The left has called former New York Mayor, and current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s recent defense of Trump everything from “idiotic” to “crazy.” But the former prosecutor may just be crazy like a fox.
One thing for sure, is Rudy enjoys the spotlight as much as his boss, and Trump is not likely to find a more loyal, or shrewd supporter anywhere. As shocking as it may be, instead of trying to deny the most recent bombshell allegations that have been hurled against POTUS since the recent court filings in the Cohen and Flynn cases, Rudy, in his usual acerbic style, denies nothing. He casually admits that Trump probably did do the things he is accused of in respect to payments to women he allegedly had affairs with. He may have even lied about those events, but in the end none of that matters, because according to Rudy, “no crimes have been committed” by Trump.
He also says that as regards to Trump now being clearly caught in lies about the incidents, that he should be forgiven about not remembering properly, because he was “very busy at the time,” referring to the heart of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Are such statements by Rudy more harmful than helpful to Trump as some suggest, blissfully ignorant about how serious the charges against Trump are, or could become — or are they a brilliant strategy by master manipulator of public opinion?
Donald Trump’s Jury Is the Public
As a former tough on crime prosecutor in the very district in southern New York where the Cohen and Flynn cases are being argued, Giuliani knows full-well that a typical defense lawyer’s stance is to admit nothing, especially in public. Rudy has seemed to go the opposite way, and instead admit everything, and deny nothing.
As far as the hush money payments — speaking on the Sunday Dec. 15 airing of ABC’s This Week, Giuliani said, “sure that happened.” But he qualified it by dismissively adding that “paying $130,000 to Stormy whatever and paying [$150,000] to the other one is not a crime.” And anyway, he said, those paltry settlement sums show that the women were just looking for money, “I have been involved in cases like this. When it’s true and you have the kind of money the president had, it’s a $1 million settlement. When it’s a harassment settlement and it’s not true, you give them $130,000, $150,000. They went away for so little money that it indicates their case was very, very weak,” said Giuliani.
As far as the accusations of colluding with the Russians, Rudy also said that, even if it occurred, “collusion is not a crime,” and when confronted with the clear evidence that Trump had been lying about the payments since last November, he told host George Stephanopoulos, “The president’s not under oath. And the president tried to do the best he can to remember what happened back at a time when he was the busiest man in the world.”
Giuliani has said that he believes that since Mr. Trump is essentially having his day in court, in real time, his “jury is the public.”
According to the New York Times, “Those who are close to him say that Giuliani’s calculated and cutthroat approach channels his client, and serves as a tactical attack on the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election. Given the Justice Department’s longstanding policy and the view of many legal scholars that a sitting president cannot be indicted, Mr. Giuliani is exercising his lawyerly skills in the court of public opinion to ward against the mutterings of impeachment.”
By that count, while others may think otherwise, Rudy’s strategy seems to be working. He told the Times, “Mueller is now slightly more distrusted than trusted, and Trump is a little ahead of the game. So I think we’ve done really well, and my client’s happy.”
