Criminal law, International, Politics

Washington Post: Giuliani Pushed To Turn Over Elderly Cleric Wanted By Erdogan

Over the years, I have been highly critical of the performance of Rudolph W. Giuliani as counsel for President Donald Trump. Nevertheless, I was floored by a story in the Washington Post this morning that Giuliani pressed Trump to transfer an elderly Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, to Turkey where he is widely expected to be tortured and killed by the authoritarian Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If true, the effort by Giuliani would succeed in reaching a new low in the various scandals swirling around the White House. Notably, former national security adviser Michael Flynn was reportedly working on the same effort, which I previously criticized as one of lowest tasks ever undertaken for profit. The story reminds me of the old joke about why scientists have started to use lawyers rather than rats in experiments because there are certain things that even rats won’t do.

Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan is obsessed with a Turkish cleric living in the United States and wants him handed over for likely torture and execution.  Flynn was reportedly one of the people willing to discuss the effort, which hardly speaks well of him or his values.  Flynn’s firm — Flynn Intel Group — allegedly received a total of $530,000 for its work.

Given near certainty of torture at the hands of Erdogan’s infamous security forces, the effort by Flynn and Giuliani is breathtaking in its collaboration. Gulen is a permanent U.S. resident who lives in Pennsylvania. Giuliani was reportedly working hard to send him to a horrible death.

The Post reports that Giuliani raised Gulen so many times with Trump and White House officials intervened and told him to stop. They were also concerned that Giuliani violated lobbying rules in the effort.

Even more chilling is the report that Trump appeared inclined to relent to the demand of Erdogan and repeatedly asked why not do the favor for Erdogan, who Trump reportedly described as “his friend.”

Given the unfolding disaster in Syria after Trump relented to a demand of Erdogan to pull back troops before the Turkish invasion, that friendship has already come at a considerable cost.

33 thoughts on “Washington Post: Giuliani Pushed To Turn Over Elderly Cleric Wanted By Erdogan”

  1. “…Notably, former national security adviser Michael Flynn was reportedly working on the same effort, which I previously criticized as one of lowest tasks ever undertaken for profit…” “Effort” = allegation that Turkey hired Flynn and Giuliani to acquire an Erdogan enemy/US resident to be transferred to be torture and murdered by agents of Erdogan.

    If true, both deserve the worst possible criminal punishment.

    I am curious though, why Turley rates Flynn/Giuliani’s alleged actions as morally “lower” than medical doctor profits for dismembering/murdering over 60 million unborn babies in the womb since Roe v. Wade.

    What exactly differentiates Turley’s “humanity” from that of a one-celled human being called a zygote?

    On a different subject: even some brave lesbians and extreme progressives are outraged that men masquerading as women shall soon own all or most athletic records previously held by women. Also, so-called transgenders are destroying Title 9 of the Civil Rights Act. Lastly, male perpetrators of sexual crimes against women masquerade as women for free and clear access to potential females to exploit and victimize.

    Tucker Carlson interviewed a rabid lifetime progressive woman who claimed NPR and all MSM (apparently except Fox) blacklist any and all negative transgender news, especially the stories listed above.

    Apparently and unfortunately, Turley also chooses to blacklist the subject, not a surprise considering his past promotion of bigamy and homosexual nuptials.

  2. I recommend “The Thirty Year Coup” by Dexter Filkins (The NewYorker) as a backgrounder on the clandestine plotting of the Gulenist movement to insert unelected leadership into Turkey. Was the CIA involved in this movement…unquestionably, yes. That said, it is a question whether the botched July 15, 2016 military coup was aided or abetted in any way by CIA — John Brennan and Barack Obama are the ones to ask.

    That said, the secretive Gulenist movement in Turkey a plot to peacefully undermine the visible, elected authorities. As such, Gulen acted as a traitor to the Turkish Republic and Constitution, and his extradition should be processed. I also think JT is unfairly castigating the Turkish judiciary.

    There is enough objective evidence of Gulen’s involvement in treason, there is no need to get a confession from him.

    The U.S. has taken up a position of CYA, and prefers to stall until Gulen dies of old age. But, the truth will eventually emerge — it can’t be covered up forever.

  3. Pingback: Washington Post: Giuliani Pushed To Turn Over Elderly Cleric Wanted – Beaux Artists

  4. FBI whistlblower Sibel Edmonds uncovered a conspiracy with the USA =Turkey and was fired for warning about 9/11….

    Sibel Edmonds- Turkish Intel Chief Exposes CIA-Gulen Terror Operation in Central Asia

    WikiLeaks, Hillary-Gulen Intimate Ties & How the Clintons Gave Birth to Mullah Gulen’s Terrorist Network

    In this episode of Spotlight with Sibel and Spiro we discuss the notorious USA-based Mullah Fethullah Gulen and Operation Gladio B in light of Wikileaks’ recent announcement that they plan to release a new batch of e-mails exposing the intimate ties between Hillary Clinton and Gulen’s 25+ Billion shady network.

