Rudy Giuliani's Desperate Defense of Trump Is Falling Apart in Front of Us
Rudy Giuliani’s Desperate Defense of Trump Is Falling Apart in Front of Us as the Case Against the President Mounts
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/83794
Michael Cohen’s ongoing testimony before Congress and the evidence of criminal wrongdoing he is providing to lawmakers, prosecutors, and the media, must be making President Donald Trump, his former client, increasingly nervous.
So Rudy Giuliani, the president’s current lawyer, is frantically trying to spin a defense as the case spirals out beyond his control.
In a new report from the New York Times Wednesday night, for example, Giuliani said that multiple lawyers for defendants in the Russia investigation have sought potential pardons. Giuliani claimed, though, that he has consistently rebuffed the request. Giuliani is an unreliable narrator in the best of times — he repeatedly mangles known facts when they benefit Trump. But in this case, his claims are even more dubious, because they clearly look like damage control; multiple reports have recently found that there were discussions of a possible pardon for Cohen, though it’s not clear who brought up the idea.
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Giuliani, the Times reported, “said he always insisted to defense lawyers that Mr. Trump would not consider granting pardons until the investigations were long over.” Of course, this might not be much of a help to Trump, because as the Times note, previous reporting found that the president’s lawyers were raising the prospect of possible pardons to defendants in the Russia investigation before Giuliani came aboard.
And even earlier on Wednesday, Giuliani gave a different, much more definitive response about the possibility of pardons.
“We have unequivocally always said only one thing, and anything else would be entirely false,” Giuliani told ABC News. “We have said the president is not going to issue any pardons and is not considering any pardons at this time.”
The answer to ABC News, though, was in direct contradiction with known facts. Giuliani has previously said Trump “reserves the power to [pardon] if and when it’s appropriate.” Trump himself has said on the subject of pardons, “I’m not taking anything off the table.”
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