saturday, february 22 , 2020. the washington post ez re A
favor with the Trump administra-
tion. The two discussed only secu-
rity issues, he said.‘Corruption no mas’
The campaign caravan inched
through the narrow streets of
Villa Altagracia, a working-class
exurb north of Santo Domingo,
blasting merengue and reggaeton
basslines for the dancing crowds.
Abinader stood up through the
sunroof of his armored SUV and
blew kisses to those below.
“Here he is, the next president
of the republic!” the emcee called
out last month.
With his composed, somewhat
stiff persona, Abinader is not
known for his charisma with the
masses. But his pro-business, law-
and-order message has resonated
with voters who are tired of per-
sistent crime and allegations of
corruption in a ruling party that
has been in power for 20 of the
past 24 years. The Dominican
Republic was ranked last year in
the bottom quarter of Transpar-
ency International’s list of most
corrupt countries in the world.
Abinader is a wealthy business-
man of Lebanese descent whose
father had been a cabinet minis-
ter, a presidential candidate and
the founder of a private universi-
ty. His family’s diverse holdings
included hotels, cement plants
and data processing centers, ac-
cording to Abinader’s advisers.
Before Abinader’s first run for
president in 2016, public opinion
surveys showed that Dominicans’
most pressing concern was crime
and violence, and his pollingnumbers on these topics trailed
other candidates.
Like many Dominicans, Abi-
nader had relatives in New York
City, w ith particularly strong con-
nections to Queens: His grandfa-
ther ran Corona Hardware in the
borough. One of his cousins, Rod-
olfo Fuertes, was the president of
the National Supermarket A ssoci-
ation at the time, and suggested
in 2015 that Abinader’s campaign
might benefit from Giuliani’s
help, Abinader said in an inter-
view.
T he former New York mayor
was famous for reducing crime
during his tenure. After leaving
office, Giuliani sought to capi tal -
ize on that reputation, offering
consulting services on security
and police reform to countries
around the world.
“You have to see Giuliani, he
can clean up Santo Domingo,”
Abinader recalled being told in a
meeting with Fuertes and others.
After being hired on a
$100,000 contract, Giuliani Secu-
rity and Safety produced a 38-
page report for the campaign in
April 2016 that discussed crime
trends and recommended several
reforms of the Dominican police,
Pereyra said.
That year, during a visit to
Santo Domingo, Giuliani told an
audience that the solution to the
country’s crime problems boiled
down to one thing: eliminating
corruption.
“No tolerance. Not allowed. It
has to end,” Giuliani told the
crowd. “Corruption no mas.”
Abinader lost that bid. AfterTrump won his White House race
later that year, Giuliani invited
Abinader to the inauguration,
where he attended a Latino gala
at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in
Washington and met with Giu-
liani and others, Abinader said.
Abinader decided to rehire
Giuliani last June, Pereyra said.
Abinader said in an interview
that he valued Giuliani’s counsel
on security matters and the firm’s
advice helped him generate a se-
curity plan for the country.
“It was a very important cam-
paign issue,” Abinader said. “I
ended up highest in the polls in
terms of fighting criminality.”Visit from president’s lawyer
By last summer, with Giuliani’s
Ukrainian efforts at f ull steam, he
made a return trip to Santo Do-
mingo. At that point, Giuliani had
been Trump’s personal lawyer for
nearly a year and a half.
He also had been in contact
with the secretary of state. In late
March, Giuliani spoke to Pompeo
by phone at l east twice, according
to State Department emails. In
May, he sent Pompeo a packet of
materials about his Ukraine re-
search in a Manila envelope with
“The White House” written as the
return address, according to doc-
uments released during the im-
peachment probe.
Giuliani has said repeatedly
that he did not do any lobbying
related to his consulting in the
Dominican Republic. In a previ-
ous interview with The Post, he
described his work there and in
other countries as focused onlyBY JOSHUA PARTLOW
AND JOSH DAWSEYSANTO DOMINGO, DOMINIcAN
RepublIc — The politics of this
Caribbean island nation do not
frequently capture the attention
of the stewards of America’s for-
eign policy, but Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo phoned down last
summer with a clear message.