    Sibel Edmonds explains how Fethullah Gulen was brought into the United States during the Clinton Administration, and how Bill Clinton’s White House, the State Department and the Justice Department’s Janet Reno provided the infamous mullah and his terrorism-heroin operations with blanket immunity and protection. We also take a look at Clinton’s hand-picked handlers, Graham Fuller and Mark Grossman, selected to manage and direct Gulen’s cells in the U.S. and abroad.”

    https://www.newsbud.com/2016/08/12/wikileaks-hillary-gulen-intimate-ties-how-the-clintons-gave-birth-to-mullah-gulens-terrorist-network/

    Turkish Intel Chief Exposes CIA Operations via Islamic Group in Central Asia
    https://www.newsbud.com/2011/01/06/turkish-intel-chief-exposes-cia-operations-via-islamic-group-in-central-asia/

    2. Wasn’t Graham Fuller (CIA) seen on the Marmara island of Büyükada the evening of the coup? I believe John Brennan and Barack Obama have some ‘splainin’ to do.

  5. While Trump is making ISIS great again, he already has made Russia great again.

    1. Kurtz, they ‘should’ be resisting Erdogan. Erdogan allowed all those ISIS fighters passage into Syria back when that country was first exploding.

      I dont know how you could think Erdogan is sympathetic. But Trumpers have this knee-jerk tendency to defend any despot Trump buddies up with.

    2. Gulen-FETO Network Exposed: The Only Independent Source on All Things Gulen in One Place

      Sibel Edmonds

      I” was the first (and only) person to expose Gulen and his CIA network to the world nearly two decades ago- despite the repeated invocation of the State Secrets Privilege Act and various gag orders.”

      https://www.newsbud.com/2019/08/23/gulen-feto-network-exposed-the-only-independent-source-on-all-things-gulen-in-one-place/

      Sibel Edmonds PEN Newman Award

      PEN American Center has named Sibel Edmonds, a translator who was fired from her job at the FBI after complaining of intelligence failures and poor performance in her unit, as the recipient of this year’s prestigious PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award.

      https://youtu.be/-X39zdgXSqs

  7. JT: “Given the unfolding disaster in Syria…”

    The Syrian Army(Assad) and the Syrian Defense Forces(Kurds, Arabs) are finally fighting side by side- it’s a beautiful thing. For there to be peace and stability in Syria, the Kurds, the secular Arabs and the government need to come to terms and unite- that is happening now.

    The radical jihadists will remain a problem everywhere until we deal with both those states that promote the ideology and those that arm them…this includes the US. Sadly, most Americans remain oblivious to our having allied ourselves with jihadists yet again just as we did in Afghanistan against the Soviets. This truth remains largely unknown although Tulsi said it last night.

      1. Anon, ‘it’s a beautiful thing’, Ivan gushes. Only a Russian would be so moved.

      2. Your ethnic bias against Slavs is noted.

        Discrimination: OK per Democrats, so long as targets are preauthorized groups.

      3. Did Putin lie the world into WAR?…..mass murder a million innocent Iraqis based on lies?

        Sibel Deniz Edmonds is a Turkish-American former FBI translator turned whistleblower. The most gagged woman in US legal history, she founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

        Sibel Edmonds Presents: Operation Gladio-B from Russia to China

        “Over a decade ago, despite multiple government secrecy orders and State-Secrets-Privilege invocations, I was the first person, and have been the only one, to expose Operation Gladio B, and introduce the world to the continuation of CIA-NATO clandestine operations in creating synthetic terrorism in target nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

        https://www.newsbud.com/2019/07/26/sibel-edmonds-presents-operation-gladio-b-from-russia-to-china/

        https://www.newsbud.com/category/sibel_edmonds_operation_gladio_b_series/

    2. Ivan, Kurds in northern Syria face possible prosecution for not answering the draft calls to Assad’s army. Assad won’t push that right now, but it’s a time bomb that should rightly worry the Kurds.

    3. Where are the Syrian Army and the Kurds fighting side-by-side?
      I haven’t seen any reports of the Syrian Army fighting the Turkish invasion.
      I thought that was their intention when they pushed northward toward the Kurdish area, but it looks more like the Syrian Army is avoiding contact with the Turkish forces.

  9. BREAKING NEWS WEDNESDAY MORNING!

    THIRD ASSOCIATE OF GIULIANI ARRESTED AT JFK

    A Florida man wanted in a campaign finance case involving associates of Rudy Giuliani is in federal custody.

    Spokespersons for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and the FBI confirm that David Correia was arrested Wednesday morning after getting off a flight at JFK Airport.

