Victoria Toensing

Toensing was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration. She led a counterterrorist investigation into the 15 May Organization for the bombing and attempted bombing of two Pan Am jets in 1982.[11]

DiGenova and Toensing established their law firm, diGenova & Toensing, in January 1996.[9][5]

Emily Bazelon of Slate has called Toensing "a blanketer of the airwaves about the tawdriness of the Lewinsky affair."[12] Toensing and her husband made regular appearances on television claiming that they were the target of investigations by the Clinton Administration.[13]

Commenting on their role in the 1998 House of Representatives Teamsters investigation, Rep. Bill Clay, a Missouri Democrat, said, "They've become a public spectacle, which means they can't be impartial." "It's a payoff from Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party to both Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova.... They have been on television over 200 times and not once have they been talking about an issue we're paying them $25,000 a month to handle for the Congress. It's a hell of a part-time job."[13]

Toensing was a founder and board member of The WISH List, a PAC seeking to elect pro-choice Republican women to public office.[14] The PAC was inspired by EMILY's List, a pro-choice Democratic PAC, and Toensing advocated for a "big tent" Republican Party that includes both pro-life and pro-choice members.[15]

Toensing was a frequent Republican commentator in the media during the Plame affair, a political scandal that led to the conviction of Scooter Libby, assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney.[16][17] The scandal involved the public outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, shortly after Plame's husband, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, wrote an op-ed in 2003 alleging that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.[18][19] In March 2005, Toensing submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, two journalists who were subpoenaed in the Plame investigation for refusing to reveal information obtained from confidential sources. In the brief, she "argued that the law couldn't have been broken when Valerie Plame's cover as a CIA agent was blown because her status wasn't really covert."[12] She also contended that Ms. Plame did not have a cover to be blown, citing a July 23, 2004, article in The Washington Times that argued that Valerie Plame's status as an undercover CIA agent may have been known to Russian and Cuban intelligence operations prior to the article (by Robert Novak) that revealed her status as a CIA employee.

In April 2018, Toensing represented Scooter Libby at the time when President Trump pardoned him.[20] Libby, the assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, had been convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in 2007 regarding the leak of Plame's identity.[17]

Toensing supported former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson in the Republican primaries for the 2008 presidential election.[12]

On March 19, 2018, Toensing and her husband, diGenova, were hired by President Donald Trump to serve on his legal team for the Special Counsel investigation.[21][22] DiGenova served as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1983 to 1988.[23][24] However, Trump cancelled the hires several days later due to potential conflicts of interest.[25]

Toensing represents Mark Corallo, who had previously served as a spokesman for Trump's private legal team during the investigation into possible collusion between members of Trump's 2016 campaign and the Russian government.[26][27] Robert Mueller interviewed Corallo as part of the Special Counsel investigation.[28][29]

Toensing has also represented Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign co-chair, and Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, who has informally advised Trump.[24]

Toensing became connected to the Trump–Ukraine scandal in hiring Lev Parnas, a colleague of Rudy Giuliani, to serve as a translator for the defense of oligarch Dmytro Firtash, one of the wealthiest Ukrainians, who is fighting extradition to the U.S. to face bribery charges. Firtash has lived in Vienna, Austria for five years. "Mr. Parnas was retained by DiGenova & Toensing, LLP as an interpreter in order to communicate with their client Mr. Firtash, who does not speak English," the firm said in a statement.[30] She was further tied to the scandal when documents from Lev Parnas were entered into record for the Trump impeachment hearing, including a letter from Rudy Giuliani asking to meet with then President-Elect Volodymyr Zelensky which stated that Giuliani would "be accompanied by my colleague Victoria Toensing, a distinguished American attorney who is very familiar with this matter."[31] This meeting was where he had intended to urge Zelensky to pursue inquiries into Hunter Biden, as well as whether Democrats colluded with Ukrainians to release information about Manafort, but it was cancelled by Giuliani saying he was a victim of spin by the Democrats.[32][33]

Toensing and diGenova were frequent guests on Fox News and Fox Business throughout 2019.[7] In November 2019, diGenova used an appearance on Fox Business to spread conspiracy theories about George Soros and make unevidenced claims that Soros controlled the State Department. After that appearance, which resulted in widespread calls for Fox to ban diGenova, Toensing and diGenova stopped appearing on the network.[34]

In November 2020, President Donald Trump named Toensing, diGenova, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis to join a legal team led by Rudy Giuliani to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election in which Trump was defeated.[10]