Washington Post

Judge Barrett Mujahedin-e-Khalq Ties

Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to join the Supreme Court, once represented an affiliate of an Iranian exile group as it challenged its State Department designation as a foreign terrorist organization.

“With today’s actions, the Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992,” the State Department said upon delisting the group. “The Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.”

Judge Barrett Mujahedin-e-Khalq MEK Ties

Barrett disclosed her legal work for the group, which she undertook while employed at a law firm in Washington, in the Senate questionnaire she submitted during her 2017 confirmation process to join the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. The work did not come up in her confirmation hearing.
Barrett wrote that she was one of five lawyers on a team that represented the National Council of Resistance of Iran and its U.S. representative office from 2000 to 2001 in their petition to review the State Department’s foreign-terrorist-organization designation.

The NCRI is affiliated with the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a onetime militant group comprising Iranian exiles who oppose Iran’s clerical regime. The Obama administration removed the group from the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations in 2012. The MEK has faced accusations of cultlike practices, which the organization has disputed as smears.

mek terror cult

Barrett wrote that she “assisted with legal research and briefing” for the Iranian exile group’s case while she worked for Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin LLP, a law firm that merged with Baker Botts LLP in 2001 during her employment there. In her questionnaire, Barrett said the counsel of record on the case was Martin D. Minsker, signaling that she was a junior lawyer on the case.
Minsker didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Baker Botts declined to comment.

The MEK formed as a militant group in opposition to Iran’s monarchy but was forced into exile after the 1979 revolution that toppled the shah. The State Department designated the MEK as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, citing its involvement in the killing of Americans in Iran during the 1970s. The department, which also cited a 1992 incident in which five men with knives invaded the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York, said the NCRI “functioned as part of the MEK” and “supported the MEK’s acts of terrorism.”

Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the MEK, said the State Department designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization unfairly in 1997 for political reasons, to curry favor with Iran.
“What’s important is the designation, to begin with, wasn’t established and was politically motivated,” Gobadi said, citing statements by Clinton administration officials involved in the decision.

Barrett played a small role in the MEK’s years-long effort to remove its terrorist designation in the United States.
In the case she worked on before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the NCRI argued that because it maintained a U.S. affiliate office and bank account, and was seen as an alias of the MEK by the U.S. government, the exile group should have been afforded due process rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution when the State Department deemed the organization a terrorist group.

The court agreed, ordering the State Department to provide due process by disclosing certain information it used to make the determination and affording the designee a right of rebuttal. The U.S. government maintained the terrorist-group designation until 2012, when a D.C. Circuit judge set a deadline for the State Department to grant or deny the group’s petition.

Days before the deadline, the department revoked the designation, citing the group’s public renunciation of violence and the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism for more than a decade. The decision came as the MEK agreed to leave a base in Iraq that Saddam Hussein had allowed its members to occupy for years. The U.S. military had been providing protection for the group at that base.
“With today’s actions, the Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992,” the State Department said upon delisting the group. “The Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.”

Gobadi, the MEK spokesman, said the terrorist-group designation was “thrown out the window by the courts.” He called the department’s citation of abuse allegations “preposterous remarks” that “were made as a face-saving measure on the day.”

White House spokesman Judd Deere emphasized Barrett’s junior role in the case, noting that she was not the counsel of record and “assisted with legal research and briefing.”
Arthur Hellman, a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and an expert on the U.S. federal courts, said Barrett, as a junior associate at a law firm, probably would not have had permission to choose her clients — and in any case shouldn’t be judged by them. He said the Supreme Court could use judges with more experience in private practice.
“If we think it’s desirable, as I and a lot of others do, that you have justices on the Supreme Court who have gotten their hands dirty with real-world litigation — some of that is probably going to be on behalf of clients that are not terribly admirable,” Hellman said.

Barrett worked in private practice for two years after clerking for Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and before entering academia.

The MEK has long sought legitimacy in the United States, in part by paying former government officials from both major parties to speak at its annual rallies, and has presented itself as a secular, democratic alternative to Iran’s theocratic regime. The dissidents also revealed the existence of secret Iranian nuclear sites, aiding U.S. efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Former New York mayor and Trump ally Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton have both been outspoken proponents of the group, as have Democrats like former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.

The group, however, has also been dogged by accusations of human rights abuses, after some former members described cultlike practices by the organization designed to control its members.

“I call them basically a cult,” said Ervand Abrahamian, a professor emeritus of Iranian and Middle Eastern history and politics at Baruch College in New York.
Gobadi, the MEK spokesman, disputed those accusations, describing them as part of a long-standing disinformation campaign against the group by the Iranian regime and its intelligence apparatus.
He said the allegations had been proved “time and again to be totally baseless.”

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

By Paul Sonne and Yeganeh Torbati

October 3, 2020 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Rudy Giuliani and MEK

Inside Giuliani’s dual roles: Power-broker-for-hire and shadow foreign policy adviser

The president’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani was on the phone in late 2018, pressing administration officials about his latest agenda item.
a man and a woman standing in front of a building: President-elect Donald Trump talks with Rudolph W. Giuliani after a meeting at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey on Nov. 20, 2016.© Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post President-elect Donald Trump talks with Rudolph W. Giuliani after a meeting at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey on Nov. 20, 2016.
President Trump had nominated a career Foreign Service officer to become the U.S. ambassador to Qatar, a key post in a Middle Eastern country with tricky regional relationships, an important U.S. military installation and vast oil reserves.

Giuliani, who has said he had held a cybersecurity contract with Qatar in 2017 and early 2018, proposed replacing her with someone he said would be a better fit — Scott W. Taylor, a Trump-supporting former congressman from Virginia defeated in his reelection bid in November 2018, according to people familiar with his outreach.
Giuliani’s previously unreported attempts to shape the pick for the U.S. envoy to Qatar is part of an unorthodox foreign policy portfolio he has carved out for himself while also working as a power-broker-for-hire with direct access to the president and top administration officials.
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The dual roles he has embraced is part of what longtime colleagues say has been a transformation of the once-iconic New York mayor into a multimillionaire consultant to powerful figures overseas.
In the three years since Trump took office, Giuliani has expanded his lucrative foreign consulting and legal practice, taking on clients that span the globe, from Turkey to Venezuela to Romania to Ukraine.

Along the way, he also has used his singular perch to try to influence U.S. policy and criminal investigations — at times pushing the interests of foreign figures who could benefit him financially.
In 2017, Giuliani tried to get Trump and top Cabinet members to make moves sought by Turkey while working as a lawyer for a gold trader from that country with ties to top government officials. This spring, he successfully helped oust U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a top target of a Ukrainian prosecutor who he considered representing in a six-figure contract. In September, he urged Justice Department officials not to pursue a case against a wealthy Venezuelan energy executive who had hired him as a private attorney.
Giuliani has said he separates his private business from the work he does for the president for free. He has said the kind of services he provides his foreign clients does not require registering with the U.S. government as a foreign lobbyist.

But since the start of the administration, his actions have caused persistent alarm among Trump’s advisers, who worry that it is often not clear who Giuliani is representing — the president, his private clients or his own foreign policy views — in his meetings at the White House and in foreign cities, according to people familiar with the concerns who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Those worries have become acute since Giuliani emerged as a central figure in the Ukraine pressure campaign that is the subject of the House impeachment inquiry — and the arrests of two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who assisted him in that effort.
Federal prosecutors in New York are scrutinizing Giuliani’s business ties to the men and his consulting business as part of a broad probe, according to people familiar with the investigation.
In several conversations in recent months, Attorney General William P. Barr has counseled Trump in general terms that Giuliani has become a liability and a problem for the administration, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations. In one discussion, the attorney general warned the president that he was not being well-served by his lawyer, one person with knowledge of the episode said.
The Justice Department and the White House declined to comment. Giuliani did not respond to multiple calls and messages seeking his comment. His lawyer declined to comment.
Giuliani has assured the president that he is not in legal trouble, according to White House aides. And Trump has so far resisted entreaties to distance himself from the former New York mayor, telling others that he appreciates Giuliani’s combative media appearances on his behalf, according to White House officials and Trump advisers.
“He’s a good man and he’s an honorable guy and he’s a great crime fighter, corruption fighter,” the president said in an interview with Bill O’Reilly last month.
Last week, even as the House began drafting articles of impeachment, Giuliani kept up his work abroad on the president’s behalf, swooping into Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian prosecutors who he claims have damaging information about Democrats.
But the federal probe — being run out of the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan that Giuliani once led — appears to be delving into his foreign entanglements.
In recent weeks, prosecutors subpoenaed a consulting firm founded by former FBI director Louis Freeh, which hired Giuliani to write an August 2018 letter to Romanian officials calling for an amnesty for people prosecuted for corruption, a policy change that would have benefited a Freeh client, according to people familiar with the move. The subpoena has not been previously reported.
Freeh’s firm declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.
This examination of Giuliani’s activities is based on interviews with more than 25 of his associates, current and former administration officials and other people familiar with his work, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing criminal investigation.
In recent interviews, Giuliani told The Washington Post that questions about his foreign clients are “diversions by Democrats hoping to shoot the messenger” and an effort to distract from information he is uncovering about the president’s political opponents, such as former vice president Joe Biden.