    Correia is named in an indictment with two Giuliani associates on charges they made illegal contributions to a congressman and a political action committee supporting President Donald Trump. The two associates were arrested last week.

    Prosecutors say Correia conspired with other defendants to make political donations with the aim of trying to get support for a new recreational marijuana business.

    It wasn’t immediately clear whether Correia would appear in Manhattan federal court Wednesday or Thursday, when his co-defendants are due for a hearing.

    From: “FBI Arrests Third Man At JFK Airport In Probe Of Giuliani’s Associates”

    WNBC News – New York City
    ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

    Three associates of the president’s lawyer have now been arrested on campaign finance charges. That doesn’t bode well for Trump. Giuliani and these money bundlers are more Watergate than Watergate. I don’t know how Republicans can defend these activities. It will be interesting to see.

    1. It’s hard to follow the rhetoric about campaign finance. What was it, when was it discovered? There are much bigger problems in NYC than this.

  12. Gulen is not exactly Mr. Nice Guy. JT, just because you disagree with a policy position, does not mean you are seeing the bigger picture.

    1. There is a legal process for extradition. It doesn’t matter what you and Guiliani think of the cleric.

      1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state_in_Turkey

        the “derin devlet” of Turkey is complicated and nearly incomprehensible to Americans

        just as the American state’s own ties to it are unclear

        Gulen seems to be a key player and he’s here doing whatever under US protection. That’s a simmering problem and not surprisingly it now emerges again.

        That aborted coup against Erdogan flaunted — they say was attempted by Gullen and his allies– and Erdogan got help crushing it from Russia. OOPS. Did the US have something to do with it? Seems likely that “christians in action” probably did. One way or another. A screwy backstabbing incompetent attempt at “Regime change’ from the outfit with the worst history of it worldwide, that’s my suspicion.

        Now, the real Russia problem the US needs to worry about is less them fiddling with elections here than it is taking away one of the most strategic pieces of real estate in the world out from under NATO

        Trump avoiding war with Turkey is a very wise move even though we see the usual suspects here chiming in to encourage it. That’s precisely what US troops were faced with if they stayed in harm’s way of the Turkish invasion.

        the US decides to invade Mexico due to some border problem, listen, no NATO ally is going to tell us we can’t go. No. Syria is on the Turkish border and regardless of how bad the actions of Turkey are, as an ally we can’t presume to stop them from doing what they intend to do for their security on their own border, especially on behalf of a non-state actor like the Kurdish YPG. No way is that possible. It’s time for you guys to quit pretending that this was even possible.

        Here we can see a deep falsehood in play among those in the mass media who want to needle Trump at all costs and have no faithfulness to truth or sense of educating the public about these complicated situations, even as they call Trump a liar every day.

      2. its well in process. this article is a little dated but a good backgrounder

        http://jtl.columbia.edu/gulen-extradition/

        President Trump’s assumption of power stands to affect the current extradition proceedings of Turkish Cleric Fethullah Gulen. The executive and the judicial branches share power in extraditions, although the executive wields an outsized influence in the process. This blog post explores the legal issues surrounding Gulen’s case now that President Trump has assumed office.

        Little has happened in Turkey in the past year without President Recip Teyep Erdogan’s regime drawing some spurious connection to Gulen. From this past July’s coup attempt to the recent assassination of Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov, Gulen’s fingerprints, as Erdogan would have it, are all over the country’s recent political unrest. Gulen, a one-time political ally of Erdogan, has clashed with the president’s regime in recent years over accusations of corruption in Erodgan’s government by Gulen’s Turkish supporters. Gulen now stands accused of orchestrating this summer’s coup, along with offenses that seemingly predate that incident.

        Unsurprisingly, the Erdogan regime is doing everything in its power to pry Gulen away from the Pennsylvania compound where he has spent much of the last two decades. After a prolonged immigration battle with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (which Gulen won), the seventy-seven-year-old cleric is now set for a face off with an empowered Erdogan, fresh off his successful counter coup and seemingly bolder than ever.

        The Obama administration’s policy towards Turkey and Ergodan has led it to take a cautious, patient approach with regards to Gulen. The incoming Trump administration’s greater support for Ergodan, however, might mean a more forceful push toward extraditing Gulen. While the Obama administration carefully cultivated its relationship with Erdogan—who swept into office originally as a moderate and reformer—that relationship soured following Erdogan’s authoritarian turn after Turkey’s civil unrest of 2013. Disagreements over Syria, in particular the arming of Kurdish rebels, only widened the rift between the two leaders, once considered trusted partners. And even though he stood steadfastly by Erodgan during the recent coup, Obama’s reservations toward the Turkish president’s increasingly hardliner politics have surely offered Gulen some comfort given the executive’s unilateral power to shield Gulen from extradition.

