How Another Trump Lawyer Became Involved in US Foreign Policy

Rudy Giuliani has drawn substantial scrutiny in recent months over his alleged efforts to run a shadow foreign policy for Donald Trump in Ukraine. But the former New York City mayor isn’t the only lawyer for Trump who has become involved in a US foreign policy matter. Last year, Jay Sekulow, while serving as a personal attorney for Trump, was in repeated contact with a prominent lobbyist who was pushing to help Turkey’s national bank avoid prosecution by the Justice Department for its alleged role in a scheme to evade US sanctions on Iran.

In foreign lobbying disclosures filed with the Justice Department last year, Brian Ballard—who runs a high-powered firm that represented both the government of Turkey and its national bank—revealed that he had exchanged phone calls and text messages with Sekulow on six occasions between July and October 2018. At the time, Sekulow was busy defending Trump against special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. But Sekulow says he wasn’t speaking for Trump in his conversations with Ballard. Rather, he says, he was involved in the exchanges because his nonprofit organization, the American Center for Law a Justice, was representing pro bono Andrew Brunson, a pastor who was imprisoned in Turkey in 2016 and released on October 12, 2018.


[link:https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/10/how-another-trump-lawyer-became-involved-in-us-foreign-policy/|