially damaging information on Hunter several weeks before the story broke in the Post, two other individuals with direct knowledge tell The Daily Beast. Some officials were eager to keep hitting the Biden family on corruption allegations before Election Day. It is unclear if any of these officials had direct contact with Giuliani about the exact contents of the hard drive.Giuliani did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story by press time. White House and Trump 2020 spokespeople did not respond, either.The ongoing efforts by Giuliani, Trump, and other prominent Republicans to push unverified dirt on the Biden family not only illustrates the degree to which nefariously obtained documents and rumor and disinformation have become a form of modern campaign currency; but also, just how comfortable the president and his team are peddling it. The latest round of Hunter Biden attacks come approximately one year after President Trump found himself embroiled in impeachment investigations for using the levers of government to try and help Giuliani dig up dirt in Ukraine on the Bidens. Both then and now, serious questions remain about the validity of the documents they’ve pointed to and the ethics and accuracy of the charges they pushed.For example, metadata on the PDF files purporting to show Hunter Biden’s emails published by the Post suggest they were created on a Mac laptop on September 29 and October 10, 2019—around the same time Giuliani’s Ukrainian associates who helped him dig up dirt on the Bidens, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, were arrested and charged with breaking campaign finance laws. The timing of the creation of those PDF files—several months after Biden allegedly dropped off his laptop at the PC repair store in April 2019—raises questions about how and when Giuliani came into possession of the purported emails.And then there are questions around how the laptop allegedly found its way to the FBI. On Wednesday, a reporter with The Daily Beast tracked down John Paul Mac Isaac, a worker at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, after reports surfaced that his store at one point possessed Hunter Biden’s computer. Mac Isaac was nervous and quiet throughout a one-hour interview, and his account kept shifting. He wavered back and forth between saying he had gone to the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the materials and the FBI had approached him. He would not comment on whether he had been in touch with Giuliani, one of President Trump’s personal attorneys and confidants. And he said several times that he was worried about his life and the lives of those close to him—a fear that he said compelled him to make a copy of the computer’s hard drive as a quasi insurance policy on his life.For Democrats and the Biden campaign, the New York Post’s story sparked immediate flashbacks to the close of the 2016 campaign, when Wikileaks published daily releases of emails from Clinton campaign aides that intel officials would later say came about from a Russia election meddling operation. The former Vice President’s office not only cast doubt on the main thrust of the article—that Biden, contrary to earlier claims, met with an official at a Ukraine energy company at his son’s behest—but also framed the entire charge as a product of “Russian disinformation.”Unlike four years ago, the social media giants appeared more sympathetic to their charges. Both Twitter and Facebook, took the aggressive step of blocking users from sharing the New York Post’s story. In a statement, Twitter said that "Given the lack of authoritative reporting on the origins of the materials included in the article,” the company had blocked links to the story based on its hacked material policy, which prohibits material that "directly distribute content obtained through hacking."Facebook said it would temporarily limit distribution of the Post story pending a review by its independent fact-checkers. In a tweet early Wednesday, Andy Stone, Facebook’s policy communications chief, cited the company’s policy on fact-checking announced in 2019 and said that the move is a standard part of the company’s approach to limiting potential misinformation on its platform.But while the social media giants stayed away, Republican lawmakers have not.According to sources familiar with the matter, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and his staff told other lawmakers on Wednesday that they had received materials related to the contents of the Post story on September 25, the day after the publishing of his team’s Hunter Biden report. They said they obtained them through a whistleblower email account. Johnson told others that his staff is in touch with Mac Isaac and spoke with him earlier this month. It’s unclear if the senator and his team are still scrutinizing the materials. Johnson for months worked on compiling a report on Hunter, interviewing dozen of witnesses about his father’s time in office and their dealings in Ukraine. Johnson