Government

Rudy Giuliani Makes Great Show Of Pretending To Cooperate With January 6 Select Committee

Look at MEEEEEEEEEE!

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(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Rudy Giuliani is never going to provide meaningful testimony to the January 6 Select Committee.

Sure, he might show up for “testimony,” only to invoke executive and attorney client privilege in response to each and every question. But let’s take this story in the New York Times about Rudy’s very serious, good faith negotiations over his proposed testimony with several very large grains of salt.

“[N]egotiations could easily fall apart,” the paper of record assures us, before noting that “Mr. Giuliani, through his lawyer, has signaled to the committee that he plans to take a less confrontational stance toward its requests than some other members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle who are fighting the committee’s subpoenas or have otherwise refused to cooperate.”

Okay, Rudy.

Let’s go out on a limb here and assume that no one from the Committee told reporters that “Mr. Giuliani was still negotiating over whether to give investigators an informal interview or a formal deposition,” because the first option is almost certainly not on the table. As Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the Committee, told CNN, “The expectation is he is going to cooperate because that’s the law.”

Giuliani is a central witness to the events leading up to the Capitol Riot, and the Committee isn’t inviting him in for a chitchat over coffee and crullers. He led the campaign’s doomed litigation to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, despite being told by the campaign’s own lawyers that allegations of widespread fraud were nonsense; He spearheaded the effort to round up fake electors to sign and submit bogus certificates to the national archives, in a deliberate effort to give either Vice President Pence or swing state legislatures a pretext to say that the result was “contested” and recast electoral college votes for Donald Trump; He participated in meetings at the White House with Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn in which they suggested declaring a national emergency and deploying the National Guard to seize all voting machines for a recount; He himself personally contacted the Department of Homeland Security about having the agency’s storm troopers confiscate the voting machines; He even contacted state prosecutors in Michigan and demanded that they turn voting machines over to him personally; And he gave a speech at the pre-riot rally calling for “trial by combat.”

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Giuliani has significant exposure here, particularly with the Justice Department investigating the fake elector scheme. His henchman Bernie Kerik already testified, after watching moldering podcaster Steve Bannon, with whom Rudy shares counsel Robert Costello, give two middle fingers to the Committee and wind up charged with contempt of congress.

Giuliani is facing a mountain of legal bills, not just because of the Committee’s investigation, but because he’s being sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems, its competitor Smartmatic, and former Dominion employee Eric Coomer. And since he’s been suspended from the practice of law and his meal ticket is now out of the White House, he can’t even hire himself out to overseas oligarchs as a lobbyist, AHEM consultant. 

To top it all off, Giuliani never got paid by Trump for his services. So perhaps, as former US Attorney Joyce White Vance suggests, this public display of affection for the January 6 Select Committee is actually intended for the person with the big checkbook. Because Rudy’s never going to pay his lawyers by plugging cigars and supplements on his podcast. Even at $400 a pop, he’d have to spend all day humiliating himself on Cameo to come up with the cash he needs.

Which is a pretty good reason to go running to the New York Times suggesting that he’s “considering taking a vastly different approach than those taken by other close Trump allies.” Because some of the witnesses subpoenaed by the Committee are getting their bills paid through a “legal defense fund” controlled by Trump, if not financed by the former president. (OPM, of course.) Meanwhile Rudy, who spent 2019 traipsing around Eastern Europe trolling for dirt on Joe Biden, then went pedal to the metal for Trump’s Big Lie in 2020, is getting hung out to dry.

“Subtle” has never been Rudy’s brand. But even graded on the Four Seasons Total Hair Dye Scale, this one is off the charts.

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Giuliani in Talks to Testify to House Jan. 6 Panel [NYT]

Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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