A6 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019 WST S LATIMES.COM
president’s travails would
have been considered risky
because it could have pro-
voked the Justice Depart-
ment to assertively prove
its independence. Under
Trump, however, Firtash’s
strategy may be a smart
move, some former federal
prosecutors said.
A 2013 indictment in fed-
eral court here charges Fir-
tash with bribing officials in
India to secure licenses to
mine minerals, including ti-
tanium for use by an air-
plane manufacturer, identi-
fiable in court records as
Boeing, the aerospace giant.
But to hear the legal ar-
guments Firtash makes and
the lawyers he has hired to
make them, you might sus-
pect the case had far more to
do with the impeachment
proceedings against Trump
than Indian bribes.
In July, Firtash jetti-
soned his legal team — led by
a Democrat who also repre-
sented Michael Cohen,
Trump’s now-estranged for-
mer personal lawyer. He
then hired attorneys Victo-
ria Toensing and Joseph
diGenova, a conservative
power couple who fre-
quently defend the presi-
dent on television and radio
and criticize investigations
of him. The two have also
worked closely with Trump’s
current personal lawyer,
Rudolph W. Giuliani.
In recent months, Toens-
ing and diGenova scored a
rare face-to-face meeting
with Atty. Gen. William Barr
in which they asked him to
drop Firtash’s extradition, a
Justice Department official
said, confirming a Washing-
ton Post account of the lob-
bying effort. Barr declined to
get involved, the official said.
Toensing, who declined
to comment about the meet-
ing, said the federal prose-
cution of her client was polit-
ically motivated and he had
done nothing wrong.
“The case against Mr.
Firtash is a legal travesty,”
Toensing told The Times.
“He is an innocent man.
Sadly, the Department of
Justice has submitted false
and misleading statements
about him and the evidence
to the Austrian courts.”
Firtash initially claimed
he was indicted because
Washington wanted to pre-
vent him from influencing
Ukrainian politics during
the country’s fragile transi-
tion after a 2014 revolution
deposed President Viktor
Yanukovych, whose govern-
ment Firtash had sup-
ported.
Firtash won an early
round in an Austrian court,
but in February 2017, an ap-
peals court upheld the U.S.
request to extradite him.
In June, Firtash’s legal
team gave Austrian officials
an affidavit from Viktor
Shokin, the former Ukrain-
ian prosecutor general who
was fired in 2015 under pres-
sure from Western govern-
ments, including the Obama
administration, which ac-
cused him of stalling
on high-profile corruption
cases.
In the affidavit, Shokin
said former Vice President
Joe Biden had warned the
Ukrainian government to
keep Firtash out of Ukraine
in order to stop him from fur-
ther influencing the coun-
try’s politics. Shokin’s affi-
davit also claimed that he
was fired because he was
investigating Burisma, a
Ukrainian natural gas com-
pany for which Biden’s son
Hunter was a board mem-
ber.
Giuliani has cited
Shokin’s affidavit in support
of his claims that Biden
should be investigated.
Other Ukrainian officials —
as well as U.S. officials —
have said Biden’s pressure
to fire Shokin had nothing to
do with Burisma. The inves-
tigation of the company was
dormant by the time Biden
pushed for Shokin’s dismiss-al, they say.
Firtash’s lawyers in Aus-
tria have also filed sealed
court papers that criticize
the Justice Department in
line with theories promoted
by Trump suggesting that
investigators were improp-
erly motivated by politics,
according to people familiar
with the arguments. The
Justice Department has re-
buffed those assertions, and
officials have noted Firtash
was indicted before Trump
announced his candidacy
and four years before
Mueller was appointed spe-
cial counsel.
Firtash hired Toensing
and diGenova on the recom-
mendation of the couple’s
Russian translator, Lev Par-
nas, according to people fa-
miliar with the legal team’s
work.
Toensing, diGenova and
Parnas were actively helping
Giuliani gather information
on Democrats who they
claim have ties to Ukraine,
according to people familiar
with their work.
Parnas and a business
partner, Igor Fruman, are
longtime clients and associ-
ates of Giuliani. They’re
both now under indictment
after they were arrested inearly October while trying to
leave the country. They’re
charged with funneling il-
legal campaign donations to
a Trump-allied political
fund and Republican politi-
cians.
When they were arrested
at Washington’s Dulles In-
ternational Airport, the pair
had one-way tickets to Aus-
tria.
Federal investigators, as
well as House Democrats,
are now exploring potential
ties among Parnas, Fruman
and Firtash, according to
people familiar with the
matter, who spoke on condi-
tion of anonymity because
they were not authorized to
discuss the subject on the
record. Giuliani, who did not
respond to text messages
seeking comment, has de-
nied knowing the oligarch.
Federal prosecutors are
examining Giuliani’s finan-
cial dealings in Ukraine, and
with Parnas and Fruman, a
person familiar with the
matter said, confirming re-
ports in the Wall Street Jour-
nal and New York Times.
Firtash is one of a handful
of Ukrainian businessmen
whose power and money
have influenced politics and
policies in the countries ofthe former Soviet Union.
Starting in the early 1990s,
he made his fortune broker-
ing deals buying natural gas
from Russia and Central
Asia to sell to Ukraine and
Europe.
Firtash’s holding com-
pany, Group DF, has signifi-
cant assets and interests in
Ukraine. The company’s
website says that in addition
to gas distribution in Europe
and Asia, Group DF has op-
erations in the fertilizer,
chemicals and titanium
businesses as well as agri-
business, media and real es-
tate. Many of his assets are
in regions of eastern Ukraine
now controlled by Russian-
backed separatist militias as
well as Russian-annexed
Crimea.
Throughout Ukraine’s
two decades of independ-
ence since the breakup of the
Soviet Union, Firtash has
used his wealth and power to
influence the country’s poli-
tics. He and another Ukrain-
ian oligarch, Rinat Akhme-
tov, financially backed
Yanukovych and his Russia-
aligned political party, the
Party of Regions, during sev-
eral political campaigns.
Trump’s former cam-
paign chairman, Paul Mana-fort, worked as a consultant
for the Party of Regions and
Yanukovych beginning in- Manafort is serving
7½ years in a U.S. prison for
financial fraud largely stem-
ming from that work.
The bribery case against
Firtash appears to be
strong, former prosecutors
noted, and the surest way to
avoid prison time would be
to convince Trump and the
Justice Department to drop
extradition.
“In the past, this was a
strategy that was entirely
counterproductive — prose-
cutors were extremely sensi-
tive to the charge that any-
thing they were doing was
politically motivated,” said
Peter Zeidenberg, a former
federal prosecutor.
Now, however, “it’s sad to
say, but this strategy might
be the appropriate one to
take, given the politicization
of today’s Justice Depart-
ment,” he said. “Close asso-
ciates of the president seem
very likely to get extraordi-
nary access and favorable
treatment.”
Times staff writer Wilber
reported from Chicago
and special correspondent
Ayres from Kyiv, Ukraine.UKRAINIANoligarch Dmytri Firtash in court in Austria, where he is fighting extradition to the U.S.Georges SchneiderAFP/Getty ImagesTycoon aligns
his defense
with Trump
[Oligarch, from A1]
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