10/15/19
Rudolph W. Giuliani privately urged President Trump in 2017 to extradite a Turkish cleric living in exile in the United States, a top priority of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to multiple former administration officials familiar with the discussions. Giuliani, a Trump ally who later became the president’s personal attorney, repeatedly argued to Trump that the U.S. government should eject Fethullah Gulen from the country, according to the former officials, who spoke on the condition on anonymity to describe private conversations. The former New York mayor brought up Gulen so frequently with Trump during visits to the White House that one former official described the subject as Giuliani’s “hobby horse.” He was so focused on the issue — “it was all Gulen,” recalled a second former official — that White House aides worried that Giuliani was making the case on behalf of the Turkish government, former officials said. “We’re not going to arrest [Gulen] to do a solid for Erdogan,” the second official said, describing the internal thinking. However, Trump appeared receptive to the idea, pressing his advisers about Gulen’s status, the people said. One former senior administration official recalled that Trump asked frequently about why Gulen couldn’t be turned over to Turkey, referring to Erdogan as “my friend.” Turkey has demanded that the United States turn over Gulen, a permanent U.S. resident who lives in Pennsylvania, to stand trial on charges of plotting a 2016 coup attempt against Erdogan. Gulen has denied involvement in the plot.
Administration officials were overwhelmingly opposed to the idea and told the president that the move could violate the legal process and damage him politically. White House officials did not respond to requests for comment. It’s unclear why Giuliani was championing a cause of such high importance to Erdogan. Giuliani is not registered as a foreign lobbyist, as he would be required to do if he were being paid to lobby the U.S. government on a policy matter for a foreign interest. Giuliani’s conversations with Trump about Gulen came on the heels of a similar effort by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, and his then-associates to promote negative views of Gulen during the 2016 campaign and the presidential transition. “We should not provide him safe haven,” Flynn wrote in a November 2016 opinion piece. Reid Weingarten, an attorney for Gulen, said that he would find it disturbing if Giuliani was pressing for the cleric’s return to Turkey on the heels of Flynn’s efforts. In interviews in recent months, Giuliani has acknowledged working with clients in Romania, Brazil, Bahrain, Colombia and Ukraine. He has represented an Iranian dissident group, once so controversial it was placed on the State Department list of terrorist organizations. However, lobbying experts said that his conversations with Trump and Tillerson to change U.S. policy on behalf of Zarrab, a foreign client, raised questions about why he did not register as a foreign lobbyist. “It seems Giuliani was acting on behalf of a foreign principal and representing those interests before a U.S. government official, which can trigger the registration requirement,” said Matthew Sanderson, a Washington attorney who focuses on foreign lobbying registration.
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