With all eyes on Mike Pence after his speech at the RNC yesterday, we examine the past 6 months of his tenure as the leader of the task force coronavirus – and what it all means for his political future.
Schiff, whose commission unsuccessfully sought documents and testimony from Giuliani during the indictment, said the decision to put Giuliani on a pedestal “tells you everything you need to know about Trump’s lack of moral character, his willingness to once again accept foreign aid. , his zeal to advance Russian conspiracy theories. “
Giuliani’s fierce defensive actions have attracted him to the presidency, while others have been shunned by the former mayor’s influence. Trump has defended himself as “a little rough around the edges” when others thought Giuliani set the defense of the accusation on fire. For Trump, Giuliani’s image is frozen in time in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when his hard-hitting charity helped ease the pain of a city and nation. And he earned Trump’s loyalty when he joined then-candidate Trump in 2016 after the tape ‘Access Hollywood’ appeared.
“So now they are after the legendary ‘crime buster’ and greatest mayor in NYC history, Rudy Giuliani,” Trump sei when the House’s indictment raged, adding that he considered Giuliani “a great guy and wonderful lawyer.”
Giuliani’s performance Thursday, on the last night of the convention when the president himself wants to accept the GOP nomination, underscores how much Trump has turned the GOP convention into a celebration of himself instead of his party.
“It’s the president who rolls his nose at everyone, with his nose on the accusation,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (DN.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who also served as an accusation manager for the Senate trial.
Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
If Giuliani’s Twitter feed is any indication, his speech on Thursday will be similar to his address at the 2016 GOP convention, when he went to Hillary Clinton for, among other things, the Benghazi attack.
“I finally managed to get the number of words in my convention speech among the small amount of time marijuana smokers put comrade Kamala in jail,” Giuliani wrote on Twitter this week, referring to California Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential candidate whose record as prosecutor has pulled control.
And on Thursday morning, Giuliani said he would not delve into the false accusations he made against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden – instead focusing his primetime address on violence and looting in major cities in connection with the most peaceful protests encouraged by police shootings of unarmed black men.
“Not in my speech. Not in this. That will be another day, ‘Giuliani told WABC when asked if he would bring his investigations to the Bidens. “It simply came to our notice then. At the moment I think you can not really escape what is happening in Chicago, in New York, in Kenosha. I think this is the problem that is the emergency problem. ”
Trump’s aides and some of Capitol Hill’s allies are at times embarrassed by the embrace of the former mayor’s president.
Giuliani was at the center of Trump’s attempt to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter over discredited allegations of corruption, driven by pro-Russian troops in Kiev, which formed the basis of the case of accusation of the Democrats. He urged top Ukrainian officials to advance the effort, and Trump repeatedly called on assistants and diplomats – and even the newly elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky – to join him.
Giuliani helped engineer the smear campaign ahead of the expulsion of Marie Yovanovitch, the foreign service career officer and longtime U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He also helped reinforce a strengthened theory with Russian support that Ukraine, not the Kremlin, interfered with the 2016 elections and hid a server full of evidence. Trump asked the President of Ukraine about that server during a July 2019 phone call that helped with the President of Accusation.
During the House of Commons’ indictment last year, Republicans criticized Giuliani in private and sought to divorce Giuliani’s president in public, as Democrats sought to make the case that Trump knew the intimate details of, and even directed, Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine to dig dirt on Biden.
One of those Republicans, then-Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who has since become Trump’s chief of staff in the White House, sought to portray Giuliani as a solo actor, then told POLITICO: ‘I would not, in my opinion, be a send private lawyer looking for some server in a foreign country. “Meadows also often insists that Giuliani could trade in Ukraine himself, despite Trump’s consistent embrace.
“This is an indictment of Rudy Giuliani. The last time I checked, he was not the president, ‘Meadows told reporters during the House hearings.
Last month, Meadows appeared on Giuliani’s podcast, and the two shared a moment and complained about the investigations and accusations that had the potential to overthrow the Trump presidency.
During the Senate indictment process, Trump’s legal team devoted an entire segment to defending Giuliani, led by attorney Jane Raskin, who praised the former mayor and accused Democrats of using him as “a colorful distraction.”
“One could argue that he is everything Clarence Darrow said a defense lawyer should be – scandalous, respectful, blasphemous, a crook, an offender,” Raskin said.
However, after three months of an investigation and indictment, some Senate Republicans who pleaded guilty to Trump’s innocence fired Giuliani, saying he was presiding over the US president and foreign policy. have the circumcision.
“One certainty from this episode is that the Mayor of America should not be a lawyer for the president. It’s time for the president and adults on his team to lead Rudy off the stage, ‘Sasse wrote the day before he voted to acquit Trump, warning of Giuliani’s’ dark financial interests’.
