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.