Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti helpfully explains the peril Rudy Giuliani finds himself in and the reasons he might turn against Donald Trump. I find no fault in his analysis, but I’m finding this saga strangely unsatisfying. I didn’t expect to feel this way. I’ve been eagerly waiting Giuliani’s imprisonment ever since he first started adventuring over to Ukraine. You’d think I’d be ecstatic to read about how screwed he is after the FBI raided his home and office and seized his electronic devices.
I think the main thing bugging me is that this is that it’s all revolving around an alleged violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Among the things Giuliani has done that are deserving of prison time, neglecting to register his activities is very far down the list. He’s a straight-up hustler, and his day typically involves jumping from one hare-brained effort to fleece people out their money to another. This is what I want exposed, not that he lobbied the president on behalf of Ukrainian oligarchs without signing the proper forms.
I won’t complain if he’s convicted of serious crimes even if I think they’re the wrong crimes, but what I want more than justice is for people to learn what this man is all about.
Of course, with Giuliani, large and small crimes intersect. For example, his “work” for Fraud Guarantee had something for everyone. It was a fake company offering a fake product that payed Giuliani a half a million dollars to do nothing. Who paid Giuliani? According to a separate federal indictment, an unidentified Russian businessman was responsible. The Russian delivered a pile of money, the indictment claims, “to gain influence with U.S. politicians and candidates.”
When I wrote about this in 2019, I repeatedly called it “the biggest political scandal in American history.”
Here’s the thing. The issue I have with how this is being covered is that it’s being framed as a technical violation as if everything would have been fine if Giuliani hadn’t tried to hide what he was doing and who was paying for it. But he was doing two very serious things. The first is that he was working for a fraudulent company that was ripping off investors. The second is that he was being paid by friends of Vladimir Putin to help cover up what the Russians did in the 2016 election and blame it on Ukrainians.
Let’s not forget, either, that he was also serving as a personal attorney to the United States. And that president was asking him to do the exact same thing. Trump probably did not tell Giuliani to try to enrich himself while he was in Ukraine trying to exonerate Russia. That was typical free-lancing from an inveterate grifter. But he did want Giuliani to damage Joe Biden, and that’s what caused the first impeachment trial for Trump.
Giuliani finished off his public career by pushing phony election fraud claims and inciting an insurrection “trial by combat” against the U.S. Government.
So, forgive me if I’m a bit impatient reading about how he’s guilty of unregistered foreign lobbying. He might turn against Trump, but the crimes as so big here they almost defy imagination. Both he and the ex-president betrayed their country in ways that no one thought possible. It’s the scale and improbability of their crimes that offer their best defense. It seems almost brazen to even accuse them of doing what they did, but they did it and I don’t want to see it treated as a technical offense.
I would find the minimal charge discouraging, too. If it’s any solace, Josh Marshall wrote a couple days ago that he thought there were signs the charges may be more serious. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-russian-nesting-doll-of-giulianis-corruption#more-1372166 (behind paywall) If anything, the firing of Ambassador Yovanvitch seems to be looming large.
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Who among us can forget the months and months of breathless anticipation on the left for the results of “Fitz-mas”, which was surely going to topple the Bush administration in an historical fashion, by exposing the oh so obvious rot from top to the bottom of the most unlawful gang of criminal miscreants in recent history, until it was dwarfed by the Trump administration.
After that experience it seems advisable for liberals to not rely so much on their Magic Eight Ball.
For me, the number one symptom of a culture in crisis is when penalties are different for people depending on wealth, class, connections and the like. Measured that way, our culture is fucked. Not that it hasn’t always been. Those who have always gotten the short end of the stick are minorities. Consider the Native American genocide, the centuries in which African-Americans were held in chains and later in states of terror, and Japanese internment just to name the most glaring examples. In the town where I live, there was a roundup of Chinese-Americans. They were deported and their property confiscated. This was all rather routine in the good old USA.
Not that we originated these practices. They were imported with our European culture. Beyond that, humans have a facility for mistreatment of out groups. The out group is comprised of those who do not remind us of ourselves. We seem wired for bias in favor of those of our own tribe and against those of other tribes. These biases can be overcome but they have a way of sneaking back in under the radar. It’s always been that way. Each of the major religions has at its core a value of unity but in practice can be as racist/sexist/classist as any other institution or segment of society. It’s something for which we need to be forever vigilant because all humans share this predisposition. For us on the left, our prejudices may run against Texans, evangelicals or Republicans but it’s the same thing. Anytime we’re prejudging people based on the group to which they belong, we’re implicated.
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