“The Swamp Media is going back 20 years to find anything I could have done which they can paint as ‘wrong,’ ” he wrote in a tweet this fall.
Embracing a new lifestyle
Giuliani first came to prominence as the mob-fighting U.S. attorney in Manhattan in the 1980s, a position that helped propel him into the New York mayor’s office in 1994. His calm, take-charge leadership during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks brought him international acclaim.
George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani are posing for a picture: Then-New York Gov. George Pataki, left, Giuliani, center, and then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tour the site of the World Trade Center disaster in New York on Sept. 12, 2001.© Robert F. Bukaty/AP Then-New York Gov. George Pataki, left, Giuliani, center, and then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tour the site of the World Trade Center disaster in New York on Sept. 12, 2001.
After leaving office, he parlayed that fame into a new role as a paid speaker around the world. The money that suddenly began flowing his way was a revelation, according to people who knew him.
One longtime friend recalled that during his travels for speeches abroad, Giuliani learned he could get paid $1 million or more as a consultant to foreign interests. He was stunned — and enticed, said the friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
Soon, Giuliani began living a much more affluent lifestyle, enjoying a house in the Hamptons, premium cigars, fine scotch, first-class travel and a luxury residence in New York. In 2003, he married his third wife, Judith Nathan, in an elaborate ceremony on the lawn of Gracie Mansion attended by 400 guests, including Trump. (The two are now in the midst of a bitter divorce.)
By the time Giuliani ran for president in 2008 — a bid that started strong but fizzled — his financial disclosure showed he had made $9.2 million for speeches alone between 2006 and mid-2007, many from domestic companies but also from foreign sponsors and think tanks. He made additional millions through his consulting company and his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, the disclosure showed.
But Giuliani’s failed presidential bid left the onetime hero “cast off into the political wilderness again,” said Andrew Kirtzman, a journalist who covered his political rise and wrote a 2001 biography of the former mayor.
He redoubled his efforts to make money, friends and associates noted.
“His values seemed to change,” Kirtzman said. “He was the least materialistic figure I’d ever covered back in his prosecutorial and mayoral days. His interest was always in power, not money. Then he became a man who was very interested in money.”
In the process, the former prosecutor began to drift away from colleagues he had known for decades, some of whom now express bewilderment at his transformation.
“There was a time when he wouldn’t take dirty money or questionable money or money of dubious origin,” said Ken Frydman, who served as the press secretary for Giuliani’s 1993 mayoral campaign, noting Giuliani was known then for vetting donors especially aggressively. “Today, it seems he’ll take money from anyone.”

Like Trump, Giuliani has always had a stubborn refusal to admit mistakes, Frydman said.
“Don’t back down. Don’t apologize,” Frydman said of Giuliani’s philosophy. But he said there is an “an intensity” to Giuliani now that goes beyond what he remembers: “He’s turned on the afterburners. He’s Rudy on steroids.”
Giuliani was soon moving in the same social circles as Trump, whom he had known for years in New York, emerging as one of the developer’s most vocal surrogates in the 2016 campaign.
Rudy Giuliani et al. sitting in front of a crowd: Giuliani arrives a Trump campaign stop in Aston, Pa., on Sept. 13, 2016.© Matt McClain/The Washington Post Giuliani arrives a Trump campaign stop in Aston, Pa., on Sept. 13, 2016.
After Trump’s surprise victory, Giuliani made clear he wanted to be named secretary of state, according to current and former administration officials. But a team of lawyers vetting potential administration appointees raised red flags about possible conflicts of interest arising from his work overseas, according to the officials.
A few weeks after Trump’s election, Giuliani announced that he had taken himself out of the running for the job. On Fox News, he said he planned to pursue his private legal and consulting business “with even more enthusiasm” than before Trump’s election.

Expanding foreign practice
The former New York mayor had robust work overseas before Trump took office. His companies, Giuliani Partners and Giuliani Security & Safety, provided security and emergency management consulting to governments in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Ukraine, among others. He gave paid speeches around the world, including to Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian resistance group operating in exile that was listed as a terrorist group by the State Department as recently as 2012.
Rudy Giuliani et al. standing on a stage in front of a crowd: Giuliani attends a March 2018 ceremony in Albania marking the Iranian new year.© Siavosh Hosseini/Alamy Giuliani attends a March 2018 ceremony in Albania marking the Iranian new year.
But Trump’s election provided Giuliani with a substantially bigger platform — and newfound access to the top levels of U.S. decision-making.
He became a mainstay at the Trump International Hotel down the street from the White House, where he has spent long evenings meeting friends and potential business partners. When he needs to privately discuss deals, he convenes meetings at some of his favorite cigar bars, including Shelly’s Back Room in Washington and New York’s Grand Havana Room, according to people familiar with the sessions.
Giuliani has bragged to other Trump allies that he has made millions of dollars since the president took office, according to people familiar with his comments.
He also has regularly boasted about his access to Trump and the closeness of their friendship, said a senior U.S. official who interacted with Giuliani.

In one meeting with a prominent Ukrainian political figure in early 2018, Giuliani was explicit that hiring him would provide a route to the president, according to a person in attendance.
“It was just so clear what he was peddling. He was pushing for business, and his pitch was, ‘I’m close to the White House, I’m close to Trump. If you want to get in there, I’m your guy,’ ” the person said. In that case, the Ukrainian did not hire Giuliani.
Giuliani used his access to Trump in 2017 to push for two controversial issues sought by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as The Post has previously reported.
Early that year, he was hired by the legal team of a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, who was charged in New York with violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. The matter was of keen interest to Erdogan, who said Zarrab was a political “hostage” of American law enforcement. Giuliani met with the Turkish president on a visit to Istanbul in February 2017 to discuss a possible “state-to-state resolution in this case,” according to court filings in the Zarrab case.
In the fall of 2017, Giuliani attended an Oval Office meeting where Trump urged then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to consult with Giuliani and craft a diplomatic deal that would involve dropping charges against Giuliani’s client in exchange for concessions from Turkey, such as the release of an American pastor in Turkish custody.
People familiar with the incident have said Tillerson was shocked at what he viewed as an inappropriate request to intervene in a criminal matter. Tillerson has declined to comment.
Giuliani told The Post he sought a prisoner exchange but declined to comment on any private discussions on the topic. He said he did not need to register as a foreign agent for his Turkish advocacy because his only goal was to assist the legal case of his client, Zarrab. Defense attorneys are not required to register as foreign lobbyists when they assist clients in criminal or civil matters.
In late 2017, Zarrab pleaded guilty to orchestrating a multibillion-dollar conspiracy to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran by disguising money transfers so they would appear to be legitimate gold trades. He testified in federal court that the scheme was approved by Erdogan. Turkish officials denied any wrongdoing.
That year, Giuliani also persistently pushed Trump on another top concern of the Turkish president: extraditing exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen back to his home country to face prosecution. State Department and National Security Council officials have argued against such a move, but Trump appeared receptive to the idea, pressing his advisers about Gulen’s status, as The Post previously reported.
Giuliani declined to discuss whether he advocated for Gulen’s extradition, writing in a text message earlier this year: “can’t comment on it that would be complete attorney client privilege but sounds wacky.”
“I don’t represent foreign government in front of the U.S. government,” he told The Post earlier this year. “I’ve never registered to lobby.”
But inside the White House, officials were so disturbed by how he was promoting Turkey’s causes with Trump that then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus pulled Giuliani aside in the West Wing in 2017 and warned him against lobbying for the country, officials said.