and others hyped the investigation as crucial, claiming it would provide vital information to the American electorate before November 3. In the end the report did not move the needle.The Trump campaign, West Wing, and Republican National Committee, meanwhile, quickly jumped on the Post item, with various senior staffers, including the president’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, gleefully promoting the article. Team Trump organized a conference call with reporters on Wednesday morning, during which Trump surrogate and former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi went after Hunter Biden and referenced the Post story. Giuliani himself teased that he had more dirt to trickle out between now and the November election. In a YouTube video Wednesday evening, he purported to have a nefarious text message between Hunter and his family, holding up a sheet of paper with a blue iPhone text message bubble and calling it a summary of a text conversation he’d obtained.Not long before his campaign rally on Wednesday evening, Trump posted to Twitter that “It is only the beginning for them.” And minutes into his Iowa rally that night, the president told his audience that the Post reporting “is a big smoking gun.”Even if the Hunter Biden attacks don’t manage to make a dent on his father’s presidential campaign, Republicans on Wednesday were already hinting that they would continue hammering away at it after the election. Three Trump advisers told The Daily Beast that it was their hope that Hunter-related materials continued to haunt Biden post November 3rd so as to create nuisances or further investigations during his presidency.And yet, the sentiment is not universally shared. Some in Trumpworld said they wished that the president, his campaign, and the White House would simply move on from Hunter-based messaging, arguing that it won’t drag Trump over the finish line to a second term in office, especially in the midst of a torpedoed U.S. economy and a global pandemic.“Whatever Hunter Biden did in 2014 is not going to put enough lead on the target. Team Trump needs Joe Biden’s fingerprints on a weapon or they need to move on,” Dan Eberhart, a Trump donor and chief executive at Canary, said on Wednesday afternoon. “I would rather see Trump’s team focused on what [Joe] Biden didn’t accomplish while in government or his failure to answer his views on court packing. Hunter Biden seems like he was more than willing to trade on his dad’s office, but I am not sure there is enough there to get us a first down.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. 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On Wednesday morning, the New York Post published a story alleging that Hunter Biden dropped off a laptop at a Delaware computer store for repair and that the device contained nefarious emails and photos.The item was immediately viewed with suspicion, both for the timing of it—coming less than three weeks before the elections—and the path the laptop supposedly took. The Post said that “before turning over the gear,” the owner of the computer repair shop, “made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello.” The story alleged that the Biden son was setting up a meeting between a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm on which he served and his father, who was then the Vice President. The Biden campaign has said no such meeting was scheduled.On Wednesday afternoon, a group of reporters, among them a journalist for The Daily Beast, spoke with the owner of the shop, a man named John Paul Isaac who lives in Wilmington, Delaware. The audio of that nearly hour-long question and answer session is below.rptrbnd · Mac Shop 10 - 14 - CmIsaac appeared nervous throughout. Several times, he said he was scared for his life and for the lives of those he loved. He appeared not to have a grasp on the timeline of the laptop arriving at his shop and its disappearance from it. He also said the impeachment of President Trump was a “sham.” Social media postings indicate that Isaac is an avid Trump supporter, and voted for him in the 2016 election.Isaac said he had a medical condition that prevented him from actually seeing who dropped off the laptop but that he believed it to be Hunter Biden’s because of a sticker related to the Beau Biden Foundation that was on it. He said that Hunter Biden actually dropped off three laptops for repair, an abundance of hardware that he chalked up to the Biden son being “rich.”Throughout the entire interview, Isaac switched back and forth from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation that reached out to him. At one point, Isaac claimed that he was emailing someone from the FBI about the laptop. At another point he claimed a special agent from the Baltimore office had contacted him after he alerted the FBI to the device’s existence. At another point, he said the FBI reached out to him for “help accessing his drive.”Isaac referenced the infamous Seth Rich conspiracy theory—which holds that a DNC staffer who police say was murdered in a botched robbery was actually killed off by Clinton allies because he leaked committee emails—as reason for his paranoia. He said he made a copy of the hard drive for purposes of personal protection.