Trump Lawyer ‘Lobbied Romanian President Over Client’ – CNN

US President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, lobbied the Romanian President for the release of a Romanian businessman whose lawyer had turned to Giuliani for help after the businessman was convicted in Romania for corruption in 2016, CNN has reported.

The US news channel said the US lawyer for businessman Gabriel "Puiu" Popoviciu, former FBI director Louis Freeh, hired Giuliani after his client lost his appeal in 2017. 

Shortly after he started working for Trump as his lawyer, Giuliani wrote to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis criticising the crackdown on corruption that had landed Popoviciu and others in jail for causing "damage to the rule of law" and foreign investment. He also asked for an "amnesty" for some of those convicted by the Anti-corruption National Direction, DNA.

The letter, which does not mention Popoviciu or any other name, echoes the discourse of the Romanian Social Democratic government of the time, which had attacked the work of the DNA and tried to pass a law to grant amnesty to some politicians it had convicted.

BIRN contacted the office of the Romanian President seeking a comment on the CNN story but received no answer by the time of publication.

Giuliani's letter was in contradiction to the US official position on corruption in Romania. Washington has repeatedly voiced support for the DNA, and criticised the former Social Democratic government for softening anti-corruption laws and interfering in the justice system.

Previously, to avoid his conviction for real estate fraud by a Romanian court, Popoviciu had accosted Hunter Biden, whose father, Joe, was US vice president under Barack Obama at the time, CNN said.

When this move failed, and Popoviciu was handed a verdict, Freeh then...