As the Justice Department’s investigation into Rudy Giuliani’s Ukrainian dealings continues, the Republican Party ignores the controversy and hands out tens of thousands of dollars to a curious couple: a team of husbands and wives of their associates who played key roles in the their supposed efforts. to intervene in the 2020 presidential election.
The Republican National Committee paid $ 20,000 last month to DiGenova & Toensing LLP, a law firm run by two privileged former GOP marriages married to each other: Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing.
According to a campaign funding report that RNC filed Friday, the $ 20,000 corresponds to “legal and compliance services” and was made on July 12, just days after the DC Court of Appeals suspended Giuliani’s license to practice law in the city.
According to Federal Electoral Commission records, the RNC had never paid the company before. And while Toensing is an influential Republican lawyer with extensive ties to Washington, her company has not devoted much to official political work. According to federal records, the RNC’s $ 20,000 check actually exceeds the store’s combined total in political payments since 2006.
Of course, it is perfectly legal for RNC to pay for this buffet. But it comes at a time when the Republican Party and former President Donald Trump seem to have almost abandoned Giuliani, as well as anyone else who is embroiled in the former New York mayor’s alleged scheme of outside influence.
According to reports, this scheme is at the heart of an ongoing investigation into Giuliani and the investigation would have swept Toensing and DiGenova.
Toensing, a former DOJ official, was the subject of a search warrant this April when federal agents confiscated her phone during a raid on her DC home. According to reports, a previous “covert order” picked up other communications via Giuliani and Toensing’s iCloud accounts.
“They’ve been reviewing this information for a year and a half without telling us or Victoria Toensing,” Giuliani’s lawyer, Mark Costello, told The Daily Beast after the raids.
Toensing’s attorneys initially resisted the government’s efforts to review the evidence through a “special master,” wrapping prosecutors with complaints about attorney-client privilege. It is possible that these negotiations bought Giuliani some time. But in the filing of a lawsuit last week, Toensing abruptly dropped out of the process.
Toensing and DiGenova have also played an important role in Giuliani’s post-election judicial challenges and were instrumental in efforts to lure Ukraine to open an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Specifically, the lawyers represented Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch who offered to help Giuliani overthrow the Bidens.
Firtash, who lives in Austria while evading extradition to the United States on corruption charges, allegedly collaborated in 2019 with Giuliani and former partner Lev Parnas to unearth brutality of then-candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter . Toensing and DiGenova reportedly joined the effort that spring and Firtash hired them in June. In doing so, they replaced former lawyer Lanny Davis, who had registered as a foreign agent for the job.
The following month, the team of husbands and wives met with then-Attorney General Bill Barr to try to recover the charge against Firtash. For his problem, Firstash paid Toensing and DiGenova up to $ 1 million. In September 2019, about a month before Parnas’ arrest for campaign finance charges, a Firtash lawyer connected $ 1 million to a bank account of Parnas’ wife, which Parnas’ lawyer claimed in that moment that was a real estate loan.
Meanwhile, Giuliani claims he worked for Trump for free, which is perhaps part of the reason Giuliani says he has broken up.
The former mayor has defended himself on several legal fronts, from civil lawsuits related to his post-election processes to federal investigation into his work with foreign clients in Turkey and Ukraine. And the financial pressure that accompanies it has created gaps between Giuliani’s camp and former President Trump’s inner circle The New York Times reporting in May that Giuliani’s allies were pressuring the Trump campaign to delve deeper into the coffers of war on behalf of his old friend.
While Toensing apparently does with the Republican Party, it has not itself been an economic boost for the party. In all, Toensing has given $ 1,025 since the Trump election, according to FEC statements, and has never given Trump himself. In early January, he contributed $ 250 to the Senate Conservative Fund. The group returned the money a week later, according to federal records.
The Daily Beast contacted RNC, DiGenova, Toensing and a spokesman for Giuliani for this article, but received no comment from anyone.