“They probably knew I had a copy because I was pretty vocal about not wanting to get murdered,” he said, “so I’m going to have a copy.”Isaac refused to answer specific questions about whether he had been in contact with Rudy Giuliani before the laptop drop-off or at any other time before the Post’s publication. Pressed on his relationship with Giuliani, he replied: “When you’re afraid and you don’t know anything about the depth of the waters that you’re in, you want to find a lifeguard.”Seeming to realize he’d said too much, he added: “Ah shit.”So, Rudy was your lifeguard, the reporters asked. “No comment,” he replied.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is looking into emails that show Hunter Biden introduced his father, former Vice President Joe Biden, to a Ukrainian adviser to Burisma Holdings in 2015. According to a Fox News report, Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) said the committee has been in contact with the person who provided the emails, which first appeared in a New York Post report on Wednesday. The committee is working to verify the information, Johnson said.According to the report, Joe Biden met with Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi, in April 2015 in Washington D.C., at the request of his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company from 2014 to 2019 while his father headed the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy."We regularly speak with individuals who email the committee’s whistleblower account to determine whether we can validate their claims," Johnson told Fox News. "Although we consider those communications to be confidential, because the individual in this instance spoke with the media about his contact with the committee, we can confirm receipt of his email complaint, have been in contact with the whistleblower, and are in the process of validating the information he provided.”The Post report detailed a collection of documents the paper received from Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal attorney, which were reportedly recovered from a laptop computer that had been dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware in April 2019.An email from Pozharskiy to Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, suggests Joe Biden may have met with the Burisma adviser: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”If the meeting did occur, it would contradict Joe Biden's claims that he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”The Biden campaign blasted accusations of wrongdoing as false and overtly political, and said Biden's official schedules from the time show no such meeting with the Burisma adviser."Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing," Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign told Politico. "Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath."He continued: "The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani — whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported — claimed to have such materials. Moreover, we have received Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place."

ABUJA, Nigeria—Civil society groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo are petitioning the country’s government to investigate millions of dollars paid by the administration of then-President Joseph Kabila to an Israeli firm associated with Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The firm’s goal: to help the Central African nation escape further economic sanctions by the U.S.Giuliani, who served as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York before becoming New York City mayor, had reportedly been negotiating a consulting deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through the Israel-based firm, Mer Security and Communication System. Mer’s work involved an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign aimed at easing concerns about Kabila, whose government was facing threats of additional sanctions from the Trump administration for human rights abuses and corruption.The Congolese petitioners are primarily asking the government to find out if a fraction of the reported $8 million paid by the Kabila administration to Mer went to “so-called consultants” acting as fronts for corrupt Congolese officials. But a potential investigation could also reveal whether or not Giuliani received payment from the conflict-torn nation through the Israeli firm to act as an intermediary between the DRC and Washington.Rudy Giuliani and His Ukraine Ally Sprint Away from Their ‘Russian Agent’ Pal“We are not asking officials to investigate Rudy Giuliani in particular but to find out if there was any fraud involved, as we’ve been told by our sources in government that certain individuals