New proximity to president
Rudy Giuliani standing in front of a wedding cake: Giuliani and Maria Ryan arrive for a State Dinner with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and President Trump at the White House on Sept. 20.© Patrick Semansky/AP Giuliani and Maria Ryan arrive for a State Dinner with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and President Trump at the White House on Sept. 20.
In April 2018, Giuliani formally joined Trump’s legal team to help him deal with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, a position that required him to talk frequently with the president.
White House aides fear Giuliani has used his role as the president’s lawyer to promote the interests of private clients, fretting that they do not know who he represents, officials said. His conversations with Trump are protected by attorney-client privilege, meaning even Trump’s closest aides are not briefed on what they discuss.
Priebus’s successor, John F. Kelly, tried to limit Giuliani’s reach, scheduling his meetings with Trump at the White House residence, so he would not interact with other White House staff, former administration officials said. Kelly also told others he did not want to be part of calls or meetings with Giuliani, the people said.
Giuliani has insisted that he keeps his role as the president’s lawyer separate from the work he does for foreign interests.
“I’ve never lobbied him on anything,” Giuliani told The Post earlier this year, referring to Trump.
But he has continued to take on foreign clients, and, behind the scenes, his advocacy on foreign policy issues has not ceased, according to people familiar with his activities.
In the months after Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team, he began discussions with a group interested in influencing U.S. policy in Venezuela.
In the summer of 2018, over cigars and whiskey at New York’s Grand Havana Room, Giuliani met with Parnas and two American business executives with investments in the country seeking his advice on how to open a back channel of communication between Trump and Venezuela’s socialist leader, Nicolás Maduro, according to people familiar with the gathering.
As part of the previously unreported talks, Giuliani agreed to help find a way to negotiate with Maduro and a diplomatic solution to the political chaos and economic collapse overtaking the country, they said.
Weeks later, he told the group that he had met with John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, to discuss the idea.
harles Cooper, an attorney for Bolton, declined to comment.

Bolton’s distaste for Giuliani’s foreign policy freelancing has emerged during the impeachment inquiry. Former national security official Fiona Hill testified that Bolton warned her not to interact with the president’s lawyer, calling him “a hand grenade that is going to blow everybody up.”
After a contested election in January, Bolton urged Trump to formally recognize legislative leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s leader instead. Maduro has refused to abdicate and the United States imposed stiffer sanctions in response.
By this summer, Giuliani had picked up an important Venezuelan client: energy executive Alejandro Betancourt López, who hired Giuliani to help him contend with a Justice Department investigation of alleged money laundering and bribery, according to people familiar with the situation.
Giuliani stayed at Betancourt’s historic estate outside Madrid in August, when he met with a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and urged him to open investigations into the 2016 election and Biden’s son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian gas company , as The Post previously reported.
On Aug. 13, days after returning from Madrid, Giuliani was back at Grand Havana Room, meeting with another potential client: the National Bank of Ukraine, which had taken over a bank once owned by Ukrainian businessman Ihor Kolomoisky, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
He suggested that lawyers with the law firm Quinn Emanuel, which represents the Ukrainian state-owned bank, hire him to wage a public campaign against Kolomoisky, with whom the bank is engaged in a complicated legal battle. Kolomoisky is also considered a political supporter of Zelensky.
Giuliani told Bloomberg, which first reported the meeting, that he was approached by the lawyers for the bank to see whether he could help them with a civil suit. He said the timing was not right.
“Since representing Trump I have considered and turned down all deals in Ukraine, even those not presenting a conflict,” Giuliani tweeted last week.
A spokesman for Quinn Emanuel declined to comment.
Interest in Qatar
Giuliani’s interest in U.S. foreign policy has often tracked with countries where he has had a financial interest.
That was the case with his efforts to shape the pick for ambassador to Qatar, where he did security consulting work in 2017 and 2018 related to a hacking incident, Giuliani told The Post earlier this year.
He declined to describe the specific work he did but said his contract concluded before he was named Trump’s attorney in April 2018. He said that he did not register as a foreign lobbyist because he never lobbied U.S. officials on behalf of Qatar.
The Qatari Embassy in Washington declined to comment.
In November 2018, Trump nominated Mary Catherine Phee to fill the post of ambassador to Qatar, a key diplomatic job that had been vacant since June 2017. Phee had served as a career diplomat since 1991, including a stint as ambassador to Sudan.

She is known as “an old school, talented diplomat” whose “strong point is the nitty-gritty of bilateral relations,” according to a former senior administration official involved in Middle East policy.
Scott Taylor, who wrote a 2015 book called “Trust Betrayed: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Selling Out of America’s National Security,” had experience in the region and with energy policy. He served as a security contractor for Hunt Oil in Yemen from 2008 to 2010, Taylor told the Virginian-Pilot before his 2016 election. While in Congress, Taylor worked to build ties with Qatar, visiting the country in 2017 and speaking at a Qatari event in Washington in 2018.
Giuliani offered to promote Taylor as candidate for the post and help guide him through the process, according to a person familiar with his outreach.
During a night at a cigar bar in Friendship Heights in December and a lunch meeting the following day at the Trump hotel, Giuliani described a plan to promote Taylor for the job, the person said.
During the conversations, Giuliani told Taylor that he had done work in Qatar, but it was unclear why he was interested in shaping the ambassador pick.
In subsequent calls to administration officials, Giuliani argued that Taylor would be a better choice than Phee because he would be more supportive of Trump’s agenda, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.
As the process progressed, Giuliani also told Taylor he had discussed the idea with the president, who had seemed enthusiastic, one person said.
When asked about his advocacy for Taylor in a November interview, Giuliani laughed and ended the call.

Reached by phone, Taylor — who this summer launched a campaign to unseat Sen. Mark R. Warner (D) — declined to comment on Giuliani’s effort to get him the appointment, saying only, “I had a lot of advocates on that.”
The State Department declined to comment.
Phee’s nomination expired when Congress adjourned last year and Trump has not renominated her. He also did not name Taylor, leaving the key job vacant.

Foreign work under scrutiny
a group of people standing in the rain holding an umbrella: Lev Parnas arrives at federal court in New York on Dec. 2.© Seth Wenig/AP Lev Parnas arrives at federal court in New York on Dec. 2.
The scope of the ongoing investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan is unclear, but the recent subpoena to Freeh’s firm indicates that investigators appear to be drilling into Giuliani’s work abroad.
In August 2018, Giuliani sent a letter to the Romanian president, expressing his concern that “excesses” by the nation’s anti-corruption agency were resulting in the prosecution of innocent people. Giuliani called for an amnesty for people convicted under the system.

Giuliani told The Post at the time that he was hired to send the letter by Freeh’s firm. He declined to say on whose behalf Freeh’s firm was working or how much he was paid.
But Freeh has said he was hired in July 2016 to conduct a review of the conviction of Gabriel “Puiu” Popoviciu, a Romanian real estate executive sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud.
Popoviciu originally hired Freeh at the recommendation of Hunter Biden, who had been retained by the Romanian, an attorney for the former vice president’s son, George R. Mesires, confirmed. The New York Times first reported Hunter Biden’s role. A Biden campaign official said Hunter Biden never discussed his Romania work with his father, who actively supported anti-corruption initiatives in the country.
Giuliani’s letter to the Romanian president, written on the letterhead of his firm Giuliani Partners, did not mention his relationship to Trump. But it caused an immediate stir in Bucharest, where news organizations highlighted Giuliani’s role as the president’s attorney and questioned whether the letter indicated a shift in U.S. support for the anti-corruption agency.
The State Department tried to distance itself from him. “Rudy Giuliani does not speak for the U.S. government on foreign policy,” an official told The Post at the time.
Giuliani has repeatedly dismissed questions about the propriety of his foreign work.
“5 different organizations are looking at 8 different cases trying to find something wrong. why if I’m not part of a Left Wung [sic] Witchunt for nailing Biden,” he wrote in a recent text message.
But people familiar with the current investigation have said federal prosecutors are exploring a wide range of potential crimes — including wire fraud and failure to register as a foreign agent — as they examine Giuliani’s relationship with his two associates, Parnas and Fruman.
The two men were charged in October with campaign finance violations. The allegations do not implicate Giuliani and both have pleaded not guilty.
Parnas and Fruman were key intermediaries who helped connect Giuliani early this year with Ukrainian officials such as Ukraine’s then-top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, who was offering damaging information about Trump’s political opponents, Giuliani and Parnas have said.
Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine soon merged with official U.S. policy. He pushed White House and State Department officials to issue a visa to a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was blocked from traveling to the United States because of corruption allegations, according to testimony from U.S. officials during the impeachment hearings.
And he lobbied Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to dismiss the U.S. ambassador, speaking with Pompeo twice by phone and then sending him a packet of material advocating her removal, documents show.
Denisse Oller wearing glasses and looking at the camera: Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, testifies before the House Intelligence Committee last Friday. Yovanovitch “exuded tremendous strength and integrity,” in the opinion of one Georgetown student.© Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, testifies before the House Intelligence Committee last Friday. Yovanovitch “exuded tremendous strength and integrity,” in the opinion of one Georgetown student.

