Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.com.
It was a head-scratcher when Rudy Giuliani was announced as Trump’s new top defense attorney just a few weeks ago, while the White House struggles to contain mounting legal woes.
As a lawyer, Giuliani hadn’t practiced inside a courtroom in nearly three decades, and his background was as a prosecutor, not a defense attorney.
Turns out the skeptics were right.
It’s been two days since Giuliani’s scattershot interview on Fox News — where he conceded Trump paid back his attorney Michael Cohen for the $130,000 hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels in 2016 — and the White House is still reeling.
“The explosive revelation, which Mr. Giuliani said was intended to prove that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen violated no campaign finance laws, prompted frustration and disbelief among the president’s other legal and political advisers, some of whom said they feared the gambit could backfire,” the New York Times reported.
“The president’s other lawyers ultimately determined that Mr. Giuliani had consulted with Mr. Trump, people close to them said, but were left speechless about why he decided to make the disclosure in such a high-profile way and without any strategy to handle the fallout.”
Aside from the political ramifications from lying about paying off a porn star prior to Election Day, Rudy may have actually increased Trump’s legal exposure:
Ted Lieu
✔@tedlieu
4 possible felonies from Rudy Giuliani admission:
1. $130k payment to Stormy was in-kind coordinated contribution above limits
2. Cohen was a straw donor used to cover up true source of contribution
3. False statements on financial disclosures
4. False statements on banking forms https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/991856832372129793 …
Giuliani’s goal on Fox News seemed to be to inoculate Trump from any campaign donation violations in terms of Cohen’s hush-money payment. But it appears he failed miserably at that.
Instead, all Rudy did was to obliterate whatever strains of credibility the White House may have still had among the non-believers.
Now, the White House is left scrambling to explain its previous and obvious lies about Daniels, it’s even losing support from some key right-wing media voices, which are calling out the rampant duplicity.
The punchline is that Giuliani was hired to deal with Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and try to bring that to a close, not to get involved in the Stormy Daniels case.
But now Giuliani’s ensconced himself in both, and they’re both unraveling.
But it wasn’t like Trump had lots of good options. At least a dozen white-collar lawyers had already turned down White House job offers, not wanting to work for an irrational client who often refused to heed legal counsel, and had a long history of not paying his bills.
Now that they’re together, Trump and Giuliani are blazing their own chaotic path — one that appears to be heading straight toward a cliff.