in the D.R. Congo benefited from the deal with Mer,” Thierry Bolasie, director of the Initiative de Puissance du Congo, or Congo Power Initiative, one of nearly a dozen civil society groups which petitioned the government, told The Daily Beast. “This isn't about the politics in America but about the transparency of officials in the D.R. Congo.”Giuliani did not reply to The Daily Beast’s requests for comment.Giuliani isn’t new to controversies when it comes to dealings between the Trump administration and overseas governments. Last year, he was a main player in the Ukraine scandal that ignited an impeachment inquiry against President Trump. Giuliani had been central to Trumpworld’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to find dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, and he also is reportedly under federal criminal investigation related to his campaign to oust Marie Yovanovitch from her role as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and whether it violated foreign lobbying laws.Giuliani’s relationship with the Kabila administration first became public knowledge in July 2018 when he was spotted in attendance at a swanky cocktail party in Washington, D.C., headlined by the Congolese special envoy to the United States. While the event was presented as a chance for U.S. officials to discuss the “strategic relationship” between the U.S. and African nations, The New York Times reported in December 2018 that it was actually part of Kabila’s aggressive lobbying effort to persuade the Trump administration to drop further sanctions.Mer hired American lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration, including firms owned by former Senator Bob Dole and by the Trump campaign’s onetime liaison to Congress, Adnan Jalil. But two top DRC foreign ministry officials with knowledge of the country’s relationship with Giuliani informed The Daily Beast that the Kabila administration began to speak with the former New York City mayor after it became dissatisfied with the work done by the other lobbyists in getting the Trump administration to take a position on the DRC’s political situation, and after spending months attempting to persuade Washington against punishing Kabila as he sought to extend his stay in office despite reaching his term limit.“Kabila was desperate to reach out to the Trump administration regarding his political future and so he wanted someone very close [to the U.S. president] to work as a liaison,” one of the officials, who worked as a diplomat in the Congolese foreign ministry during the period of negotiations with American lobbyists, told The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity. “What he wanted was for the U.S. government not to impose sanctions on him should he decide to continue to serve as president.”The DRC is one of Africa's poorest and most politically unstable nations, despite boasting vast natural resources. In the heavily populated eastern part of the country, over a hundred militia groups are involved in conflicts that have forced around 4.5 million people out of their homes. The area is also battling with a deadly Ebola outbreak—the second worst in history—that has so far claimed more than 700 lives.Kabila, who became DRC president in 2001 following the assassination of his father and predecessor, had been under huge pressure from the West to relinquish power following accusations of corruption, human rights abuses, and extrajudicial killings during his nearly 18 years as president. The Trump administration had hinted that his close allies might be subjected to new sanctions if he continued in office beyond his constitutional term, which he already had overstayed by two years. His engagement of American lobbyists through Mer was a bid to avoid sanctions from Washington.Just a few weeks after the D.C. cocktail event that Giuliani attended, Kabila announced he was stepping down in January 2019 after a December 2018 vote to elect a successor. His decision to give up on pursuing a third term, The Daily Beast learned, was part of the understanding he reached with Trump administration officials, allegedly with the help of Giuliani.“It was agreed that if Kabila announced that he was stepping down, the U.S. will not go ahead with sanctions and will have no issues with whoever he backs to succeed him,” said the diplomat who worked closely with officials at the DRC embassy in Washington. “We believe that Rudy Giuliani helped make the deal happen.”Not only did the Trump administration not go ahead with its plan to place additional sanctions on the DRC, but it also backed the controversial election of Kabila's secretly anointed successor, Felix Tshisekedi.Tshisekedi, an opposition candidate who was not favored by pundits or polls to emerge as president, is believed by many in the DRC to have cut a corrupt deal with Kabila to become his successor. He was elected in December 2018 through a process that was described by regional election observers and the international community as widely