Yovanovitch was removed from her post in May, the same month Trump directed top U.S. officials working on Ukraine policy to coordinate with his private attorney. By July, Trump was personally involved in the effort, pressing Zelensky by phone to work with Giuliani to open the investigations.
Giuliani has insisted he was not paid for the work he did for Trump. But he has acknowledged that in January he considered representing Lutsenko and the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice, writing a draft contract to formalize the deal in which he would have been paid $500,000.
He told the Wall Street Journal that he quickly decided against the arrangement, fearing it could pose a conflict with his representation of the president.
Last week, Giuliani traveled to Budapest, where he met with Lutsenko, then traveled to Kyiv, where he met with two members of Ukraine’s parliament who have called for a joint U.S.-Ukrainian parliamentary investigation into the gas company that hired Hunter Biden.
During the trip, Giuliani indicated he was speaking for the United States, writing on Twitter that until Ukraine investigates the “criminal conduct” of Biden, it “will be a major obstacle to the U.S. assisting Ukraine with its anti-corruption efforts.”
The president appeared pleased with his efforts, telling reporters Saturday that Giuliani was going to “make a report” to the attorney general and Congress.
“He says he has a lot of good information,” Trump said, adding: “I hear he has found plenty.”
josh.dawsey@washpost.com
rosalind.helderman@washpost.com
tom.hamburger@washpost.com
devlin.barrett@washpost.com
Anne Gearan, Alice Crites and John Hudson contributed to this report.

Josh Dawsey, Rosalind Helderman, Tom Hamburger, Devlin Barrett

December 11, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Never knowingly engage with the Mujahideen-e Khalq

Trump, Iran’s Rouhani descend on same corner of New York but remain far apart

After months of lobbing threats and vowing military reprisals, President Trump will find himself on the same block of midtown Manhattan as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani this week at the annual U.N. General Assembly.
At times, Trump has flirted with the idea of meeting with Rouhani for a historic tete-a-tete, only to retreat to a position of imposing tougher economic sanctions.
Trump’s top advisers privately opposed such a meeting and appeared to win that debate after an attack on Saudi oil facilities Sept. 14 prompted the United States to impose more sanctions on Tehran. But Trump has not ruled anything out.
“Nothing is ever off the table completely, but I have no intention of meeting with Iran, and that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen,” the president told reporters Sunday on the South Lawn of the White House. “I’m a very flexible person.”
Even if Trump changed his mind and extended an invitation, however, it is far from clear that Rouhani would accept, something critics attribute to the Trump administration’s mixed messages.
Trump has tried to appeal to Tehran in various statements, ruling out regime change and entertaining a French plan to extend a line of credit to Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal the United States withdrew from last year. But the president’s hawkish advisers have taken a tougher posture: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that Iran is “bloodthirsty and looking for war,” and his diplomats did little to help facilitate a meeting in the run-up to the General Assembly, said U.S. officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations.
On Wednesday, Pompeo is scheduled to speak at an event hosted by Iran hawk and former diplomat Mark Wallace, who has drawn criticism for including a fringe Iranian diaspora group, Mujahideen-e Khalq, or MEK, in his programming surrounding the U.N. gathering.

Until 2012, the MEK was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States for allegedly killing U.S. personnel in Iran in the 1970s and for its links to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It is largely reviled inside Iran because of its alliance with Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war. It is participating in a dissident convention hosted by Wallace a day before Pompeo’s speech at the Iran summit.

Analysts said Pompeo’s involvement in Wallace’s event risks confusing Trump’s declaration last month that “we’re not looking for leadership change.”
“This is an extremely unwise and dangerous decision,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, director of the center for Middle East public policy at the Rand Corp.

“The message this will send is that regime change is still in the mix despite the president’s statements to the contrary,” she said. “There’s already confusion about U.S. aims on Iran, so this will only raise more questions about what the U.S. has been trying to achieve since its withdrawal from the nuclear agreement.”

An Iran scholar scheduled to speak at the same event as Pompeo has dropped out because of the MEK’s involvement in the event Wallace is hosting Tuesday.

Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution said in a statement to The Washington Post that she “would never knowingly engage with the Mujahideen-e Khalq, a cultlike terrorist organization that is despised by many Iranians.”
“Although the summit and the diaspora event will be held on separate days, the overlap in the sponsorship of the two events was too close for my comfort,” she said.
Pompeo has previously distanced himself from the group when asked about the attendance of Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and then-national security adviser John Bolton at MEK events. The group offers generous speaking fees and has cultivated close connections in Washington among Democrats and Republicans, including to former senator Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D).
“Let’s not beat around the bush,” Pompeo reportedly said during a meeting with Iranian American leaders in April. “Ambassador Bolton spoke at an MEK rally. President Trump and I have not.”
A senior State Department official dismissed the concerns about the MEK’s participation in Wallace’s event, saying, “Have you looked at the people attending the U.N.?”

When asked about his decision to include the MEK, a spokesman for Wallace said he “decided early on that the convention will not discriminate or make value judgments on participation.”

His spokesman, Joshua Silberberg, added that Wallace’s organization, United Against Nuclear Iran, “admires Suzanne Maloney and respects her decision about participating in the Iran summit on Wednesday, which is an unrelated event.”
Ali Safavi, an official with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which speaks for the MEK, said Maloney “has no credibility whatsoever to comment on the MEK.”
As diplomats from around the world streamed into New York for the United Nations’ 74th annual General Assembly, Pompeo and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif continued to trade barbs.
Pompeo, going further than Trump in assigning blame for the attack on Saudi Arabia, said, “This was an attack by Iran on the world.”
“We’re looking for a diplomatic resolution to this, unlike the Iranians,” he told CBS.
Unlike Pompeo, Trump has not directly blamed the country for the assault, saying last week that “as soon as we find out definitively, we’ll let you know.”

Trump did, however, approve new sanctions on Iran’s state bank Friday and signed off on a new deployment of U.S. troops to the Middle East to enhance Saudi Arabia’s air defenses.
With those moves, Iran’s foreign minister told reporters that Trump “knowingly or unknowingly on Friday closed the door to negotiations.”
“I think it’s all going the wrong direction in addressing this issue,” Zarif told CBS on Sunday. “I don’t think this type of posturing helps.”
U.S. officials said the Trump administration would try to build a coalition to denounce Iran’s activities in the Middle East this week. Rebels in Yemen, known as Houthis, took responsibility for the strike on Saudi oil facilities, but Pompeo and Saudi Arabia have said the militants do not possess the type of drone and cruise missile weaponry used in the attack. Even some Democrats reluctant to embrace Trump’s messaging have rejected Iran’s denial of involvement, including former secretary of state John F. Kerry, who said Iran was responsible “one way or the other.”
In an acknowledgment of the worsening tensions, France’s top diplomat, who has tried to broker a meeting between Rouhani and Trump, said it was now more important to de-escalate the “dangerous” situation rather than set up a meeting between the two governments.
“What is at stake during this week is whether or not we can carry on with this de-escalation process,” Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
Carol Morello contributed to this report.
John Hudson,

September 25, 2019 0 comment

USA

MEK loses its ally in the White House

Bolton’s departure will fundamentally alter Trump’s Iran policy
Whether national security adviser John Bolton was fired by President Trump or he quit is irrelevant. The change in foreign policy leadership will have a profound impact on how this administration’s Iran policy is shaped and implemented.

