Lawyer for Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas asks to withdraw, cites ebbing defense funds
Source: USAToday
NEW YORK An attorney for indicted Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas asked to withdraw from the defendant's campaign finance conspiracy case.
Defense lawyer Edward MacMahon filed a withdrawal request on Christmas Eve in Manhattan federal court that said Parnas' "apparent ability to fund his defense has diminished."
"It thus would constitute a significant hardship for Mr. Parnas to continue being represented by two attorneys in this matter," MacMahon wrote.
New York City defense lawyer Joseph Bondy will continue to represent Parnas in the case if U.S. District Court Judge Paul Oetken approves the withdrawal request. Similar motions are routinely granted.
Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman were indicted in October on charges they conspired to surreptitiously funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign money to U.S. political candidates and campaign committees. Evidence in the case includes $325,000 allegedly contributed under a false donor name to a super political action committee for Donald Trump, whose personal attorney is Giuliani.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/12/26/lawyer-for-rudy-giuliani-ally-lev-parnas-asks-to-withdraw/2748346001/
Smart lawyers like to get paid up front, so Lev and Rudy and Igor, too may be in need of more cash real soon. A lot more cash.
brewens
(13,536 posts)released. It could be he wouldn't go that far even if Trump told him to. I think that would stink just as bad as anything they are getting from Parnas.
Kid Berwyn
(14,789 posts)Or, Barr is waiting for the right time to pull the plug.
We got to make sure that time never arrives.
Toward that goal, an excellent backgrounder from Frank Snepp on the guy:
Bill Barr: The Cover-Up General
"At the center of the criticism is the chief articulator of Bush's imperial presidency," we reported in 1992, "the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad"
by FRANK SNEPP
The Village Voice, APRIL 18, 2019
Snip...
For the next two years, as chief of the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, Barr played a key role in shaping Richard Thornburghs stormy tenure as attorney general. In a job that was essentially political, he helped maintain the administrations ideological purity by screening out judicial candidates who werent conservative enough. He also drafted two key documents rationalizing the U.S. invasion of Panama and the seizure of General Manuel Noriega.
Snip...
In mid 1990, as Thornburghs own problems with Congress deepened, Barr was tapped to run interference, and was named deputy attorney general. The appointment came just in time for him to draft another landmark tract for the administration, the legal pretext for the undeclared war against Iraq. It would have made any Nixonite proud. Explaining it later to Congress, Barr said he believed there was a gray zone between a declared offensive war and an emergency defensive action where there is latitude for the president, if he believes that the vital interests of the United States are threatened by foreign military attack, there is room for him to respond.
Barr did not make clear how the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait equaled an attack on vital American interests, but to his credit, at the moment of decision itself, he did counsel the president to soften the impact of his unilateral rush to war by seeking a declaration of congressional support. That piece of advice, much akin to Johnsons leveraging of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, helped to keep the naysayers at bay.
Barrs service to the administration, however, wasnt limited simply to such flashes of political savvy. In 1991 he became active in stone-walling the Iraqgate and the BCCI investigations and further gratified conservatives by keeping up the tattoo on their favorite hot-button issues. Embracing immigration policy as his own, he helped craft an exception rule that automatically barred HIV-positive sufferers from entering the country. Civil libertarians charged illegal discrimination and even racism, since many of those excluded were black Haitians. Barr assured Congress that the policy was meant only to keep out people who might be thrown back on public welfare.
Flogging another conservative hobbyhorse, Barr fought hard as deputy AG to keep federal courts from expanding their right to review state criminal convictions on writs of habeas corpus. As a devout Catholic, he also pandered to the antiabortion crowd, even torquing the law in August 1991 to advance their crusade. The challenge came when a federal judge in Wichita issued an order barring anti-abortion demonstrators from blocking access to a clinic. The Justice Department intervened to try to force a lifting of the ban. Later asked about this by Congress, Barr gave an exquisitely technical rationale, asserting that though the demonstrators were lawbreakers . . . treading on other peoples rights, they should be dealt with in state court, not federal court thus the federal judges order was unenforceable.
Continues...
https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/04/18/attorney-general-william-barr-is-the-best-reason-to-vote-for-clinton/
Then, theres the time Barrs dad hired an unqualified Jeffrey Epstein to teach at a New York prep school...
cstanleytech
(26,222 posts)the Senate and House even though that is not a power the President even possesses.
B Stieg
(2,410 posts)or Dmytry or Roman or Oleg or Ihor, WE need more CASH!
gab13by13
(21,234 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,789 posts)...to Diaper Donnie Anus Orange play.
Cyprus is at the center of a circle of corruption surrounding Trump
The cast of characters linked to the Bank of Cyprus and President Donald Trump is troubling.
By Ruth May
The Dallas Morning News, Dec 15, 2017
The country of Cyprus has a long history as a laundromat for dirty money, particularly from Russia. Cyprus is referenced 530,937 times in the Panama Papers, and the Bank of Cyprus, the country's largest bank, is referenced 4,657 times. And the cast of characters linked to the bank and President Donald Trump is troubling.
-When Oleg Deripaska, the founder of Russian aluminum company Rusal, began paying Paul Manafort $10 million a year in 2006 to act as a secret emissary for Russian President Vladimir Putin with Western governments, he paid Manafort through the Bank of Cyprus. Records handed over to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team show that Manafort and his partner, Rick Gates, had at least 15 accounts at the Bank of Cyprus and a bank that it took over in 2013, Cyprus Popular Bank, according to the National Herald. Mueller's 12-count indictment against Manafort and Gates charged the two men with money laundering and conspiracy against the United States.
-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross led a group of U.S. and European investors to purchase a $1.3 billion stake in Bank of Cyprus in July 2014 when the bank was on the verge of failing. This investment bought Ross the largest ownership share in the bank, 17 percent, and the vice chairmanship. Ross was co-chair of the bank from 2014 until early 2017 when he relinquished his position to join Trump's cabinet. Ross's first co-chair was Putin appointee Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a former KGB agent and long-time associate of Putin. In 2015, Strzhalkovsky was replaced by Maksim Goldman, is director of strategic projects at Viktor Vekselberg's Renova Group and sits on the board of Rusal.
Continues...
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/12/15/cyprus-is-at-the-center-of-a-circle-of-corruption-surrounding-trump/
Guns Oil n Putin make the Mob go round.
NotHardly
(1,062 posts)I'm saying that because, should anyone of us ever have been accused of any offense at this or a lesser level, we would have never even have been able to have this discussion of whether bail is too high, or lawyers to defend you are too expensive. Just because all of it is true.
Hell, that little man has been boosted for and by and supported by the KGB (I know, they call themselves the SweetHearts or some such now, because Vlad likes politically correct shite).
I have heard of instances in which Judges have received these requests and denied them on a variety of grounds. Moreover, this likely is a set up with him 'pretending' to have little resources, so he can skip town when they take 'pity' on him. His attorney was a smuck, is a smuck, and just pandering... I long for the justice given to the mighty to be like that served on the weak. But, I dream.