fraudulent but was praised by the Trump administration.Foreign Policy reported early last year that when the results of the presidential election were announced in favor of Tshisekedi, officials from government agencies across Washington worked together and agreed to condemn the process as rigged and vowed to hold those involved responsible. But the statement that emerged from the U.S. State Department on Jan. 23 surprisingly did not condemn the election as “deeply flawed and troubling,” as stated in the original draft, but instead endorsed the results and offered praise for the polls—despite leaked documents made available to the media indicating that Tshisekedi’s main rival, Martin Fayulu, won by a wide margin.Tshisekedi had hired Avenue Strategies, an American firm founded by former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and senior campaign adviser Barry Bennett, on Jan. 21, 2019, two days before the controversial State Department statement was released, to “work to advance the strategic relationship of the President-elect and his government with the United States, support visits of the President-elect and his team to the United States and implement a media and public relations plan to improve understanding of the President-elect and his agenda for the people of the DRC” at the cost $90,000 for the period from Jan. 22 through Feb. 28, 2019, based on documents published on the U.S. Department of Justice’s fara.gov website (PDF). The Daily Beast has learned that this arrangement was the brainchild of the then-outgoing Kabila administration, which wanted the incoming president to immediately win the cooperation of the U.S. government.“Kabila wanted the Trump administration to believe that the incoming president was someone they could easily work with,” said the diplomat. “It was a plan that was conceived long before the elections.”Months before the presidential votes, senior DRC foreign ministry officials were confident that the outcome of the polls would be backed by the U.S. because they believed Trump’s close associates — Giuliani in particular — would do everything possible to ensure that Kabila faced no uncertainty as he leaves office.“What we kept being told by colleagues who dealt with the American lobbyists was that Trump’s lawyer would ensure that Kabila was fine,” another top official from the ministry who also did not want to be named, told The Daily Beast. “It was exactly the assurance the government needed because there was fear that if Kabila rigged the elections for his candidate, the Americans would make sure he is embarrassed.”The manner in which Giuliani, and the lobbyists before him, were allegedly engaged by the Kabila administration was said to not be straightforward. Key officials in the DRC government, including Foreign Minister Léonard She Okitundu, were kept in the dark concerning the deal with Mer as Kabila, who wanted to avoid the risk of sabotage, worked out the details with François Nkuna Balumuene, his U.S. ambassador, and Raymond Tshibanda, his special envoy to Washington at the time.“Most, if not all, cabinet members became aware of his [Giuliani's] involvement when the media reported it a few weeks before the elections,” said the second foreign ministry official, who worked closely with the then-foreign minister. “Kabila and his close men didn't want to risk another Trump scandal.”It is not the first time that Giuliani’s lobbying work has created a huge controversy.The Daily Beast reported last October that despite Giuliani claiming in 2018 he’d never filed a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) document, questions were raised about his lobbying status, with several Democratic senators appealing to the Department of Justice for information on his FARA filings, a legal requirement for any U.S. citizen making contact with the government or media at the request of foreign politicians or officials. Those questions grew when it was reported that his dealings in Ukraine had come under scrutiny in connection with the arrest of two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who are believed to have worked with him in investigating so-called corruption allegations against former Vice President Biden.The DRC presidential elections may have ended with Kabila and, perhaps, Giuliani having their way, but the spotlight will definitely return to the American as Congolese anti-corruption advocates insist on a probe on the country’s past dealings with Mer.Based on disclosures filed with the Justice Department, the Congolese government agreed to pay Mer $5.58 million between Dec. 8, 2016 and Dec. 31, 2017 for advisory services and support in lobbying senior U.S. government officials and key policy makers in various Congressional committees. The Tel Aviv-based firm admitted in its filings it will engage the services of subcontractors to work with officials of the African nation. But those calling for an investigation into the deal believe the numbers don’t add up.