While it’s fair to call both Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hawkish on Iran, their posturing on best practices for dealing with Tehran have always differed.

Bolton favored the ever-present threat of military action against the Islamic republic and has often openly advocated for it, including the episode in June when Trump approved military strikes in response to the downing of a U.S. drone, which he abruptly aborted when he learned the projected casualties.

Bolton, though, thought the attacks should proceed as planned. For decades he has been consistent in his contempt for the leaders in Iran — and other longtime adversaries — and not shy about the need to spill innocent blood sometimes to reach what he perceived to be U.S. strategic goals.
The Iraqi people now have
lead responsibility
The State Department is about to capitulate to the Taliban, al-Qaeda’s longtime ally, in order to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, argues Rep. Liz Cheney. (Video: Joy Sharon Yi, Danielle Kunitz/Photo: Rafiq Maqbool/AP Photo and Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

His absence also means that the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a reviled Iranian opposition group that long lived on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups, no longer has a powerful ally in the White House.

The now former national security adviser and U.S. to the United Nations was one of dozens of U.S. politicians, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, to accept large speaking fees in exchange for publicly advocating the organization as a viable replacement for the Islamic republic.

The MEK can claim no popular support, and among Iranians of nearly all political orientations, inside the country and in the diaspora, it was Bolton’s paid alliance with the cultlike group that made him such an odious character.

With the MEK suddenly nowhere in the conversation, ordinary Iranians who would prefer to see their government negotiate its way out of the sanctions that currently have a stranglehold on the country’s economy will be more inclined than ever to support such a process with U.S. leaders.

And those millions of Iranians who prefer a regime change can be more confident now that the United States has no serious plans to install the hated group if the Islamic republic were ever toppled.

Either way, when it comes to Iran, the Trump administration’s hands are no longer tied by Bolton, an ideologue who views diplomacy as a weakness rather than a tool.

The shake-up creates the first real opportunity for Trump to pursue a policy of engaging Iran, which both he and Pompeo have publicly advocated for since this administration’s decision to exit the 2015 nuclear accord with the Islamic republic.

Bolton assumed duties as the national security adviser in April 2018, a month before Trump pulled out of the deal. Although Trump threatened to do so long before he took office, the timing probably pleased Bolton, as he loved to be seen as tough on Iran.

It was yet another reason Bolton’s mere presence in the administration — and at such a high level — made talks between the Trump administration and Tehran all but impossible.

Trump and Pompeo must now make a clear choice and stick with it: actively pursue a new deal with Iran’s leadership as Trump has promised to do since he was a candidate, or continue with the disingenuous charade that is their “maximum pressure” campaign, a policy that has only had the discernible effect of making the lives of average Iranians more miserable.

Trump and Pompeo have time and again put the possibility of new talks, without preconditions, on the table. Now they can prove it. Bolton’s departure, two weeks before the annual United Nations General Assembly session, puts the ball squarely in Tehran’s court.

If President Hassan Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, refuse the offer to meet with their U.S. counterparts while in New York, it is they who will suddenly appear to be the unreasonable party.

The only thing that can be said for Bolton’s position on Iran was that it was clear, but he was a liability from the moment he joined this administration. The ways in which his ouster might change the direction of Trump’s Iran policy will prove it.
By Jason Rezaian

September 11, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Trolls to make US Iran Case

Why does the U.S. need trolls to make its Iran case?

This weekend, a new wrinkle was added to the ongoing saga about the information war over Iran policy: the stunning revelation that an online persona that was cited by the Trump administration to justify leaving the Iran nuclear deal is likely not a real person, after all.
On Sunday, the Intercept published an investigation into “Heshmat Alavi,” a rabid supporter of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a controversial Iranian opposition group. Since 2014, he had amassed a large Twitter following, which he apparently leveraged to attract interest in freelance submissions.
But according to the Intercept report, it turns out Alavi, the self-proclaimed “Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights” who claims to be “in contact with sources that provide credible information about the mullahs’ regime in Tehran,” was a team of MEK members producing the content in Albania.
That didn’t stop Forbes, the Hill, Daily Caller and even the Voice of America from amplifying Alavi’s platform as a voice on Iran policy. All of these outlets, and several more, have published articles by Alavi that claimed the MEK is the main opposition to the current Iranian regime.

More disturbing than the articles, however, were the Twitter tirades that Alavi directed at established journalists who write on Iran — including me — referring to us “lobbyists,” “agents” and “collaborators” of the Islamic republic. These efforts actively sought to undermine our credibility about the best approach to deal with Iran and resorted to personal attacks in order to do so.

Apparently, libel isn’t a concern if you’re not actually a person.
After the report, Twitter appears to have suspended the account.

But the MEK, the organization that “Team Heshmat Alavi” represents, has a nasty history. It was on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations for years before being removed in 2012. These days, it has no discernible popular support in Iran and egregiously mistreats its members.
Despite its history and negligible influence among Iranians, the MEK happens to have the support of many U.S. officials, including Trump advisers John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani, both of whom have appeared as paid speakers at the group’s events.

The new revelations come less than two weeks after reports that the State Department had been funding an initiative called the Iran Disinformation Project, which was outed last month by Iran watchers for targeting and spreading lies about knowledgeable and experienced Iran commentators. The State Department suspended the funding to that initiative temporarily, but a full accounting of how taxpayer money may have been used against U.S. citizens — a crime under U.S. law — has not happened yet.
The Heshmat Alavi saga does not appear to be directly linked with the Iran Disinformation Project. But both operations raise similar concerns.

In both instances, the U.S. government — knowingly or not — aided in the flow of falsehoods perpetuated by opaque sources targeting U.S. citizens and attempting to discredit journalists and other commentators. And in both cases, the administration seemed to care more about advancing their views on Iran than about verifying the truth.

In the current atmosphere, any discussion of Iran that doesn’t explicitly advocate for the most severe measures against Iran — and, by extension, all people inside Iran — is branded apologia by supporters of President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign. The MEK and Iranian Disinformation Project talking points have a captive audience here in the capital. So, too, do the rants of others echoing the most hawkish elements of the Trump administration’s Iran rhetoric.
But this is the United States of America. In this country, at least, we can and must have these conversations in the light of day, and maintain an atmosphere where we can openly debate and defend dissenting views without spreading falsehoods or slander. This is critical, not just for our democracy, but also for long-term peace and stability.
Political commentators have pointed to this rhetorical buildup against Iran as similar to the George W. Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq. But the comparison isn’t entirely apt: We are not at the same informational disadvantage we were as a nation in the lead-up to the Iraq War.
The current Iranian American population is much bigger than the Iraqi American population of the early 2000s. It’s better positioned economically in the society and has more political representation. And crucially, there is a flow of Iranian Americans who still routinely travel to the country. Social media is rich with images from inside Iran telling myriad stories.
So, instead of resorting to false narratives and personal attacks, we should cultivate our Iran policy — because there still isn’t a coherent one — the old-fashioned way: by making real arguments, backing them up with actual evidence and prioritizing real people over the tactics of manipulation and fraud preferred by authoritarians.

Jason Rezaian,

June 12, 2019 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

In U.N. speech, Trump fails (again) to make his Iran case

In President Trump’s speech Tuesday at the United Nations, one thing about his Iran policy became clear: its incoherence.

“We ask all nations to isolate Iran’s regime as long as its aggression continues. And we ask all nations to support Iran’s people as they struggle to reclaim their religious and righteous destiny,” Trump said.

Earlier in the day, however, Trump had tweeted about the person who embodies that despised Iranian regime like no other — President Hassan Rouhani: “I am sure he is an absolutely lovely man!”

Those conflicting words underscore this administration’s shaky handle on its biggest foreign policy dilemma.

Iran is once again a focus of the proceedings at the U.N. General Assembly this year. That’s partially by Iran’s own design, as leaders from Tehran seize their lone opportunity on the calendar to meet with other world leaders and the Western media.

