NEW YORK (AP) — Two businessmen pleaded not guilty Thursday to conspiring with associates of Rudy Giuliani to make illegal campaign contributions, as a prosecutor said evidence includes data from over 50 bank accounts and information gathered through 10 search warrants.
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David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin are among four men charged with using straw donors to make illegal contributions to politicians they thought could help their political and business interests, including committees supporting President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
Their next court date was set for Dec. 2, though U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken granted a request from Kukushkin to remain in California, where a $1 million bail package limits where he can go beyond home to work, legal visits and medical appointments.
Two other men charged in the case, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, worked with Giuliani to try to get Ukrainian officials to investigate the son of Democrat Joe Biden. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, has said he had no knowledge of illegal donations.
Prosecutors say Correia and Kukushkin teamed with Parnas and Fruman in a separate scheme to make illegal campaign donations to politicians in several states in an attempt to get support for a new recreational marijuana business.
Money for those donations was actually supplied, prosecutors say, by an unidentified foreign national with “Russian roots.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos told the judge the indictment could be updated, but he made no mention of whether others might be arrested.
It was fair, he said, “to characterize the government’s investigation as ongoing.”
Besides the bank and search warrant records, Roos said, prosecutors have obtained emails and electronic records for over 10 accounts.
The court hearing was finished in just over 15 minutes, and lawyers and their clients declined to speak afterward.
Meanwhile, officials in California announced they would review the dozen state marijuana distribution licenses granted to a partnership involving Kukushkin to make sure there were no improprieties, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
“We always have concerns when something like that happens, so we want to do our due diligence and look at them,” said Lori Ajax, chief of the California Bureau of Cannabis Control.
All the state licenses issued to the partnership of Garib Karapetyan and Kukushkin are provisional permits, Ajax said, pending detailed background checks and disclosure of major investors.
Karapetyan’s attorney, Brad Hirsch, said his clients are in complete compliance with all regulations.
Separately, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg called for an investigation of his city’s permit system to determine how Kukushkin and another businessman obtained nearly one-third of the licenses issued by the city.
All the defendants are U.S. citizens, but Kukushkin and Parnas were born in Ukraine and Fruman in Belarus.
GOP dumbell Rick Perry, failure head of Dept of Energy quit today due to his involvement w the Ukraine fiasco. The 2 Ukrainian goniffs working for Crazy Rudy are in deep trouble. And Trumpf Chief of Shtick Mulaney admitted his dumb boss broke the law. Their defense: the Prez did it, but its not a crime. But he did it.
Rudy was the mayor of America . He was here when we most needed him on 9/11. And he cleaned up NYC . He implemented stop and frisk and broken windows . He took Dinkins mess and cleaned it up . Now Dinkins assistant deblassio ended those policies and surprise surprise crime is back up .
Hey phineas don’t bore me with facts and statistics . Bottom line is Jews feel less safe in NYC whether it’s knockouts or other threats and acts of violence . It feels very much like 1991 crown
Hieghts .
Rudy didn’t do bupkis following 9/11, other than to have himself photographed at Ground Zero, so he could get his face on the news. On Nov. 1, 2001, he had his cops rough up some firefighters and arrest them, because he didn’t want to pay them overtime. The man is a lying phony; my opinion of him has ZERO to do with Trump. In 1966, Guiliani had a Judge whom he was clerking for, sending a letter to his local draft board stating that “his work was essential to national defense”. I can’t believe that the politicians on the draft board accepted that excuse. In any event, Rudy is under federal investigation right now, and his lying face will not be shown on tv, unless he is hauled into court.
So Nieves your name switched from phineas to nachum and you expect to have credibility ?
Re the rough up with fire fighters , there were too many cooks in tne pot and Rudy needed to take control.
In general there is no denying that crime was way up when Rudy started . He instituted broken windows and stop and frisk and crime went down . That why NYC doesn’t look like Chicago and Baltimore. These are all facts .
You sir are a fake news spinner
And a liar . You have revisionist history . Rudy across the globe was called the mayor of America. And for good reason . Don’t sell me buba masses . I told you phineas I don’t care about facts . I care about the big story . Facts can always be spun .
I am the authentic Nachum, which is my Hebrew name; I don’t need to go by a goyish name “Educated Archy”, which is a misnomer, since Archy (the tv character), and you, are both uneducated slobs. You are a shanda on this site, as for an ostensible Yid, you can’t even spell or write a grammatically correct sentence to save your life. Did your schooling end at the 5th grade? Anyone who disagrees with the horse “m” that you throw out daily on this site, is called “a liar, and a revisionist” by you. Unfortunately, you don’t know s— from apples, and never will. Rudy evaded military service during the Vietnam War, as did his meshpucha Trump. They are birds of a feather, who flock together. Rudy is under federal investigation right now, and you will notice, that he no longer appears for any interviews. His ex wives have no use, for that philandering, lying, cheating slob. He was never “America’s Mayor”. Case closed!