Photograph Source: Gage Skidmore – CC BY-SA 2.0
Help me get this straight. Rudolph Giuliani is the President’s private attorney, or at least he still seems to be. According to CNN on 10/11/19:
“Rudy Giuliani is still President Trump’s personal attorney but will not be dealing with matters involving Ukraine, a source close to Trump’s legal team told CNN.
Earlier today, Trump wouldn’t say whether Giuliani was still his personal attorney.
‘Well I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to Rudy. I spoke to him yesterday briefly. He’s a very good attorney and he has been my attorney, yeah, sure,’ he told CNN.
Asked later by CNN if he was still Trump’s attorney, Giuliani responded, ‘Yes.’”
As CNN went on to note:
“However, Ukraine is at the center of the current impeachment investigation being conducted by the House of Representatives into Trump. Also, the criminal indictment against two of Giuliani’s associates who were arrested Wednesday night trying to leave the US, describe an elaborate, months-long scheme to funnel foreign money into federal and state elections around the US to curry favor with politicians on behalf of at least one Ukrainian government official and a Russian businessman.”
Wasn’t Giuliani the bagman for Trump’s sordid campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens under pain of losing US military assistance—to fight the Russians, whom for Democrats seem to be the source of most of the world’s evils? Aren’t these two shady guys (Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman) his erstwhile if not indicted partners in crime? Why aren’t Rudy and his pals fodder for impeachment proceedings? This does not compute.
All this this begs the question: Given that, besides Trump, Giuliani is a central figure in the Ukraine morass, why didn’t the House impeachment inquiry call Rudy as a witness? Or did they make such an effort and not tell anybody? Most likely, Rudy would have weaseled out of testifying, as had he been sworn in he would be forced to admit things that Trump has ordered the entire executive branch not to talk about. But that still would have provided great talking points for the Democrats that, for whatever reason, they chose to forego.
As Trump’s personal attorney, or one of them, Giuliani is not on the White House Staff. He’s not even a federal employee. And so, as Trump’s gag order on executive agencies doesn’t apply to him, why didn’t House investigators direct Rudy to appear and compel him to testify?
But this didn’t happen. And it isn’t happening in the Senate impeachment trial either, despite Giuliani’s expressed eagerness to be a witness for the defense? (Rudy seems to believe that he could conduct the trial all on his own.) He can say that because he knows McConnell wouldn’t let it happen.
Now, Rudy could have and likely would have invoked client-attorney privilege to avoid spilling beans on his conversations with Trump, but why would his shenanigans in Ukraine be considered exempt from discovery and cross-examinations? They could have asked him what Pence was up to with President Zelinsky in Warsaw as Trump’s surrogate because he has no privileged relationship with our esteemed second-in-command.
Has anyone asked Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, or Jerry Nadler why they didn’t forcibly drag Rudy into the House chamber by his cohones? Surely, dismissed US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch would like to know, and so would I.
Trump’s bitch Mitch isn’t about to let anyone to testify in the Senate impeachment trial, we won’t know until some enterprising AG drags Rudi into court. But shame on Pelosi and her minions for squandering this golden opportunity.
Despite Trump’s stonewalling, the House impeachment team has done a pretty decent job of corroborating its charges against him, but it could have done more. It goes to show that what you don’t know can hurt you.
