US judge asks whether Zarrab’s legal team is affiliated with Trump administration

NEW YORK

REUTERS photo

A U.S. judge on May 16 signed a two-page order demanding to know if Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Mukasey, two lawyers of the Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, produced any “work performed for President Trump’s administration, including participation on United States commissions, such as those relating to the so-called ‘Muslim ban’ executive order,” according to various reports.

Judge Richard Berman said he has not yet been able to get a satisfactory answer from former New York City Mayor Giuliani and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey regarding the services their legal teams provide for the U.S. government or any affiliated institutions.    

Berman has also asked the two lawyers if their legal teams have ever offered assistance to the U.S. government regarding projects on cyber-attacks. 

Indicating that Guiliani and Mukasey have never touched upon such information on previous hearings, the judge demanded that they immediately answer these questions with a written statement.

He also said he did not find the legal team’s answer on May 2 to be satisfactory regarding his previous question of whether any of the lawyers of Zarrab had been hired by Iran, the U.S., or Turkey.

On May 2, Berman focused at a hearing on whether there was any potential of conflicts of interest for Giuliani and Mukasey representing Zarrab in his case, in which Zarrab stands accused of conducting illegal transactions through U.S. and Turkish banks on behalf of the Iranian government, violating U.S. sanctions.

Prosecutors previously said they are concerned because eight of the U.S. banks involved in the case have been clients of Giuliani or Mukasey’s law firms, and because Giuliani’s firm, Greenberg Traurig, is a registered agent of Turkey.