Dominican President Danilo
Medina’s supporters were push-
ing to change the country’s con-
stitution to allow him to run for
an unprecedented third term. In a
call with the president, Pompeo
emphasized the importance of
“adherence to rule of law and the
constitution,” a ccording to a State
Department readout.
That message was echoed a
week later in person by President
Trump’s personal attorney Ru-
dolph W. Giuliani.
“If you want to change the
constitution, change it for the
future,” Giuliani told reporters
during a July 2019 visit to Santo
Domingo. “Don’t m ake it look like
you’re changing it for you. Don’t
change it for this election.”
Giuliani was not in the Domini-
can Republic as Trump’s repre-
sentative. He was speaking as a
paid consultant to an opposition
presidential candidate, Luis Abi-
nader, a businessman who had
been protesting the possibility of
a constitutional change allowing
the incumbent to run again.
Days later, Medina announced
that he would not seek reelection.
The overlapping interests of
the U.S. administration and Giu-
liani’s paying client underscores
how his decision to work as an
international consultant while
serving as Trump’s lawyer has
caused disquiet, both among for-
eign leaders and U.S. administra-
tion officials.
Giuliani’s presence in Santo
Domingo annoyed rival Domini-
can presidential candidates who
felt Abinader was trying to buy
his campaign an American seal of
approval, according to candidates
and their advisers. And it con-
cerned officials in the presiden-
tial palace who scrutinized Giu-
liani’s comments for signs he was
speaking for Trump, according to
a person familiar with the discus-
sions who spoke on the condition
of anonymity to describe internal
talks.
Giuliani’s visit to the Domini-
can Republic came around the
same time that he — with Trump’s
backing — had been pressing
Pompeo and U.S. diplomats to
push Ukraine to announce inves-
tigations into Trump’s political
opponents, a gambit that led to
the president’s impeachment.
The State Department did not
respond to multiple requests for
comment.
Giuliani did not respond di-
rectly to a question about wheth-
er he met with anyone at t he State
Department about his client
there.
“Why in the world would you
care about my work in the DR
except to once again try to suggest
falsely that there is some question
about it?” he asked in a text
message. “Don’t you have any-
thing better to do? Whatever I did
in DR was perfectly lawful and
appropriate.”
The full scope of Giuliani’s cli-
entele is not known. The uncer-
tainty about whom he represents
— and his willingness to take on
foreign clients with interests be-
fore the U.S. government while
working for the president — has
alarmed senior administration
officials, as The Washington Post
has previously reported.
In his various meetings last
year with foreign and U.S. offi-
cials, Giuliani toggled between
serving as Trump’s emissary and
representing other interests. Dur-
ing a sit-down in August with a
top Ukrainian official to discuss
the investigations Trump wanted,
Giuliani advocated for a former
client, the mayor of Kyiv. On that
same trip, he stayed at a historic
estate of a client, Venezuelan en-
ergy executive Alejandro Betan-
court López — and later met with
top Justice Department officials
to urge them not to charge him in
a money-laundering case.
Giuliani, who says he works for
Trump free, has told The Post t hat
he is always careful to make clear
he is a private lawyer for the
president, not a representative of
the U.S. government.
Since 2015, Giuliani has been
hired by Abinader as a security
on security services.
Given his prominence, the Abi-
nader campaign asked the U.S.
Embassy if it wanted to provide
security for Giuliani’s visit in July.
Embassy officials declined, as
Giuliani was not a U.S. govern-
ment employee, according to Abi-
nader advisers.
The embassy referred ques-
tions about Giuliani’s visit to the
State Department, which did not
respond to requests for comment.
Abinader’s team picked Giu-
liani up from the airport on
July 16. The candidate and his
aides met with Giuliani in a JW
Marriott conference room for a
couple of hours to discuss what
Giuliani would tell the press the
following day.
“Giuliani was the frontman,
the personality,” said Roberto Ál-
varez, a former Dominican am-
bassador to the Organization of
American States and a foreign
policy adviser to Abinader who
met with Giuliani that day. “He
knows nothing about the cultural
context.”
During his visit, Giuliani had
dinner with Bernstein, the U.S.
ambassador, and her husband,
Richard, who were Republican
donors and had both sold insur-
ance to Trump while in Palm
Beach.
