Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City Mayor and Donald Trump
loyalist, has spent the past decade in the private sector traveling
the world and making millions by giving speeches and consulting on
security issues.
He has spent the last two weeks engaged in an unusually public
fight to land the secretary-of-state slot in the next
administration. Mr. Trump, the Republican president-elect, is also
considering nominating Mitt Romney, the GOP's 2012 presidential
nominee and former investment banker. But Mr. Giuliani and his
allies continue to press his case.
Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway joined in on Thursday: "Receiving
deluge of social media & private comms re: Romney Some Trump
loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state," she wrote in a post
on Twitter.
In two recent interviews, Mr. Giuliani, 72, said his years of
work as an international security consultant make him uniquely
suited for the job in the Trump administration, along with the hard
lessons he learned as mayor of a city that sustained the deadliest
terrorist attack on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001.
"I probably have traveled in the last 13 years as much as
Hillary did in the years she was secretary of state," Mr. Giuliani
said, in a reference to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
who lost the presidential race to Mr. Trump. "My knowledge of
foreign policy is as good, or better, than anybody they're talking
to," he said.
By his own estimate, Mr. Giuliani says he has visited 80 foreign
countries since he left office and made more than 150 foreign
trips, often meeting with heads of state and other government
officials.
"I've been to England eight times, Japan six times, France five
times. China three times—once with Bill Clinton, by the way," he
said. "You can't say I don't know the world."
Mr. Giuliani's quest for the nation's top diplomatic post is a
sharp deviation from prior presidential transitions, in which
candidates for top jobs avoided the news media so as not to damage
their prospects. A spokeswoman for Mr. Romney didn't respond to a
request for comment.
In addition to secretary of state, Mr. Giuliani is being
considered for the country's most senior spy position, director of
national intelligence, according to people familiar with the
transition team's deliberations.
After leaving the mayoral office in 2001, Mr. Giuliani founded
Giuliani Partners, a management-consulting and security firm that
advises companies and foreign governments on policing, security
planning and counterterrorism.
His firm and its subsidiaries have held security-consulting
contracts with the governments of Qatar and Colombia, as well as
TransCanada, the company attempting to build the Keystone XL
pipeline. President Barack Obama last year rejected the company's
application to build the pipeline in the U.S. after a
recommendation by Secretary of State John Kerry.
Juan Carlos Pinzon, Colombia's defense minister from 2011 to
2015 and now the country's ambassador in Washington, said he
personally worked with Mr. Giuliani a few years ago on a security
project. He said Mr. Giuliani's work in the country included
pursuing policies to decrease homicide rates in Medellí n, Cali and
other cities.
"Areas of high crime rates were/are a major concern for the
Colombian government," Mr. Pinzon said in an email. "Giuliani's
advice focused on addressing this [problem] based upon his
successful experience in the city of New York, strengthening
justice, penalties and the mind-set of the citizens themselves,
able to trust public institutions again."
Mr. Pinzon didn't reply to questions about how long the project
lasted or how much the Colombian government paid Mr. Giuliani for
the work. Mr. Giuliani didn't respond to a request for comment on
how much he earned.
Mr. Giuliani's firm also did consulting for retired heavyweight
boxing champion Vitali Klitschko during his unsuccessful run for
mayor of Kiev, Ukraine in 2008. Mr. Giuliani's firm advised the
campaign on anticorruption policy, according to news reports. Mr.
Klitschko went on to win the office in 2014.
The company has held contracts with the Mexico City Civic
Organization—a group of private businessmen who paid Mr. Giuliani's
firm to work with the Mexico City police—and Royal Dutch Shell PLC
subsidiary Shell Oil Co..
It has also done consulting for Aleksandar Vucic, a Serbian
politician who was then running to be mayor of Belgrade and is now
the country's prime minister. In an interview on Serbian TV, Mr.
Giuliani said he advised Mr. Vucic on economic development.
And Mr. Giuliani has ties to TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, a
consulting firm that aids Russian companies and has links to the
Kremlin. According to the company's website, the firm arranged in
2004 for Mr. Giuliani to travel to Moscow and meet with Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and "other prominent Russian
politicians and businessmen." The firm also arranged other visits
for Mr. Giuliani to visit Ukraine and Russia.
Mr. Giuliani said he had never lobbied the American government
or anyone else on behalf of other countries or companies. According
to a disclosure form he filed in 2007 for his failed bid for
president, he took home $9.2 million for more than 100 speeches in
2006 and early 2007 after fees collected by the Washington Speakers
Bureau.
The 2006 disclosure, the most detailed accounting of Mr.
Giuliani's business dealings since leaving the mayor's office,
shows that his income that year was $16.1 million, including from
the speeches and partnerships. Among the groups that he appeared
before are General Motors Co., Shell Oil, Oklahoma State
University, Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
He was paid $1.6 million in 2006 and the first part of 2007 by a
holding company called Giuliani & Company LLC, which his
disclosure said he had a 30% share of. He also had a share of the
profits valued at $2.5 million. Giuliani & Co. was one of
several affiliated firms then under Mr. Giuliani's control,
including Giuliani Partners. He was also paid $1.2 million from the
corporate law firm then known as Bracewell & Giuliani and
received $146,092 in royalties for his book "Leadership," an
account of his role as mayor during and after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks.
Mr. Giuliani's firm has sought business throughout the Middle
East and Central Asia, The Wall Street Journal previously reported,
prompting some U.S. diplomats to be wary of his ties to foreign
entities and governments.
Mr. Giuliani has been an outspoken proponent of regime change in
Iran and scrapping the nuclear accord reached with Tehran last
year. He has regularly appeared at events supporting an Iranian
opposition group, called the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which the U.S.
State Department designated as a terrorist organization from 1997
through 2012. His speaking fees for those events ranged from
$25,000 to $40,000.
"He was willfully accepting payment to speak on behalf of a
foreign terrorist organization, and he did it again and again,"
said Jeremiah Goulka, an analyst who worked on an extensive report
on MEK by Rand Corp. in 2009, in a recent interview. "I see him as
a zealot for a highly dubious cultic group with no support in
Iran."
Mr. Giuliani said those concerns were unfounded and unfair. He
said "90%" of the work undertaken by the firm is done on behalf of
companies, not governments. "I don't even know how to peddle
influence," he said.
Mr. Giuliani said he stands by his assertion that MEK isn't a
terrorist group.
Ethics experts said Mr. Giuliani's work for foreign governments
wouldn't prevent him from taking a job in the Trump administration
but would likely raise questions about potential conflicts of
interest.
Jay Solomon and Farnaz Fassihi contributed to this article.
Write to Mara Gay at mara.gay@wsj.com and Felicia Schwartz at
Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 24, 2016 21:15 ET (02:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
General Motors (NYSE:GM)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
General Motors (NYSE:GM)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024