Victoria Toensing

Victoria Ann Toensing (née Long; born October 16, 1941) is an American attorney, Republican Party operative and with her husband, Joseph diGenova, a partner in the Washington law firm diGenova & Toensing. Toensing and diGenova frequently appeared on Fox News and Fox Business channels, until diGenova used a November 2019 appearance to spread conspiracy theories about George Soros, leading to widespread calls for him to be banned from the network. In 2019, Toensing and diGenova began representing Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash in his efforts to block extradition to the United States under a federal indictment and became embroiled in the Trump–Ukraine scandal. The couple has worked with Rudy Giuliani in support of President Donald Trump beginning in 2018, and was named to join a legal team led by Giuliani to overturn the results of the 2020 United States presidential election in which Trump was defeated.

Early life and education

Toensing graduated from Indiana University in 1962 with a degree in education. Toensing was active with the Republican Party in Michigan. She taught high-school English until she entered law school, earning a J.D. from the University of Detroit School of Law in 1975.

She joined the U.S. attorney's office in Detroit, where she prosecuted narcotics cases.

In 1981, Toensing became chief counsel to Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where she helped draft the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

News and politics

Reagan administration

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.

Clinton investigations

DiGenova and Toensing established their law firm, diGenova & Toensing, in January 1996.

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

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."

The WISH List

Toensing was a founder and board member of The WISH List, a PAC seeking to elect pro-choice Republican women to public office. 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.

Valerie Plame investigation

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. 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. 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." She also contended that Plame did not have a cover to be blown, citing a July 23, 2004, article in ''The Washington Times'' that argued that her 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 Donald Trump pardoned him. 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.

2008 election

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

Involvement with Trump, his associates and Ukraine

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. DiGenova served as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1983 to 1988. However, Trump cancelled the hires several days later due to potential conflicts of interest, though Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow said they might assist in other legal matters.

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. Robert Mueller interviewed Corallo as part of the Special Counsel investigation.

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.

In spring 2019, Toensing began representing former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin and then-prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko

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