But this year American leaders are ratcheting up the pressure. Trump’s speech follows a series of antagonistic statements by his top foreign policy officials in recent days. “There is no love for Iran here in the United States, and there is no love for the United States in Iran, and both sides are going to go back and forth,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday.

Perhaps that is true. Yet it’s also true that each has a strange and enduring fixation — obsession, really — with the other. At no time is that clearer than at the U.N. meetings.

The latest instance is the terrorist attack that occurred Saturday in the southern Iranian city of Ahvaz, which targeted an annual military parade commemorating the start of the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Unknown assailants opened fire on the crowd, which included defenseless women and children. Nine people lost their lives.

Iran was quick to blame regional allies of the United States. The United States, meanwhile, denied any involvement, but multiple Trump administration officials and surrogates used the opportunity to blame Iran.

Rouhani reacted, tweeting that accusing Iran of contributing to an attack on its own people would be like blaming the U.S. government for 9/11.

Even though top Trump officials say that there is no plan for regime change in Iran, their disdain and contempt for the leadership in Tehran has rarely been more palpable.

“I don’t know when we’re going to overthrow them. It could be in a few days, months, a couple of years. But it’s going to happen,” Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer and former mayor of New York, said at a rally Saturday in a Times Square hotel.

That event was organized by supporters of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), an exiled opposition group that was long on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Over the years it has paid large sums of money to current and former U.S. officials — including Giuliani — to amplify its messages.

The MEK is widely considered a cult because of its suspected brainwashing and torture of its own members — especially those who attempt to leave the organization — so current and former U.S. officials working on Iran have quietly tried to keep it out of policy-making deliberations. But the loyalty shown to it by key figures close to Trump, including Haley and Giuliani as well as national security adviser John Bolton, should be worrisome.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his newly appointed special representative for Iran, Brian Hook, continue to say that they want to negotiate with Iran.

“The new deal that we hope to be able to sign with Iran, and it will not be a personal agreement between two governments like the last one, we seek a treaty,” Hook said in a speech last week.

To reach such an agreement, however, would require Iran conceding to a list of 12 demands that Pompeo outlined in May, which is almost certainly unacceptable for Tehran.

Ultimately the Trump policy appears to resemble the one Obama used to induce Iran into negotiations over its nuclear program — minus the participation of other world powers (especially Europe, China and Russia) or any actual incentives for Iran to re-engage in talks.

The Trump administration is hoping to use economic sanctions to create a massive public backlash against the regime. In my own conversations with State Department officials who support such an approach, they seem to be trying to will themselves into believing that such a policy would magically work, but have few arguments to support how it could.

Whether the goal is regime change or a change in the regime’s behavior, the Trump administration has failed to provide a case for how it would achieve either. The president’s speech in New York on Tuesday provided little other than more confusion.

By Jason Rezaian, Global Opinions writer

September 30, 2018 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Giuliani works for foreign clients while serving as Trump’s attorney

Rudolph W. Giuliani continues to work on behalf of foreign clients both personally and through his namesake security firm while serving as President Trump’s personal attorney — an arrangement experts say raises conflict of interest concerns and could run afoul of federal ethics laws.

Giuliani said in recent interviews with The Washington Post that he is working with clients in Brazil and Colombia, among other countries, as well as delivering paid speeches for a controversial Iranian dissident group. He has never registered with the Justice Department on behalf of his overseas clients, asserting it is not necessary because he does not directly lobby the U.S. government and is not charging Trump for his services.

His decision to continue representing foreign entities also departs from standard practice for presidential attorneys, who in the past have generally sought to sever any ties that could create conflicts with their client in the White House.

“I’ve never lobbied him on anything,” Giuliani said, referring to Trump. “I don’t represent foreign government in front of the U.S. government. I’ve never registered to lobby.”

Carrie Menkel-Meadow, a legal ethics professor at University of California-Irvine, said it is generally unwise for the president’s lawyer to have foreign business clients because of the high likelihood they will have competing interests.

“I think Rudy believes because he is doing the job pro bono the rules do not apply to him, but they do,” Menkel-Meadow said.

Since Trump hired him in April, Giuliani has repeatedly crossed the lines traditionally followed by presidential lawyers. He has regularly opined on Iran, North Korea and other policy issues outside his purview, while also publicly revealing details about his discussions with his client and with the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which is investigating whether the Trump campaign assisted Russia in interfering with the 2016 election.

Among the clients represented by Giuliani’s consulting firm is the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, whose mayor was a leading figure in Party of Regions, the Russia-friendly political party at the center of the federal conspiracy prosecution of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. His firm worked for the mayor in 2018 and is expected to work for him again later this year, Giuliani said in an interview.

Kharkiv has contracted with a subsidiary of Giuliani’s consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, to help set up a new office of emergency management there, according to Giuliani and others involved in arranging the deal. Giuliani traveled to Ukraine last November to meet with Kharkiv officials and then hosted a delegation from the city in New York in March, about three weeks before he was hired as Trump’s attorney, according to officials and Ukrainian news reports.

Another current Giuliani client is the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian resistance group operating in exile that was listed as a terrorist group by the State Department as recently as 2012. Giuliani said he has regularly received payments from MEK over the past 10 years; he declined to disclose his fees.

Giuliani acknowledges giving a paid speech to the group in May in Washington, and he delivered another speech at an MEK gathering outside Paris on Saturday advocating regime change in Tehran. He said before the conference he planned to spend “three or four days” in Paris helping the group.

His consulting firm has also been hired by cities in Brazil and Colombia looking for new policing strategies and for ways to reduce crime, Giuliani said. He recently returned from a trip to Brazil to meet with clients before leaving for the MEK conference.

Lobbying experts said some of Giuliani’s work for overseas clients is likely to require registration under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), which mandates disclosure to the Justice Department of attempts “to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws” on behalf of foreign entities or individuals. Although violations are punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, the Justice Department has prosecuted only a handful of cases in recent decades.

Joshua Ian Rosenstein, a partner at the Sandler Reiff law firm, which specializes in FARA and other lobbying registration questions, pointed to Giuliani’s MEK speech in Washington in May as an example of political activity requiring registration.

“Political activity is a broad term,” Rosenstein said. “It includes any actions — including speeches, PR work and media outreach — that are intended to or anticipated to influence the U.S. government or the U.S. public with regard to the formulation, adoption, or modification of the policies of the U.S., or with regard to the political or public interests, policies, or relations of a foreign political party.”

Two White House spokespeople declined to comment on Giuliani or whether his work for foreign entities posed any conflict of interests for the president.

But Giuliani’s talkative and freewheeling style has irritated many White House officials, who say his frequent pronouncements are unhelpful and have often put the president in difficult positions. Giuliani often gives Trump personnel advice, White House aides said, and he said in a recent Post interview it would be good for Trump to have a more “political” chief of staff than John F. Kelly ahead of the 2018 midterms.

“He seems to be blending the services of a lawyer with the services of policy in the White House,” said William Jeffress Jr., a lawyer who represented Richard B. Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby. “If you begin to stray to seek to influence the president or the White House that could be a problem. If you are seeking to influence the government in representing a foreign power, then you have a duty to register.”

Giuliani has also lobbied the president to promote his son, Andrew, a low-level White House aide who has clashed with Kelly and others in the West Wing. The elder Giuliani said that before becoming Trump’s attorney, he asked about a promotion he believed Trump had promised his son, and the president responded in the affirmative. He said he has not talked to the president about the issue since becoming his lawyer.

But three White House officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Giuliani continued to lobby Trump for his son’s promotion after he became the president’s lawyer.

Andrew Giuliani, who works in the White House Public Liaison Office, often arranges sports team visits to the White House and has been a regular Trump golfing partner for years. He suggested in an interview with The Post that some at the White House have bristled at his efforts to root out leaks.

“I’ve been lucky enough to know the president for close to 30 years and known him well for 20 years,” Andrew Giuliani said. “I find him to be similar to an uncle, and I’m lucky enough to be very close to his family.”

Trump remains pleased with Giuliani, lunching with him in New Jersey this weekend ahead of his Supreme Court nomination, praising his attacks on the special counsel and telling others that his situation has improved because of the former mayor, White House officials said.

After leaving the New York mayor’s office following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Rudolph W. Giuliani built a lucrative career soliciting well-heeled clients for Giuliani Partners. He also worked with two law firms while accepting speaking fees on his own. He has since severed ties with the law firms but retains his security firm while representing Trump.