“Someone needs to explain how the money rose from $5.5 million to $8 million,” said Bolasie of the Congo Power Initiative. “Everything about the deal seems shady.”The Daily Beast reached out to Mer for comments on its relationship with Giuliani and for details of its contract with the Kabila administration but it did not get any response from the firm.Meanwhile, since Kabila’s successor, Tshisekedi, took office last year, relations with the U.S. are strengthening. In August, both countries agreed to pursue military cooperation, with America offering to train Congolese officers in the United States despite the fact that the Central Africa nation’s military have a terrible record of human rights violations. The agreement has also led to speculation about a possible relocation of the headquarters of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) to the DRC. AFRICOM had announced in July that it had kick-started plans of moving its headquarters from the German city of Stuttgart, as it looks to reorganize U.S. military forces in Europe.Whether or not the Tshisekedi administration, which came to power through Kabila’s support, investigates the payments made to Mer remains to be seen. The Congolese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comments on the petition sent by the civil society groups who are determined to force a probe on the spending.“We’ll eventually take our protest to the streets if the government fails to carry out an investigation in time,” said Bolasie. “A poor country like the D.R. Congo should not be spending millions of dollars on things that are irrelevant to the vast majority of its citizens.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

U.S. Navy veteran Joe Collins, a Republican who is running to unseat Democrat Maxine Waters, has released a new campaign ad attacking the California congresswoman for living in a multimillion-dollar mansion outside of her district, which is  one of the state's poorest.“Do you know where I am right now? Maxine Waters’ six million-dollar mansion,” Collins says in the new video ad. “Do you know where I’m not right now? Maxine Waters’ district.”"Maxine does not live in her district, but I do," Collins adds.> Do you know where I am? > Maxine Waters’ $6 Million Mansion.> > Do you know where I’m NOT? > Her District.> > Mansion Maxine Waters doesn’t live in her District — I do.> > My name is Joe Collins and I’m running for Congress against Maxine Waters.> > Help Me WIN: https://t.co/K4OcfhUR0E pic.twitter.com/GgnmvSWSq9> > -- Joe E. Collins III For Congress CA-43 (@joecollins43rd) October 10, 2020Waters lives in a $6 million house that was located in her district until redistricting caused it to now be located in California's 37th District, which is represented by Democratic Rep. Karen Bass.Waters has represented California’s 43rd District since 1991. Before she was elected to Congress, Waters had been a member of the California State Assembly since 1976.The poverty rate is at least 22 percent in Waters's district, with more than 161,000 people living below the poverty line.Collins goes on in his campaign ad to describe his upbringing in South Los Angeles, where he says he survived a drive-by shooting outside his house when he was a child.“Gangs, drugs, violence, that was my upbringing. And where was Maxine Waters?” Collins says."While I was fighting for this country, Maxine Waters could not be bothered to fight for her own district here in America. And when I returned from war, I came back to my community as a war zone," continues Collins, who served 13 years in the Navy and fought in the Iraq War.Collins outlined some of his priorities for change in the district, including combatting the lack of quality education, gang activity, the sky-high crime rate, and homelessness.In recent years, Waters has been outspoken about her opposition to the Trump administration, at one point encouraging her supporters to harass administration officials if they spot them in public. She was also one of the loudest voices calling for the president’s impeachment.

So, what crime would you charge, Mr. President?The closing weeks of the campaign find President Trump berating William Barr, the attorney general who has served him and the country well. Trump’s increasingly strident complaints relate to the probe of his 2016 campaign, launched by the Obama administration. At Barr’s direction, the genesis and conduct of that probe have been under investigation since early 2019 by Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham, a well-regarded career prosecutor.Trump is ballistic that Barr and Durham have not prosecuted top Obama-administration officials, not least Vice President Biden, Trump’s opponent in this election, as well as the former president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the last election.It is increasingly clear that Clinton had a large hand in driving the Trump-Russia narrative, which Obama intelligence and law-enforcement officials inflated into a counterintelligence and criminal probe. She accused Trump of engaging