Giuliani’s Kremlin and Russian Mob Ties Are Now Front and Center...Along with Those of Two Fox Commentators

At the heart of the investigation is a Russian billionaire named Dmitri Furtash. Remember that name.

The Rudy Giuliani saga is difficult to wrap your head around. It involves a cast of Ukrainian oligarchs, shady former prosecutors turned Fox News Trump propagandists, even shadier Russian agents now under arrest, a pattern of sharing disinformation and smear campaign materials, and the movement of a lot of money. It is, in short, classic Giuliani.

Photo Credit: Reuters

The best way into this story is to look at the crime of which Giuliani likely will stand accused. As the New York Times reported back in the fall of 2019, federal prosecutors have been investigating whether Giuliani broke lobbying laws in his dealings with Ukrainian officials by failing to disclose he was acting on their behalf. While violation of a disclosure law doesn’t sound particularly bad or sexy, the point of the law is to require transparency whenever someone has contact with the government or media in the United States at the direction or request of foreign politicians or officials. 

The reason for this is plain: In recent years especially, covert foreign influence has been highly damaging to our democracy, with disinformation peddling chief among the concerns. Whenever someone goes on Fox News pushing Russian-aligned propaganda, for example, authorities want to know whether covert foreign influence lies behind it. Same goes for statements within Congress. 

So on whose behalf why might Rudy Giuliani really be working? A few names have emerged that are worth exploring, but today I’m focusing on one: Dmitri Furtash. Once all the connections are laid bare, it’s easy to reach the same alarming conclusion federal agents and prosecutors have reached: Giuliani, the right hand man of the former president, likely is deep-in-bed with Russian agents and oligarchs and is an active threat to national security.

Furtash is a Ukrainian billionaire wanted for extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges. Witnesses who have been cooperating with the investigation confirmed to Time Magazine that authorities were particularly interested in Giuliani’s communications and association with Furtash.

First, some background on Furtash. He is a wealthy industrialist with assets across Europe, but for the last five years, he has been in Vienna fighting the U.S. extradition charges. The Department of Justice in 2017 named Furtash among the “upper echelon associates of Russian organized crime” but had been under investigation for at least ten years prior to then. His early work in the gas trade brought him into contact with Russian mob bosses who gave their blessings on his ventures. As those businesses grew, in the mid-2000s Furtash received an exclusive right from Vladimir Putin to sell Russian gas to Ukraine in partnership with Russian’s state owned gas company, Gazprom. This arrangement made him a billionaire. Furtash used his influence to buy up chemical and fertilizer plants across the Ukraine.

In 2010, Furtash supported the Russian-backed candidate for president, Viktor Yanokovych. Proving again that connections to Trump are everywhere, Furtash worked on the campaign alongside Paul Manafort, Trump’s one-time campaign manager, who was later convicted and sentenced to seven years before receiving a pardon from Trump. (Furtash once attempted to buy and redevelop the famous Drake Hotel in New York with Manafort, a deal that never went through.) After Yanokovych won that election, Furtash expanded his business empire under that administration, buying up lucrative gas distribution and storage companies in Ukraine.

In 2014, violent street protests led to Yanokovych’s ouster, and Furtash was arrested in Vienna and charged under U.S. law for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He began fighting the extradition requests, and the case has languished for years. But in 2019, it began to reheat. In July of that year, Furtash hired two close associates of Giuliani, Victoria Toensing and her husband Joseph DiGenova, who were frequent defenders of Trump on network TV and active in efforts to spread anti-Biden disinformation.

Giuliani has made it easy to follow the crumbs to Furtash. For example, when he went on cable television to accuse Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and Joe Biden of wrongdoing, Giuliani waved around an affidavit from a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. That statement alleged the now-disproven conspiracy that Joe Biden fired Shokin to stop an investigation into Burisma in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who served on its board. What Giuliani neglected to mention, but what was quite easy to discover, was that the affidavit originated from Toensing and DiGenova, the new legal team for Furtash. In fact, the very first part of the affidavit stated that Shokin was making the statement “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitri Furtash.”

Put another way, Giuliani was now amplifying disinformation on cable television by citing a discredited affidavit provided by a witness acting for a known Russian mobster and tool of the Kremlin.

Weaving the web even more tightly is this fact: Toensing and DiGenova hired a Giuliani associate, Lev Parnas, to act as the translator between them and their client, Furtash. Parnas was arrested along with his business partner at the Dulles Airport holding a one-way ticket to Ukraine, and both were charged with violating campaign finance laws by secretly channeling Russian money to political causes and candidates. Parnas’s company, Fraud Guarantee (a Florida based company—you can’t make this name up) paid Giuliani $500,000 for his consulting services, according to a report by CNN. This is money that may have been originally bankrolled by Furtash himself. In September of 2019, Parnas’s wife received a $1 million wire transfer from a bank account in Russia, and the source of the money was a lawyer for Furtash, according to NBC News.

After his arrest and charging, Parnas has been cooperating with federal authorities on their investigation of Giuliani. Parnas has said that Furtash’s involvement in providing affidavits to smear Joe Biden stemmed from an explicit quid pro quo: In exchange for Furtash’s help in their attempt to damage then-candidate Biden, Parnas assured Furtash they would make his U.S. legal troubles disappear. “For us to be able to receive information from Furtash, we had to promise Furtash something," Parnas said. “So for Furtash, it was basically telling him that we knew his case was worthless here and that he's being prosecuted for no reason. And that basically, it could get taken care of.”

Furtash lived up to his end of the deal by providing the false Shokin affidavit for Giuliani to cite on television, but according to Parnas, Furtash's lawyers Toensing and DiGenova were unable to convince then-Attorney General William Barr to intervene in the Furtash case.

But wait, there’s more! The New York Times recently reported extensively about efforts among Giuliani and Toensing to represent other Ukrainian officials in exchange for six figure payments and to help in getting the former Ambassador to the Ukraine fired, which ultimately happened in May of 2019. Giuliani apparently declined to take this work on directly but appears to have brokered the deal for Toensing and DiGenova. (This part of the saga is its own mini-series, to be covered another time.)

On the same day Giuliani’s home and office were searched, Furtash’s lawyer Victoria Toensing’s home was also raided by federal authorities and her cell phone seized. As some commentators have noted, Toensing may have also been an agent working on behalf of Furtash and other Russian-allied oligarchs and agents alongside Giuliani. This is significant because evidence from Toensing’s electronic devices or her testimony could box Giuliani in, even if he was able to hide or destroy evidence of his own involvement with foreign actors.

The Furtash connection is only one among many other possible ones that could land Giuliani in very hot water. It would not be hard for prosecutors to draw a line from Toensing to Giuliani given their close lobbying work and common scheme to spread disinformation supplied by the Russians through Furtash. One thing is already clear: There are many pressure points now at prosecutors’ disposal, from Lev Parnas to Victoria Toensing to Dmitri Furtash himself. This could set off a race to cooperate and strike a deal early with the feds, assuming their prime target is Giuliani himself—and very possibly Giuliani’s own boss sometime thereafter.