Other Republicans say Giuliani has damaged America’s foreign policy in Ukraine, which has focused on efforts to combat Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine.
But Trump was never ready to overthrow Giuliani, and insider accounts have since confirmed the president’s intentions.
Madeleine Westerhout, Trump’s former executive director and chief operating officer of the Oval Office, said in her recent book that Giuliani had earned Trump “eternal, unwavering loyalty” for holding on to the GOP’s secure presidential candidate at the lowest point of the campaign – the day of the “Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about family members without their permission, was leaked.
“[Trump] has been hurt so many times by people he trusted that if someone passed through, like Rudy, he would remember it for the rest of his life, “Westerhout wrote, later recounting how” a group of us “Trump” would practice “Do not allow begging Giuliani on television because he is” ashamed of himself and the administration. “
“The president would not hear of it,” Westerhout added, quoting Trump as saying, “He’s the only one who stood up for me. Rudy is my guy.”
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said the president, who signed all the convention speakers, wanted Giuliani to appear. Miller gave Giuliani credit for helping defeat “the witch hunt of accusation.”
“He has a bigger than life footprint. “He’s the president’s personal lawyer and friend,” Miller said. “He is one of the most loyal, smart and hardworking people I have ever met. We’re lucky we got him at the convention.
The other lawyers who worked alongside Giuliani to protect Trump from indictment and accusation said they were not surprised that Trump was ready to see Giuliani on the last, most striking day of his convention.
‘I’ve known Rudy for over 40 years. He is very capable and has demonstrated his excellence as mayor of New York, “said John Dowd, a former Trump lawyer. “He’s a great friend to and very effective advocate for the president. I think he has served the president very well and I’m glad he was elected to speak … He’s a great American.”
Jay Sekulow, who defended the president with Giuliani amid two years of investigation by Russian specialist Robert Mueller, praised Giuliani as “a great leader and lawyer.”
However, Giuliani has continued to face controversy in court, even since the prosecution process ended.
Most notable were federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the criminal justice department in DC Giuliani, although the status of those sins is unclear. And Giuliani’s own investigations into Biden and other Democrats have included meetings with Ukrainian officials who have a history of false, debunked narratives that are often repeated by the Kremlin. More recently, U.S. intelligence officials cited one of them, pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach, as engaging in a foreign information plot aimed at minimizing bids.
“It just shows you what a group of grifters are at the heart of Trump’s GOP – that they would choose to profile someone who is deliberately dealing with someone who identifies the intelligence community as progressive Russian propaganda,” he said. Ship.
Derkach did not respond to requests for comment.
Giuliani was also deeply involved with two Ukrainians – Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman – who were charged last October with campaign finance charges and are scheduled to face charges in February. Giuliani, who is not accused of having relationships with the couple, deployed Parnas and Fruman in Ukraine as fixers on the ground to gain access to senior government officials and leaned on them to investigate Biden.
Parnas has meanwhile renounced his alliance with Giuliani and collaborated with Chamber investigators during the indictment. He says it’s no surprise that Trump is keeping Giuliani close.
“Their bond is even deeper than it seems – they have skeletons in the closet between the two of them. I’m aware of a few,” Parnas said in an interview. “He knows Rudy will go out there and speak on his behalf. What he does not understand is that Rudy does not have the same impact as in 2016. “
Since the indictment of Parnassus and Fruman, Giuliani has also met with Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat who promoted an unfounded allegation that the Ukrainian government collaborated with the Democratic National Committee in 2016. about Telizhenko as the panel prepares for its subpoena in an investigation involving Biden’s son, Hunter, and his role in the management of a Ukrainian energy company. POLITICO reported at the time that the briefing touched on Telizhenko’s unfounded theories, and the commission later withdrew the curfew.
In a text message to POLITICO, Telizhenko said it was “very positive” that Giuliani was selected to speak at the GOP convention, noting that Giuliani “is close to President Donald Trump I think [trusts] Mr. Giuliani. ”
For months, there have been questions about whether Giuliani remains legally exposed in the case that Parnas and Fruman have been charged with. An uproar at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, orchestrated by Attorney General William Barr in June, prompted some critics of Trump to raise concerns that efforts were being made to increase investigations into the president’s allies. Last week, the office accused Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign boss and senior adviser, of allegations of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in connection with an alleged plot to use a fundraiser for a border wall to pay personal costs.
“You know, the president only has so many options of people to surround himself with that are currently outside custody,” Schiff said. “And Giuliani, I think, is one of them.”
Anita Kumar contributed to this report.