in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin to sabotage her campaign. The allegation was based largely on Russia’s suspected hacking of Democratic National Committee emails, to which no evidence tied Trump.Even before the DNC hacking, Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, had joined Clinton in beating the Trump-Russia “collusion” drum; and after the hacking, Obama’s FBI director James Comey formally leapt in to investigate. The probe relied heavily on bogus political opposition research generated by the Clinton campaign -- specifically, by its retention of Christopher Steele, an incompetent and stridently anti-Trump former British spy, who churned out a “dossier” rife with unverified innuendo, obvious material errors, and, quite likely, Russian disinformation.Attorney General Barr has described the Trump-Russia probe as a “travesty” because it was triggered on the thinnest of predication and carried on long after the lack of proof was manifest. The probe continued well into Trump’s presidency, forcing him to endure the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller and govern under a cloud of suspicion until Mueller finally cleared him, 27 months into his term. Democrats cited the existence of an investigation as grounds against allowing Trump to exercise normal powers of his office, such as nominating Supreme Court justices. To this day, congressional Democrats comb Mueller’s report for grounds for another impeachment.The Obama administration and federal investigators clearly abused their powers in this matter. Yet, abuses of power do not often translate into prosecutable offenses codified by the federal penal code. That fact was illustrated to the president’s advantage during his Ukrainian misadventure in 2019, when he exploited his authority over the conduct of foreign relations to pressure an ally to undertake an investigation politically favorable to him. Congressional Democrats were frustrated in their effort to find a crime that fit the abuse.In “Russiagate,” the Justice Department can’t seem to find one either, at least not fast enough or high enough up the political food chain for Trump. The president ranted on Twitter last week about the “TREASONOUS PLOT,” and inveighed against Barr in friendly talk-radio interviews over the failure to indict Obama officials.Trump’s wayward invocation of treason brings the problem into sharp relief. Besides being unhinged political rhetoric, as a legal matter -- which is what Barr has to consider -- it is sheer nonsense. The presidency is not the nation. A president is a public servant, and a presidential candidate a mere public figure; neither of them is the United States, on whom war must be waged to trigger treason. Under federal law, treason’s close cousin sedition, also touted by Trump supporters as a potential charge, similarly requires proof of conspiracy to use force against the nation and its government.There’s a reason that the checks against abuses of power in our system are predominantly political, not legal. The discretion to exercise government’s police and intelligence-collection powers must necessarily be broad because the potential threats to national security and public safety are infinite. If a presidential candidate actually was conspiring with a hostile nation against vital American interests, an incumbent administration would have not only the legitimate authority but the duty to investigate, regardless of political considerations. Fear of prosecution after the fact would paralyze an administration, to the nation’s peril. If the executive’s awesome powers are abused, the Constitution arms Congress with the means to discipline an administration and even remove wayward officials from office.Prosecution is obviously appropriate only if there have been unambiguous violations of the law. The one official thus far prosecuted by Durham is a former FBI lawyer who tampered with a document critical to the Bureau’s sworn application to the FISA court for a surveillance warrant. Correctly, Barr has insisted that only such “meat and potatoes” crimes will meet the Justice Department’s standards; there will be no extravagant reaches, no prosecutorial “creativity” to sweep Obama officials into the net. Weeks ago, in fact, Barr announced that Obama and Biden are not subjects of Durham’s criminal investigation.Barr, meantime, has vowed that there will ultimately be a narrative report about the Trump-Russia investigation. That is appropriate in accounting for government misconduct, particularly where the Justice Department and FBI are implicated. It is consistent with the attorney general's duty to oversee the conduct of law enforcement, which in the case of the Hillary-email investigation was carried out by DOJ's inspector general in issuing a public report.The attorney general remains admirably mindful of his role within our system of government and determined to honor the norms that inform that system. We wish the same could be said of the president of the United States.