        That power emerges from the structure of Article 3 of the United States’ bilateral extradition treaty with Turkey. Under that provision, the executive can refuse an extradition request—even one that has been granted by a magistrate judge—if it determines that the request has “been made to prosecute or punish the person sought for an offense of a political character or on account of his political opinions.” The executive may also simply refuse an extradition request for failure to meet the necessary evidentiary bar. On that score, the Obama administration has been scrupulously careful, following the usual course for politically charged extradition requests by hewing to procedure and asking for patience.

        A new administration, then, might reverse course with regards to Gulen and Turkey. Any sort of policy shift toward placating Turkey could hypothetically speed up Gulen’s extradition timeline and remove the extra protection that a principled post-judicial refusal of Turkey’s request might afford Gulen. Already in Turkey, the hopes for such a reversal are high, as General Michael Flynn, one of President-elect Trump’s closest advisors, has explicitly expressed his support for Gulen’s extradition and for the Erdogan regime in general. While Flynn’s dubious connections to an Erdogan-aligned Turkish lobbying firm raise doubts about his independence in the matter, and the incoming Trump administration has yet to take an official stance on Gulen, Erdogan himself has not been shy about hoping aloud for exactly the kind of shift that Flynn has advocated.

        Fortunately for Gulen, however, the executive does will not technically have the final say in any extradition case brought against him. Should the incoming administration decide to move forward with Turkey’s extradition request, they will still need to submit that request to an extradition hearing. At this hearing, the requested offender may push his own political defense, even if the executive does not. This defense, known as the political offense exception, is also codified in article 3(1)(a) of the US-Turkey extradition treaty, which states that, “Extradition shall not be granted: If the offense for which extradition is requested is regarded by the Requested Party to be of a political character or an offense connected with such an offense.”

        The political offense exception has shielded those, like Gulen, whom foreign states have deemed terrorists in the past. In 1981, for example, after a US court refused to extradite a Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) member who stood accused of murdering a British serviceman, the Reagan administration was powerless to extradite. This, along with other PIRA and PLO cases, led to the 1985 adoption of a supplemental treaty with the United Kingdom which hollowed out the political offense exception for offenders charged with certain crimes of violence—crimes of which, among others, Gulen stands accused.

        Assuming, arguendo, then that the incoming administration will be unwilling—or simply less willing—to reverse a judicial grant of extradition, the political offense exception likely stands as Gulen’s best protection against extradition. This is, in part, because of the low bar the government must clear to grant an extradition request: the government needs only establish probable cause and the Federal Rules of Evidence do not apply in extradition proceedings. So while the Turkish government’s extradition request, and thus the evidence to be used against him, is not publicly available, there will not need to be much of it. That the political offense exception is Gulen’s best protection, however, does not mean that it is a bulletproof one. The political branches are not the only ones which have sought to weaken the exception’s application to violent or terroristic offenders; the courts have gotten involved, too. In particular, the relatively recent Fourth Circuit opinion in Ordinola v. Hackman appears to remove violent attacks on civilians from the purview of the political offense exception. This opinion brought the Fourth Circuit into line with a similar 1988 case from the Second Circuit, Ahmad v. Wigen, and both opinions are part of a broader trend of limiting the political offense exception’s extension to terrorists. That said, the political offense exception is, to say the least, rarely litigated, and Gulen’s case presents a novel fact pattern—people rarely plot coups from the Poconos. The Turkish cleric has not set foot in Turkey since his self-imposed exile nearly seventeen years ago, meaning any request would be based on extraterritorial conduct.

        Gulen’s case, then, may on a surface level appear well-suited to a political offense exception defense. However, the Ordinola court hewed closely to what may prove a worrying precedent for Gulen: deference to the State Department’s classification of political offenders.Thus, while the incoming administration will not be able to act unilaterally to extradite Gulen, it will likely enter any extradition hearing against Gulen with a strong upper hand.

        Brett G. Mead is current second-year at Columbia Law School and staff member of the Journal of Transnational Law. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and

      3. I’d be interested in the legal process and political decisions involved in admitting Gulen.
        The “Blind Shiek” behind the 1993 WTC bombings had been implicated in the assassination of Sadat.
        I thought there’s be more coverage of how this guy came to be admitted to the U.S., and what officials OKed it.
        I’m not comparing Gulen to either the Blind Shiek or the Ayatollah Khomeini. He’s a mysterious figure not well known to the public, but past experiences make me wonder if our own intel agencies know Gulen’s real intentions.

    2. Mr. Schulte,
      In the run up to the Shah leaving Iran, there was a lot of favorable press for a humble cleric who’d been in exile from Iran.
      And some of that positive portait of Ayatollah Khomeini came from the Carter Administration.
      I don’t know what this Gulen is really about, and I’m not sure if our own government knows either.

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