Rudy Giuliani is way more of an open book than any criminal defense attorney should ever be, but that’s a good thing for the public. It allows us to have a better understanding of Trump’s thinking and strategy.
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Sunday that his repeated imputations of a supposed scandal at the heart of the Robert Mueller investigation – which Donald Trump calls “Spygate” – amounted to a tactic to sway public opinion and limit the risk of the president being impeached.
“Of course we have to do it to defend the president,” Trump’s lawyer told CNN State of the Union host Dana Bash, who accused him of being part of a campaign to undermine the Mueller investigation. Trump has repeatedly called the special counsel’s work a “witch hunt”, despite its producing five guilty pleas, including by three former Trump aides, and evidence of Russian tampering in US elections.
“It is for public opinion,” Giuliani said of his public campaign of dissimulation. “Because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach or not impeach. Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, are going to be informed a lot by their constituents. And so our jury – and it should be – is the American people.
“So Republicans largely, many independents, even some Democrats now question the legitimacy of [the Mueller investigation],” Giuliani said.
This is an admission that Trump fully expects Mueller to deliver a report to Congress meriting an inquiry on possible impeachment. Eventually, Giuliani says, the House of Representatives will be faced with the choice of whether or not to impeach the president. Potentially, the Senate will be forced to decide whether to convict or remove the president. Giuliani doesn’t say that this is a possibility. It says it is a certainty. And that’s a long way from what he said when he was first hired, which was that the whole thing would be wrapped up in a couple of weeks.
I see no particular reason to think Giuliani and Trump are wrong about this prediction. But, either way, they’ve clearly decided that the best way to defend the president now is to begin the political fight early while Mueller is still compelled to stay mum.
Impeachment is a political matter that is fought over legal principles. If only one side is fighting politically, then that side is winning.
But they have a lot of work to do to delegitimize this investigation if they have any hope of countering the case Mueller is assembling. Once the facts are placed on the table, the advantage will shift hard in the other direction.
The fact don’t matter to Trump’s Base. Literally. There is so much evidence of continual lies, cowardice, ignorance, mendacity and outright bribery that the Base ignores totally.
You are right that when the facts come out it will be devastating to the Trump administration with the 70% of the population that is not hopeless. They will be so delegitimized that it might make naming post offices a problem. I do not, however, see it leading to a successful impeachment.
Note the use of the operative term “successful” in the above sentence? Pelosi, Schumer and Co, being the cold hearted pragmatists that they truly are will not want to impeach at all. They might be forced.
We’ll see.
Not just ignoring. By actively re-tweeting, repeating and defending Trump’s lies and misdeeds his base is actually colluding with him to harm America. What we’re witnessing is the opposite of patriotism.
patriotism – noun pa·tri·ot·ism ˈpā-trē-ə-ˌti-zəm love for or devotion to one’s country.
Trump only loves and is devoted to himself… and money.
. . . the table soon enough.
Hmm. One thing you can be sure of with this bunch – every word they say is a lie, including `and’ and `the.'(1) They, or at least Giuliani, can still do the math – they know impeachment is not possible, even if the Democrats have a tidal wave 2018 election.
So this is BS:
Rile up the base in advance, like “Obama is coming for your guns”? For something that isn’t going to happen anyway? Maybe this more for the Nov 2018 congressional elections. The base is convinced the investigation is illegitmate but they have to turn out to vote.
(1) paraphrasing Mary McCarthy
. . . Mueller’s “indictment” (yeah, I know, not technically) will consist of . . .
. . . obstruction of Mueller’s investigation.
Guessing fairly high.
I’m not so sure. Marcy Wheeler keeps pounding the table over this but a lot of the media keep thinking certain questions/topics as being only relevant to obstruction when they’re also part of “collusion”. Trump’s involvement in written statement by Don Jr. regarding the June 9th meeting being the most obvious.
Especially given that he quickly admitted (boasted?) it was specifically over “the Russia thing”, not the obviously bullshit explanation they first put out. Then did boast about it to his Russian owners (Kislyak in this case?), seeming deluded that that would quash the investigation.
Giuliani said:
A lengthy…and badly needed…translation:
So it goes.
And…I say the following wth real intent, with no intended snark whatsoever:
That’s what has been printed on most the money printed in the U.S. for the last 100+ years.
And…once again…it is “the money” that is going to make the decision.
Bet on it.
We shall see how they bet.
Won’t we.
Let us pray.
Later…
AG
Now a standalone:
What Giuliani Says…And What He Really Means. A Translation.
Please reply there.
Thank you.
ASG
the advantage will shift hard in the other direction
We can only hope, but I’m a bit skeptical. I hate to be the pessimist but my feeling is that you are going to have to get some really hard evidence to tie Trump directly to “high crimes” to even have a chance at conviction in the Senate and certainly impeachment won’t happen unless the Democrats take the house.