Democrats plan to create commission to review president’s fitness for office as speaker warns of ‘disassociation from reality’Democrats in the US Congress have announced a plan to create a commission to review whether Donald Trump is capable of carrying out his presidential duties or should face removal from office.The office of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced a Friday press conference about the bill after she expressed concern that Trump, who is under treatment for coronavirus at the White House, is suffering a “disassociation from reality”.The president has unleashed a barrage of erratic and self-contradictory tweets and declarations in recent days that have left staff scrambling and raised concerns over his stability.In a zig-zagging interview on the Fox Business channel on Thursday, his first since being hospitalised, Trump, 74, boasted: “I’m back, because I am a perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young. And so I’m lucky in that way.”Pelosi, who is negotiating a Covid-19 economic stimulus plan, responded at her weekly press conference: “The plan isn’t for the president to say that he’s a perfect physical specimen. Specimen, maybe I can agree with that ... And young, he said he was young.”Trump “is, shall we say, in an altered state right now” and “the disassociation from reality would be funny if it weren’t so deadly,” the 80-year-old speaker added while wearing a mask.Trump reacted angrily to Pelosi’s manoeuvre, tweeting: “Crazy Nancy is the one who should be under observation. They don’t call her Crazy for nothing!”He also retweeted Republican allies, including the congressman Mark Green, who posted: “I wouldn’t put it past Speaker Pelosi to stage a coup. She has already weaponized impeachment, what’s to keep her from weaponizing the 25th amendment? We need a new Speaker!”In the surprise move on Thursday, Pelosi revealed that Democrats will meet to focus on the 25th amendment to the constitution, which contains a clause that allows a president to be removed from office against his will because of physical or mental incapacity.Her office followed up with the announcement that Pelosi and the congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland will hold a press conference at 10.15am on Friday “to discuss the introduction of the Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office Act”.The legislation will create the body and process called for in the 25th amendment to “enable Congress to help ensure effective and uninterrupted leadership in the highest office in the Executive Branch of government”, it added.Although the 25th amendment enables Pelosi to create such a panel to review the president’s health and fitness for office, the House of Representatives would not be able to remove Trump from office without the agreement of the vice-president, Mike Pence, and members of the cabinet. They have given no hint that such a move is imminent.The Democratic-led House impeached Trump last year on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he sought to pressure Ukraine for political favours. The Republican-controlled Senate did not convict him.Trump tweeted last Friday morning that he had tested positive for coronavirus, and he was flown to a military hospital that evening. After a three-night stay, including a car ride to wave to his supporters, he flew back to the White House and caused outrage by removing his mask.He has received various treatments including doses of remdesivir, an anti-viral drug, supplemental oxygen, a controversial experimental antibody treatment by the US biotech firm Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and dexamethasone, a steroid that some medical experts warn can cause insomnia and mood swings.Despite continued confusion about the Trump’s condition, the president’s physician, Dr Sean Conley, said he anticipates Trump would be able to safely return to public engagements on Saturday.Pelosi said: ‘I’ve quoted others to say that there are those who say that when you’re on steroids and/or if you’ve had Covid-19 or both – that there may be some impairment of judgment. But, again, that’s for the doctors and scientists to determine, but it was very strange, really surprising.”Trump has issued video messages and dozens of tweets that, even by the standards of his mercurial presidency, have spun in all directions and sown disarray.This week he abruptly announced that he was calling off the talks with Pelosi over additional coronavirus economic relief legislation, catching Republicans by surprise, only to later partly reverse his position. On Thursday he also suddenly declared that he would not take part in next week’s debate with Joe Biden, after it was announced on Thursday morning that the event would be virtual, not in-person.And the president has returned to the Oval Office despite isolation rules that should have kept him away and the White House itself becoming a virus hotspot. At least 20 people in or working around the executive mansion have tested positive for Covid-19 in recent days.In Trump’s hour-long interview with Fox Business on Thursday, observers found further cause for concern. He mused that he could have contracted the virus from a reception he held for military families at the White House. “They want to hug me and they want to kiss me,” he said. “And they do and, frankly, I’m not telling them to back up.”He claimed that his hospitalisation was unnecessary. “I didn’t have to go in, frankly; I think it would have gone away by itself.” And he made the false assertion: “I don’t think I am contagious at all. Remember this: when you catch it you get better. And then you’re immune.”This was after he emerged from hospital announcing that people should not fear Covid-19, despite the fact it has already killed 212,000 people in America and caused many others among the 7.6 million infected in the US to suffer serious and sometimes prolonged symptoms.And reacting to Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate, he called the Democratic senator Kamala Harris of California a “communist” and “monster” who wants to “open up the borders to allow killers and murderers and rapists to pour into our country”.Earlier on Wednesday, the president tweeted a video of himself describing his contraction of the virus as a “blessing from God”.Under the 25th amendment, Pence would take over if Trump were deemed unfit to serve, with Pelosi next in line. Pence reported on Thursday that he had tested negative for coronavirus.