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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSpeaking of Rudy Giuliani, here's a reminder of the breadth of his evil
He was one of the three main attorneys that won the horrible 2002 deal that allowed Purdue to keep murdering people by continuing to make and push OxyContin.
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[snip]
Purdue Pharma hired Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now Donald Trumps lawyer [note: he was his lawyer at the time this article was written], to head off a federal investigation in the mid-2000s into the companys marketing of the powerful prescription painkiller at the centre of an epidemic estimated to have claimed at least 300,000 lives. According to the CDC, the death toll from OxyContin and related prescription opioids now exceeds 200,000.
The Sackler family made billions from OxyContin. While Giuliani was not able to prevent the criminal conviction over Purdues fraudulent claims for OxyContins safety and effectiveness, he was able to reach a deal to avoid a bar on Purdue doing business with the federal government which would have killed a large part of the multibillion-dollar market for the drug.
The former New York mayor also secured an agreement that greatly restricted further prosecution of the pharmaceutical company and kept its senior executives out of prison.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/22/rudy-giuliani-opioid-epidemic-oxycontin-purdue-pharma
Karadeniz
(22,676 posts)in Comeys infamous announcement to relook at her computer contents. Giuliani won't be going to heaven....
Sky Jewels
(7,262 posts)He's been so corrupt for so long ... but finally, finally it seems to be catching up to him.
AZSkiffyGeek
(11,263 posts)And that Comey was trying to get ahead of their leak - to save his own skin, perhaps?
Wasn't there an FBI agent in NYC that was recently arrested or something for the 2016 election?
Karadeniz
(22,676 posts)FakeNoose
(33,196 posts)Then he resigned his seat less than a year later. Way too skeevy...
John1956PA
(2,702 posts)The agent spoke of once having worked in the NY FBI office. The agent expressed dislike for the Clintons and the desire to have had them both incarcerated. I did not speak up regarding that passing remark. I did challenge the former agent in the assertion that the leak of the Podesta emails was the only attempt to influence the 2016 election. I stated that Russian trolls on the web were a factor, but the former agent dismissed my opinion.
Kid Berwyn
(15,382 posts)The shocking indictments against the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI in New York raise many dark questions.
By Craig Unger
The National Review, February 1, 2023
In the course of writing two books on Donald Trumps ties to Russia, the same question occurred to me again and again: How is it possible that I knew all sorts of stuff about Donald Trump, and the FBI didnt seem to have a clue? Or if they did, why werent they doing anything with it?
Specifically, I knew that:
* Starting in 1980, an alleged spotter agent for the KGB began cultivating Trump as a new asset for Soviet intelligence.
* The Russian mafia laundered millions of dollars through Donald Trumps real estate by purchasing condos in all-cash transactions through anonymous corporations that did not disclose real ownership.
* Trump Tower was a home away from home for Vyacheslav Ivankov, one of the most brutal leaders of the Russian mafia, and at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the mafia held the deeds to, lived in, or ran alleged criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties.
* Trump was some $4 billion in debt when the Russians came to bail him out via the Bayrock Group, a real estate firm that was largely staffed, owned, and financed by Soviet émigrés who had ties to Russian intelligence and/or organized crime.
Much of my material came from FBI documents. A lot came from open-source databases. It made no sense. There was an astounding amount of data on the public record. The FBI had launched enormous investigations of the Russian mafia in the 1980s. They had staked out a New York electronics store that was a haven for KGB officers. They knew thats where the Trump Organization bought hundreds of TV sets. They had their eyes on Ivankov and other Russian mobsters who were denizens of Trumps casinos and bought and sold his condos through shell companies. They had to know that Trump laundered money for and provided a base of operations for the Russian mafia, which was, after all, a de facto state actor tied to Russian intelligence. They had to know that the Russians repeatedly bailed Trump out when he was bankrupt. They had to know that Russia owned him.
Snip
As FBI director, Freeh had warned that Russian organized crime posed a grave threat to the United States that far transcended mere criminality. It is not clear how much he was paid by Prevezon after he switched sides, but Freeh later bought a $9.38 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, just a 10-minute drive from Trumps Mar-a-Lago.
Then there was the late James Kallstrom, who ran the FBIs New York office in the mid-90s and oversaw successful investigations into both the Italian Mafia and later the Russian mob. Kallstrom had developed close friendships with two key players in the Trump-Russia saga. He worked closely with thenU.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani in the investigation of the Cosa Nostra network that led to the famed Mafia Commission Trial of 19851986. Going even further back, Kallstrom had also been friends with Donald Trump since around 1973, when Kallstrom was putting together a Trump-funded parade in New York to honor Vietnam veterans.
Continues
https://newrepublic.com/article/170328/charles-mcgonigal-throw-2016-election
Karadeniz
(22,676 posts)whose messages allegedly originated in the office of Betsy Devos'
husband had been properly investigated. Unfortunately, the man who discovered it went straight to Alfa Bank instead of the FBI and the computer vanished. I wonder if Devos still has evidence in his computer system. It was thought that Devos was passing voter information to the Russians for them to help Trump with, although I don't know why the Trump tower computer was needed. Come to think of it, Devos might have passed along info to the Trump campaign, but balked if he knew he was part of a Russian plot. I think it's no mystery why Betsy Devos was completely untouchable as secy of education, defying govt orders as she sought fit.