One person who attended the
embassy dinner with Giuliani de-
scribed it as a social call, not a
political gathering. The only topic
of conversation this person re-
called was the recent deaths of
tourists at Dominican resorts, an
image crisis for the government
at the time.
The morning after his arrival,
Giuliani had a breakfast meeting
with Dominican journalists and
then gave a news conference at
the JW Marriott, according to the
campaign.
At that time, the constitutional
question had seized Dominican
politics. Critics of the proposal,
including Abinader and other op-
ponents, had staged protests and
rallies to demand that the pro-
Medina legislature not move for-
ward with allowing a third term.
“Keep the rules the way they
are. Respect democracy,” Giuliani
told reporters that day. He men-
tioned he was speaking as a “pri-
vate citizen.”
A story in the Diario Libre
newspaper about his visit re-
ferred to him as “the lawyer for
the president of the United
States.” A headline that day on
Dominican To day, a n online news
site, read: “Giuliani jumps into
Dominican Republic’s reelection
fray.”
His visit was closely monitored
by aides to Medina, the current
president, who scrutinized Giu-
liani’s remarks to see if he was
speaking on behalf of Trump.
Abinader wanted “to associate
himself with the Trump adminis-
tration and show that he is Ameri-
ca’s man,” s aid one senior Domin-
ican official, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because
he was not authorized to speak
publicly.
Abinader’s rival candidates
also saw Giuliani’s presence as an
attempt to signal an endorsement
from the U.S. president.
“It’s a game of perception;
they’re trying to leave the impres-
sion” t hat “the government of the
United States favors them,” said
Leonel Fernández, a former presi-
dent who is running again this
year. “In the end, the Dominican
voters are going to decide. They
don’t care whether President
Trump is in favor or against.”
Álvarez, the adviser to Abinad-
er, denied that, saying the rela-
tionship with Giuliani was only
about advice on security matters.
“ Never did we use his contact
in order to move U.S. policy,” he
said.
After two days, Giuliani jetted
out of Santo Domingo.
The Abinader campaign is now
getting consulting advice on secu-
rity issues from a former Giuliani
partner, John Huvane, who left
Giuliani’s firm in October, offi-
cials said. Huvane did not re-
spond to a request for comment.
In recent polls, Abinader has
held a strong lead — more than
10 points — over his two main
rivals, including Medina’s hand-
picked successor. The election
will be held in May.
[email protected]
[email protected]anthony Faiola, tom Hamburger and
alice crites contributed to this report.Giuliani’s work for Dominican candidate caused unease
eriKa santeLices/agence France-Presse/getty imagesconsultant two times, according
to Samuel Pereyra, an official in
the Abinader campaign who
managed the contracts. His most
recent contract, for $75,000, was
secured last June, Pereyra said,
more than a year after Giuliani
joined Trump’s legal team.
For that sum, Giuliani made a
two-day trip to the Dominican
Republic in July, appearing with
the candidate at a briefing for
reporters and visiting a poor
neighborhood in the capital,
where he said people shouldn’t
have to live behind bars like pris-
oners.
While he was there, Giuliani
also puffed cigars at his favorite
Dominican cigar club and dined
at t he residence of the U.S. ambas-
sador, Robin Bernstein, one of
Trump’s longtime Palm Beach,
Fla., friends and an original mem-
ber of Mar-a-Lago, according to
people familiar with his activities.
Some members of Abinader’s
campaign team felt it was a mis-
take to rehire Giuliani, saying he
spoke in generalities and provid-
ed little of value, and worried that
the candidate had brought him
aboard to get access to the presi-
dent.
“I think [Abinader] wanted a
direct line to Trump,” said one
adviser, who spoke on the condi-
tion of anonymity to describe in-
ternal discussions. “For me, that’s
the principal reason he was hired:
It’s a link to the White House and
the State Department.”
Abinader denied that, telling
The Post in an interview that he
did not hire Giuliani to currytatiana Fernandez/associated Press
TOP: Rudolph W. Giuliani, right, greets Dominican presidential candidate Luis Abinader during a news conference in Santo Domingo in
February 20 16. ABOVE: Abinader, center, takes part in a march last summer he organized to protest a constitutional change that would
have allowed Dominican President Danilo Medina a third term in office.S129-6x2Retropolis
Stories of the past, rediscovered.washingtonpost.com/retropolis