What Trump has to fear from Rudy Giuliani
Opinion by George T. Conway III
Contributing columnist
May 6, 2021 at 11:33 a.m. EDT
To borrow the infamous line of his ex-presidential ex-client, it looks like Rudolph W. Giuliani is “going to go through some things.” Like possibly being charged with a crime. Worse, some people who might have tried to save him from that fate might have actually guaranteed it.
In law and in life, things have a way of coming full circle. The quoted words come from the former president’s supposedly “perfect” phone call with Ukraine’s president, and described what could happen to the American ambassador there, Marie L. Yovanovitch. It was Giuliani’s relentless efforts that got her recalled.
Now that’s what might land poor Giuliani in the dock. Last week, the FBI showed up at his apartment at dawn, armed with a search warrant that reportedly focused on Yovanovitch’s firing. Questions the seized materials might answer: On whose behalf was Giuliani acting? Just Donald J. Trump, legal client? Or was Giuliani also representing Ukrainian officials who wanted the corruption-fighting diplomat gone?
If the latter, Giuliani might have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Giuliani denies any obligation to register — because, he says, he drafted his retainer agreements to disclaim lobbying or foreign representation.
Whatever happens, the investigation marks yet another step in Giuliani’s unimaginable fall from grace. The once-respected former federal prosecutor, New York mayor (“America’s mayor”!), presidential candidate and possible Cabinet pick, stands reduced to a laughingstock: shirt-tucking star of the “Borat” sequel, headliner for a news conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, and now defendant in a $1.3 billion defamation suit for having claimed that the long-dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez founded a voting software company that helped steal the presidency from Trump.
Even before he peddled nutso election-fraud claims, Giuliani had firmly established himself as one of the world’s worst lawyers. He’s the bumbler who blurted out on national TV that his client, Individual-1, had reimbursed a $130,000 payment made to a porn star, a transaction that triggered a sprawling and ongoing New York grand jury investigation into Trump’s overall business affairs.
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That’s not the ultimate irony of Giuliani’s predicament. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan tried to get permission last fall for a Giuliani raid but were rebuffed by senior officials serving under Trump. And last June, for reasons still opaque, then-Attorney General William P. Barr ousted the U.S. attorney there and tried to handpick a successor.
If any of that was intended to protect Giuliani — or Trump himself — it might end up backfiring spectacularly. If a warrant had been executed before Jan. 20, it’s hard to imagine that Trump wouldn’t have pardoned Giuliani, out of spite, self-interest or both.
Now it’s too late. As Giuliani cautioned on the newly disclosed transcript, “be careful of the people around you, because they can very easily, they can very easily get you into trouble.” That might be the only advice he gave that turned out to be right.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/06/george-conway-giuliani-raid-trump-fear/
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