The fact that Trump has surrounded himself with criminals pretty much amounts to nothing to the Republican party because the Republican party itself has become essentially a criminal enterprise- selling off pieces of the government and favors to their various billionaire backers. Trump is the direct result of a continuing march towards a corrupt fascist state that puts them in the drivers seat. He is the idiot savant that managed to figure out that that Republican voters can be told anything as long as they get promised their piece of the action or, more importantly, they can show Democrats who’s in charge and listen to them scream as one function after another of our government is destroyed. Survey after survey has show that the majority of the Republican party is all in- being a Republican has become their identity and they will pick and choose their “facts” accordingly.
I also think that the average person right now is pretty befuddled by the complexity of the Russia investigation and the nightly “scoop” on MSNBC about it, and any impeachment that relies on flakes like Carter Page or Roger Stone to tie Trump to dirty deeds will probably be easily deflected. “everybody knows these people are nutcases… I didn’t have anything to do with their crazy ideas”, etc…
My concern is that we are at an inflection point in our history and that the way politics works is changing rapidly. The norms that used to govern our politics are being tossed out the window by the increasing radicalism and corruption of the Republican party and I’m not so confident in the ability of the Democratic party to respond to the situation appropriately.
Yes. The 46% is made up of virtually all identifying Repubs and a collection of low-info/low-ed “independents” (who lean Repub, but won’t admit it to themselves for a variety of dimwitted personal psychological reasons). Der Trumper’s support is not at Bushco 28% levels, he’s in the low 40s, meaning after all the atrocities and boobery he hasn’t lost many of The 46%.
So Mueller is going to present a report that a political criminal is squatting in the WH, duh. He can’t indict the prez, so that means the House will have to “act”. Nothing will induce a Repub House to act with Trumper at 40-some percent. But The 46% has already decided that Trumper did nothing wrong, and if he did, they don’t care. They love his harassment and torture of Latinos, that was the WH admission price for Trumper and he surely has paid it in full.
We were told endlessly by the political scientists and pundits in 2016 that (according to all the traditional rules) Trumper was a terrible, terrible candidate who was certain to lose many times over. His election was a supposed impossibility. Yet, using our failed Constitution, he “won”. And once in office he has destroyed one democratic “rule” after another, with no meaningful response by the various institutions—other than the appointment of Mueller. So as you say, our politics is indeed “changing rapidly”, and I’d say the inflection point has been reached. What we are seeing now are the last ditch attempts to act as though it were otherwise, as though the “system” can handle this little problem of the collapse of the white electorate and abject corruption and moral monstrosity of the Repub party and the Great Satan, the American “Conservative” movement.
Mueller’s work is critical for history. If a report such as we are about to see came out about Obama, the country would have been torn asunder, because the “conservative” movement and its Noise Machine would not have stood for it. Will the (non-conservative) majority be willing to tear the country apart when the (actual) crimes of Der Trumper are officially laid out? Highly unlikely.
The only thing that will reduce their support is serious economic ruin. Trump knows this, which is why he and Fox emphasize economic talk.
RE:
This phrase was used by the brave (mostly Bavarian) journalists to describe the manifestly unqualified and thug-deploying Herr Hitler, as he and his Nazi cohorts worked to achieve high office, pre-1933. Perhaps I have it wrong, but I have always taken this to mean a criminal who then turned his attention to politics, as opposed to an established politician who simply engages in “political” crimes. Our Trump is a (financial) criminal who has since gone into politics—but he is a criminal first, a politician second.
These journalists were to a man killed upon the creation of Der Fuhrer. We of course never had their like in 2015-2016. Unlike Hitler, Stalin and Putin, Der Trumper has not yet had an opponent killed (simply beaten), but he is only in his second year in office…
The phrase “political criminal” in isolation without that historical context did seem to imply only crimes of a political nature as distinct from just ordinarily criminal crimes (Trump is obviously guilty of both kinds).
With the added context, as an historical allusion, it makes much better sense.
If Giuliani is full of shit on everything else, and he is, why is he spot on about this?
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
BTW, this is what makes me worried that William Kristol is on our side re: Trump. He’s always wrong!
All our signals are unreliable now? Trump is so bad, the laws of physics break down near him.
on anything, I realized we must be in the Darkest Timeline. The Trump era has really effed up everything.
In Schiff’s presser after the DoJ/FBI briefing he said that Flood told them that he was at the meeting as WH counsel, not as Trump’s personal lawyer.
That distinction going forward, where he is hired on to protect Trump’s presidency, may need some broadening if they have already acknowledged internally that Mueller will give a report that will provide charges for impeachment.
In Trump’s case, the charges that will be leveled will no doubt be ones that can’t be simply extinguished by impeachment. His legal team probably should be representing him on the premise that what they do and how they do it will be used in legal actions after Trump is impeached (or even if he isn’t).
In other words, Giuliani may acknowledge that the legal team represents the Pres, but the actions that the candidate took aren’t protected like those of a sitting president and it’s the candidacy and his transition months that will be targets once Mueller’s report is on the table.
This sounds at least modestly promising!