Giuliani said he is not as involved at the consulting company as he was before taking over as the president’s lawyer. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.

Giuliani said he never brings up his other clients with the president. He also said he has turned down some potential clients who have approached him recently, including a Russian business; he declined to identify the company.

“I really don’t think he does,” Giuliani said, when asked if the president knew who his clients were. “He knows I do a lot of security work all over the world.”

White House officials say they cannot be sure if Giuliani’s claim about not discussing clients with the president is true or not. The two men often talk late at night and early in the morning, and the conversations are frequently wide-ranging.

Giuliani also defended his work with Kharkiv Mayor Gennady “Gepa” Kernes, who was close to deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych before he fled to Russia and who has since sought to align himself with the new government in Kiev. Kernes uses a wheelchair after nearly being killed by an unidentified gunman in 2014. His allies have blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the attack, an allegation the Russian government has denied.

“I wasn’t concerned about them because he just got his legs blown off by Putin,” Giuliani said, referring to alleged links between Moscow and Kernes. “Maybe those ties were before.”

Representatives for TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, a New York consulting firm involved in arranging the meetings between Kharkiv officials and Giuliani, did not respond to requests for comment.

On Giuliani’s MEK relationship, a spokesman for the group, Shahin Gobadi, did not respond to a question about payments to Giuliani for speeches but said his appearances were not the same as working for the group.

“Mayor Giuliani’s advocacy for the human rights and democracy in Iran has been consistent with his long-held views,” Gobadi wrote in an email to The Post. “He has never worked for the MEK in any shape or form. He has never done any lobbying on behalf of the MEK.”

He added later, “Of course, he has relation with the MEK and has publicly said to have worked with them in line with his views but he has not worked for them.”

MEK was formally listed as a terrorist group by the State Department until the Obama administration dropped the designation in 2012 amid a sustained lobbying campaign. Members of the group have been implicated in the deaths of Americans and thousands of Iranians, primarily in the 1980s when the neo-Marxist group was allied with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the war between Baghdad and Tehran.

MEK supporters, including many U.S. conservatives, say the group has changed since then and is a valuable bulwark against the theocratic Iranian regime.

Daniel Benjamin, a State Department counterterrorism coordinator during the Obama administration, criticized Giuliani’s advocacy for the MEK and suggested he and others may have violated the law. Benjamin said the Treasury Department was so concerned about an MEK lobbying and public relations program featuring Giuliani and other notables in 2012 that it opened a preliminary inquiry into the issue.

“Plenty of us working in counterterrorism found just the appearance of support for a listed organization that had American blood on its hands to be outrageous,” said Benjamin, now a scholar at Dartmouth College. “An unfortunate consequence of the decision to delist was that this investigation got shelved.”

MEK officials deny any inappropriate lobbying and said the Treasury review cited no violations by the group. They also say allegations of terrorism and of responsibility for the death of Americans are unfounded and distributed as part of a propaganda campaign on behalf of the Iranian government.

Carol D. Leonnig in Washington contributed to this report.

by Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger and Ashley Parker,

July 11, 2018 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The MeK has paid Giuliani handsomely for years

Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican Party grandee and President Trump’s newly appointed lawyer, made a telling remark over the weekend. At a gathering organized by a group of activists opposed to Iran’s government, the former New York mayor seemed to suggest that the nuclear deal with Iran was doomed and that the Trump administration anticipated yet more havoc in the Middle East.

“We have a president who is tough,”Giuliani said on Saturday.”We have a president who is as committed to regime change as we are.”Confronting Iran, he added, is”more important than an Israeli-Palestinian deal.”

Since coming to power, Trump has blasted the agreement forged in 2015 between Iran and world powers. He repeatedly lambastes the Obama-era pact as a shameful concession to a rogue state and looks poised to violate its terms by reimposing certain sanctions on Iran later this week. He also apes the views of Washington’s neoconservatives and right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, casting the Islamic Republic as the greatest menace facing the Middle East.

But if regime change is on the agenda, Trump has been far more circumspect about how it would happen. Dethroning the mullahs would likely involve waging war against Iran, a prospect at odds with his own stated desire to withdraw from Syria and disentangle the United States from a generation of costly conflicts in the Middle East. Trump tweeted his solidarity when Iranians took to the streets in protests earlier this year, but that has been the extent of his tangible support.

But the more traditional hawks in Trump’s inner circle have no such ambivalence. Newly installed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has advocated regime change and a bombing campaign of the country, as has the new national security adviser, John Bolton.

Bolton, Giuliani and a host of Washington politicos from both parties have supported — and likely taken money from — front groups directly related to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian resistance group that operates in exile. Its agents have been implicated in the deaths of Americans and thousands of Iranians, many stemming from its coordination with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980s amid the war between Baghdad and Tehran.

The MEK was once listed as a terrorist group by the State Department — which also views it as a”cult”— before a sustained lobbying campaign saw its designation changed in 2012. It was behind the event at which Giuliani spoke this weekend, marking yet another episode in his long, cozy relationship with the organization.

“The MeK has paid Giuliani handsomely for years—$20,000 or more, and possibly a lot more—for brief appearances before the group and for lobbying to have it removed from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), which occurred in 2012,”noted Politico.

Jason Rezaian, The Washington Post’s former Tehran correspondent who was detained unjustly by the Iranian regime for a year and a half, points to the widespread contempt for the MEK among ordinary Iranians, who view the organization as a craven, treacherous outfit.

“In the seven years I lived in Iran, many people expressed criticism of the ruling establishment — at great potential risk to themselves,”noted Rezaian.”In all that time, though, I never met a person who thought the MEK should, or could, present a viable alternative.”

Nevertheless, its American allies are now in a commanding position. And in the event of the nuclear deal’s collapse, they may seek to further their ultimate goal of toppling the Islamic Republic.

“To those who claim that the nuclear deal isn’t working, regime change remains the only solution,”wrote Rezaian.”For the MEK, and Bolton, if his words are to be taken at face value, the only path to that could be war. The group has long been prepared to do whatever it takes to see that happen, including presenting fake intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program.”

The Trump camp itself also appears open to the dark arts. Over the weekend, the Guardian alleged that aides linked to Trump recently employed an Israeli intelligence firm to wage a”dirty ops”campaign against Obama administration officials involved in brokering the nuclear deal.”The idea was that people acting for Trump would discredit those who were pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it,”a source told the British newspaper. It remains unclear what became of the research the company conducted.

Trump’s moves against the Iran deal are chiefly motivated by his desire to unwind Obama’s legacy and play to his political base at home. His lieutenants, though, seem ideologically invested in breaking the deal apart, even as a host of domestic critics and European allies urges them to reconsider. Even in Israel, many prominent figures in the country’s security establishment have come out in defense of the agreement, arguing that its demise may play into Tehran’s hands.

“An American announcement that it’s withdrawing from the agreement would let Iran drive a wedge between the world powers and gradually loosen international oversight over its nuclear program,”retired Israeli general Amos Gilad told Haaretz.”If the Americans abandon the agreement, they have to prepare for alternatives, and I don’t see this being done.”

Giuliani’s regime-change comments over the weekend marked the bluntest articulation yet by a Trump aide of a potential”alternative.”That has many others justifiably worried.

“I’m hopeful that one day the Iranian people will find a way to get rid of the Islamic Republic, but I am skeptical about America’s ability to accelerate such a development without unintended consequences, and worried that some of what the hawks propose could make things worse,”wrote Philip Gordon, a former official in the Obama administration.”The Iran nuclear deal is far from ideal, as I and others have always acknowledged, but we live in a messy, complicated world, and sometimes the best actually is the enemy of the good.”

by Ishaan Tharoor

Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.

Follow @ishaantharoor

May 7, 2018 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

John Bolton wants regime change in Iran, and so does the cult that paid him

President Trump’s appointment of John Bolton as his new national security adviser has created a stir among foreign policy experts. He is known for expressing extreme skepticism about international institutions (including the United Nations, where he served as U.S. ambassador in the George W. Bush administration). He has advocated a preemptive strike against North Korea. And he has also repeatedly proposed “regime change” (meaning “war”) in Tehran.

