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Trumps lawyer and the Venezuelan president: How Giuliani got involved in back-channel talks with Maduro
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post
Posted: January 13th, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-lawyer-and-th...
The international call came in September 2018. On one end of the line was Venezuelas socialist president, the pariah leader of a disintegrating economy whom President Trumps administration was seeking to isolate. On the other end: the U.S. presidents personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and then-Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.). Both were part of a shadow diplomatic effort, backed in part by private interests, aimed at engineering a negotiated exit to ease President Nicols Maduro from power and reopen resource-rich Venezuela to business. Sessions had served as emissary in the back-channel effort, visiting Maduro in Caracas that spring. The phone call, which Giuliani joined, was a follow-up to that visit. The phone conversation ... provides another example of how Giuliani used his private role to insert himself into foreign diplomacy, alarming administration officials confused about whose interests he was representing. Giuliani operated a similar campaign this year in Ukraine, where he pressured officials to announce investigations to benefit Trump an endeavor that led to the presidents impeachment this month. The impeachment inquiry pushed into the spotlight consulting work Giuliani has undertaken around the globe even as he has been representing Trump at no charge. Giulianis willingness to talk with Maduro in late 2018 flew in the face of the official policy of the White House, which, under national security adviser John Bolton, was then ... taking a harder line against the Venezuelan government.
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