Scooter Libby DiGenova called on President Trump to pardon
Scooter Libby, adviser of
Dick Cheney, who was found guilty of perjury in an investigation revolving around
leaks of sensitive classified material. DiGenova is married to Libby's lawyer, Victoria Toensing. Trump pardoned Libby on April 13, 2018.
Russian interference in the 2016 election DiGenova, who frequently appears as a
commentator on
Fox News, has accused FBI officials of trying to "
frame"
President Donald Trump for "nonexistent" crimes. On March 19, 2018, he and his spouse, Victoria Toensing, were hired to serve on Trump's legal team for the
Special Counsel investigation. However, Trump backtracked the hires several days later due to potential
conflicts of interest. The president hoped diGenova could function as a stand-in for him on television and spearhead the attacks on Mueller and the investigation. In April 2018, diGenova called for the firing of Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein, said that special counsel
Robert Mueller's team investigating
Russian interference in the 2016 election were "legal terrorists" and called former FBI Director
James Comey "a dirty cop". On February 21, 2019, diGenova stated in
Laura Ingraham's podcast that the US is in a
civil war and that he advises friends to prepare for total war by voting and buying guns.
Kavanaugh appointment On September 18, 2018, diGenova discounted charges that U.S.
Supreme Court nominee
Brett Kavanaugh, then 17 years old, had allegedly sexually assaulted a 15-year-old
Christine Blasey Ford at a party. The allegations referred to a time when Kavanaugh was attending
Georgetown Preparatory School. On Fox News, diGenova said if Ford testified, "she's going to look like the loon that she is."
Ukraine investigations In July 2019, diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, were hired by the Ukrainian oligarch
Dmytro Firtash, to defend Firtash from extradition to the United States on corruption charges related to a mining permit in India. In 2017, the
United States Justice Department described Firtash as an "upper-echelon [associate] of Russian organized crime." As a middleman for the Russian natural gas giant
Gazprom, Firtash was known for funneling money to campaigns of pro-Russia politicians in
Ukraine and is also a onetime business partner of
Paul Manafort, a Trump 2016 campaign chairman. When he was vice president,
Joe Biden had urged the Ukrainian government to eliminate middlemen such as Firtash from the country's natural gas industry, and to reduce the country's reliance on imports of Russian natural gas. In August 2019, diGenova and Toensing met with Attorney General
William Barr to argue against the charges for Firtash. In October 2019,
Lev Parnas, a businessman who was working for diGenova and Toensing's firm as an interpreter in the Firtash case, was one of two men arrested at
Dulles International Airport and accused by federal prosecutors of funneling foreign money into U.S. elections.
The New York Times reported in November 2019 that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation to hire diGenova and Toensing, with the proposition that Firtash could help to provide compromising information on Joe Biden, an arrangement Parnas's attorney Joseph Bondy described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter." After Firtash hired diGenova and Toensing, Giuliani acquired a statement from former Ukrainian
prosecutor general Viktor Shokin that falsely alleged Biden had pressured Ukraine to fire him in an effort to cover up corruption by Biden and his son. Shokin's statement noted that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash." Giuliani had presented the Shokin statement during television appearances, and Bloomberg News reported that its sources told them Giuliani's publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political
quid pro quo. DiGenova and Toensing worked with
Rudy Giuliani on
opposition research from
Ukraine to be used against the 2020 Democratic candidate
Joe Biden, according to
Fox News Sunday. All three were working off the books, outside the administration, according to Fox News. "The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump," Fox host
Chris Wallace said. DiGenova called the story "categorically false." In November 2019, in an appearance on Fox News, diGenova claimed that
George Soros "controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States
State Department" and "also controls the activities of FBI agents overseas who work for NGO's, work with
NGO's. That was very evident in Ukraine." The
Open Society Foundation, founded by Soros, described diGenova's claims as "beyond rhetorical ugliness, beyond fiction, beyond ludicrous" and requested that Fox News provide an on-air retraction of diGenova's claims, and stop providing diGenova with a platform. Although the network never publicly announced it had banned diGenova, , diGenova had not appeared on Fox following the incident. In September 2020, diGenova said, "I don't know what George Soros has on
Suzanne Scott, the head of Fox, but the bottom line is this: that network is compromised when it comes to Soros." On December 8 Krebs filed a civil lawsuit against diGenova, the Trump campaign, and
Newsmax TV, accusing them of "defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, aiding and abetting, and civil conspiracy". He said that he has received "a barrage of threats and harassment" as a result of diGenova's comments and "faces a genuine risk of imminent harm." DiGenova and his wife were among several Trump associates who were emailed by
OANN anchor
Christina Bobb on December 13, 2020, regarding efforts by Republicans in seven states to appoint
false electors and create fraudulent
certificates of ascertainment to be submitted to vice president
Mike Pence for certification on January 6, 2021. == Second Trump presidency ==