John Bolton wants regime change in Iran, and so does the cult that paid him

Since the latter issue is one of the trickiest facing the Trump administration, it’s worth taking a closer look.

Bolton’s hawkish views on Iran mirror those of Israel, Saudi Arabia and one of his key ideological partners, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK).

Today the MEK bears little resemblance to the highly organized, influential and militant opposition force that it was in Iran while seeking to topple the shah during the 1979 revolution. Initially it worked in cooperation with the clerical government. In fact, children of several top officials in the Islamic Republic joined the MEK.

When it became clear that the MEK could no longer coexist with the ruling Islamic Republic Party, some MEK members withdrew from the group, while others were imprisoned. They either recanted and returned to society or were executed.

Those who were left fled to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein, who invaded Iran in 1980, gave them a haven. Many took up arms and fought against their Iranian countrymen, earning the group the unofficial nickname monafegheen, or the “hypocrites.” That title has stuck, and most Iranians inside the country, regardless of their political tendencies, refer to them as such.

The group is loathed by most Iranians, mainly for the traitorous act of fighting alongside the enemy.

But it is the group’s activities in the decades since that have cemented its reputation as a deranged cult. For decades its command center was a compound in Iraq’s Diyala province, where more than 3,000 members lived in virtual captivity. The few who were able to escape told of being cut off from their loved ones, forced into arranged marriages, brainwashed, sexually abused and tortured.

All this was carried out under the supervision of the group’s leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, the husband and wife at the top of the organization’s pyramid. He has been missing since the U.S. invasion in 2003 and is presumed dead. She now runs the group and makes regular public appearances with her powerful friends from the West — such as Bolton.

The group was long a fixture on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations for having killed American citizens. Bolton and others successfully lobbied to have the designation removed in 2012. That did little to change how average Iranians think of the organization.

In the seven years I lived in Iran, many people expressed criticism of the ruling establishment — at great potential risk to themselves. Some hoped for regime change by military force, others dreamed of a return of the monarchy and many more wanted to see a peaceful transition to a secular alternative to clerical rule. In all that time, though, I never met a person who thought the MEK should, or could, present a viable alternative.

But apparently that doesn’t matter to its supporters in Washington.

Of course they were paid for their loyalty. “Very few former U.S. government officials shilled pro bono for the MEK,” said a former State Department official who worked on Iran. Among the long bipartisan list of people who have taken money from the group in exchange for speaking at its events are former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean. Bolton, the former official told me, was also paid.

Their many efforts failed to the block the nuclear deal with Iran. Despite the long list of nefarious acts still carried out by Tehran, the biggest threat that Iran posed to international security — the issue that our allies and other world powers all agreed needed to be resolved — has been resolved.

Based on U.S. assessments and those of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran appears to be complying with the nuclear deal.

To those who claim that the nuclear deal isn’t working, regime change remains the only solution. For the MEK, and Bolton, if his words are to be taken at face value, the only path to that could be war. The group has long been prepared to do whatever it takes to see that happen, including presenting fake intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program.

A dividend of our protracted negotiations with Iran is the increased knowledge we now have about the Islamic Republic and the population it rules over. It’s a luxury we didn’t enjoy in 2003, when exiled figures like Ahmad Chalabi were able to convince the Bush administration they could help transition Iraq into a thriving democracy.

We know enough about Iran that we can’t fool ourselves into thinking that the MEK could ever provide a viable alternative to the current regime.

The MEK is the type of fringe group that sets up camp across the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and hands out fliers filled with unsubstantiated claims. This is America — we let crazy people talk. That’s their right, and I would never suggest that they be prohibited from doing that. But giving the MEK a voice in the White House is a terrible idea.

In John Bolton they have someone who will do it for them.

Jason Rezaian, Washington Post,

Jason Rezaian is a writer for Global Opinions. He served as The Post’s correspondent in Tehran from 2012 to 2016. He spent 544 days unjustly imprisoned by Iranian authorities until his release in January 2016.

March 27, 2018 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Giuliani was paid advocate for shady Iranian dissident group

Reports say former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has emerged as a leading candidate to serve as secretary of state under President-elect Donald Trump. (Reuters)

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is reported to be in contention to be Donald Trump’s attorney general or secretary of state. Senators who will be considering his confirmation may want to examine the fact that Giuliani took money to advocate on behalf of an Iranian dissident group while it was listed by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization, potentially breaking the law.

For years, Giuliani has been one of the most prominent American officials to advocate on behalf of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a Marxist Iranian opposition group that claims to be the legitimate government of Iran and resembles a cult. A Treasury Department investigation in 2012 examined whether speaking fees paid by several MEK front groups to a long list of U.S. politicians, including Giuliani, violated laws on Americans receiving money from designated terrorist organizations.

The State Department added the MEK to the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 1997 due to its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. The group, which has about 3,000 members living in exile in Iraq, has not conducted a confirmed act of terrorism in more than a decade. In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the United States mostly disarmed the MEK and provided its members with protection at their Iraqi base, Camp Ashraf.

Throughout the first term of the Obama administration, Iranian American organizations with extensive links to the MEK paid prominent U.S. national security officials to speak on behalf of the group. They also contributed heavily to the campaign coffers of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The payments ran through the lobbying law firm DLA Piper, which passed the money through a speakers’ bureau that cut checks to the officials.

In 2011 and 2012, Giuliani gave several speeches, including at events inside the congressional office buildings, calling on the State Department to take the MEK off of the list of foreign terrorist organizations. He also heavily criticized the U.S. government’s effort to help relocate MEK members when the Iraqi government evicted them from Camp Ashraf.

In March 2012, Giuliani traveled to Paris to speak at an MEK conference alongside the group’s secretive leader Maryam Rajavi. While there, he called the U.S. military base in Iraq where the United States wanted to relocate the MEK a “concentration camp.” Those comments later appeared in an MEK ad in the New York Times.

That same month, the Treasury Department’s investigation into the payments made to American politicians became public when former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell admitted that he had received a subpoena related to his work on behalf of the MEK. It’s illegal for American citizens to do business with a group designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

During a pro-MEK protest and rally outside the State Department in 2011, Rendell told me he had received $20,000 for his appearance there. How much money Giuliani received per appearance is unclear, although he spoke on behalf of the MEK several times in 2011 and 2012.

Representatives of several of the front groups, which have names like the Iranian American Citizens of Northern California, have maintained that they have not broken any laws.

Other potential Trump administration appointees took money to advocate for the MEK while it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization, including former ambassador John Bolton and former CIA director James Woolsey, but they were less involved than Giuliani. Other officials who have given pro-MEK paid speeches include Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), former FBI director Louis Freeh, former senator Robert Torricelli, former representative Patrick Kennedy, former national security adviser Gen. James Jones, former Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Richard Myers, former White House chief of staff Andy Card, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, former representative Lee Hamilton, former CIA director Porter Goss and former senator Evan Bayh.

At the time, top State Department officials often complained about the U.S. politicians who were advocating for the MEK, calling their interference unhelpful and misguided. The American supporters of the MEK were increasing tensions between the U.S. government and the MEK while negotiations were ongoing.

“The Americans who ought to know better and claim to be on the side of good solutions are really damaging it. Either they are too lazy or too arrogant to actually do their homework. They don’t spend the time to learn facts, they just pop off. They accept the MEK line without question and then they posture,” one State Department official told me in 2012.

In October 2012, after the MEK finally relented to State Department pressure and moved to Camp Liberty, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to remove it from the foreign terrorist organization list. What happened to the Treasury Department’s investigation after that is unclear.

The MEK story is complicated because the group does have legitimate grievances and has been the target of deadly attacks by Iranian-backed forces inside Iraq. There are also reports that the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services have used the group’s members at various times to conduct covert operations inside Iran.

Giuliani and the other MEK supporters’ argument that the group is the victim of human rights abuses and deserves protection from atrocities is valid. But by profiting from their advocacy while the group was a listed terrorist organization, they may have broken the law.

And if Giuliani really believes that the MEK could represent a viable alternative to the current Iranian government or a even a key pillar in U.S. policy on Iran, his potential tenure as a national security official in the Trump administration will mean a new and uncharted era in U.S.-Iran relations.

By Josh Rogin ,

November 16, 2016 0 comment

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