THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Graham also mentions Trump's personal interest in a "Turkish bank case" in the call that appears to refer to a U.S. case involving Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader and client of Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Trump had asked then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017 to help persuade the Justice Department to drop the Zarrab case. [...]

According to U.S. prosecutors, Zarrab and others used the Turkish bank Halkbank to "launder billions of dollars-worth of Iranian oil proceeds, ultimately creating a slush fund for Iran to use however it wished -- the very harm that U.S. sanctions were put in place to avoid." A senior banker at Halkbank was found guilty of working to evade sanctions on Iran, and Halbank itself could still face fines by the Treasury Department.

Zarrab also had ties to the Turkish government, according to a memo written in 2016 by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and was "engaged in a massive bribery scheme... paying cabinet-level [Turkish] governmental officials and high-level bank officers tens of millions of Euro and U.S. dollars" to facilitate his transactions.

Erdogan, wary of corruption being revealed in open court, fiercely lobbied high-level Obama administration officials for Zarrab's release after his 2016 arrest, the Washington Post reported at the time. At one point he even asked Vice President Joe Biden to have Bharara fired. Erdogan also sent his justice minister at the time to meet with then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and argue that the case was "based on no evidence."

In the hoax call, Graham suggested that the president would try to help Erdogan regarding that case as best he could.

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