Crime

It's Giuliani Time! Rudy Ritualistically Suicides One Case To Try To Save Trump From Another

Thing is, I think Giuliani ineffectively inoculated Trump from campaign finance violations, while successfully murdering all credibility.

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Rudy Giuliani (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty)

New Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani went on Sean Hannity tonight and decided to completely blow up one of Donald Trump’s many legal cases. He blew it right the f**k up. It’s gone. Bye-bye.

Donald Trump has been arguing that he didn’t have a relationship with adult film actress Stormy Daniels, that he knew nothing about Michael Cohen’s hush-money payment to Daniels, and that he generally knew nothing about nobody. Trump went on Air Force One and said that he did not know about Michael Cohen’s payment.

And Rudy Giuliani just went on cable television and basically called Trump a liar.

Yep, Giuliani said that Trump did reimburse Cohen, “funneling” the money through a law firm (which is not a word you want to use when your personal attorney is under investigation for fraud), but Trump “didn’t know the specifics of it.” A flabbergasted Sean Hannity actually pressed Giuliani on the point. He noted that Cohen has repeatedly said that he paid the money out of his own funds, without asking Trump. Giuliani said, “I don’t know. I have not investigated that. No reason to doubt him… I like Michael a lot.”

Yeah, so, Cohen didn’t even get a full-throated expression of support from Giuliani. Chew on that, Michael, when you are weighing whether or not to plead out and flip.

Trump supporters, I suppose, will argue that Trump just paid his lawyer $130,000 without asking why. And Cohen will still argue that he paid a porn star $130,000 without asking his client if he needed to. But… there is literally no rational person who could possibly believe all that any more. Trump people thought Mexico was going to pay for the wall, so I’m not impugning them with the heavy burden of rational thought, but Giuliani just told us what we already know: that Trump and Cohen have been lying about Stormy Daniels this whole time.

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So… you have to ask why. The answer is in the very next thing that came out of Giuliani’s mouth: “That money was not campaign money, sorry. I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violation.”

Donald Trump is personally concerned with the implication that he slept with a porn star. But his legal team has always, always, always been more concerned with the campaign finance violations. Paying hush money to a porn star is just gross. The campaign finance violation is a crime.

It seems likely that Giuliani made the decision to give up the ghost on the porn star payment, which was always a lie and a very obvious one at that, in an exchange to say the next line: the money was not “campaign” money, so… no violation. That’s the bigger fish, in Giuliani’s mind. Whether he actually consulted with anybody on the Trump legal team is a matter of debate. Who is actually running Trump’s legal team at this very physical moment is a matter of debate, given the upheavals of today.

The problem is that NOTHING Giuliani said actually inoculates Trump or Cohen from any possible campaign finance violation. Giuliani can say that “it’s not campaign money,” but that’s Rudy being worried about the entirely wrong thing. If Cohen made the payment, then that could be viewed as a campaign contribution. Paying somebody back for campaign contributions doesn’t… unmake the violation. Did Michael Cohen give Trump a personal loan? Was he paid back with interest? Just because Trump can donate as much of his own money to his campaign doesn’t mean Michael Cohen can.

Giuliani also said that Trump paid Cohen back over time, which could be a whole other ball of trouble for Trump. Was he, for instance, still paying Cohen off — sorry, “back,” — after it became clear that the F.B.I. was looking into Cohen? Was Trump… structuring the payments to avoid reporting requirements? Giuliani was not speaking with the discretion necessary of a defense lawyer who is going to risk going on television.

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And for good measure, Giuliani ALSO said that Trump fired James Comey because Comey would not publicly say that Trump was not a target of the F.B.I. investigation. … Which sounds MORE like obstruction of justice than ever before.

After Giuliani was hired, I said on All In With Chris Hayes that the #Resistance shouldn’t at all be worried about Giuliani coming on the team… because Giuliani is an old, bad lawyer who was more likely than not to make things worse. I feel like it’s taken a week for me to be proven right. The man just went into a friendly interview, admitted that the president and his personal lawyer have been lying, ineffectively tried to set up a defense to campaign finance violations, and deepened the case for obstruction of justice.

And you know what? None of this probably really matters because Robert Mueller and the S.D.N.Y. probably already have all the documents they need to prove that Giuliani was, I guess, telling the truth about all the dirt he just exposed on TV.

Welcome to the Trump legal team, Emmet Flood. Hope you have had fun during your orientation.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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