Rudy Giuliani Shocked To Learn Going Rate For Doing Trump’s Dirty Work Still ‘Zero Dollars’

No honor among thieves.

Poor, sad Rudy Giuliani is having a bad week. The feds are at the front door demanding his phone and laptops, and they won't even take possession of Hunter Biden's hard drives.

"Mr. Giuliani, that's an electric shaver," they say dismissively. As if Norelco isn't the biggest chipmaker in North Korea! (Allegedly.)

This wouldn't have happened if Bill Barr were still in charge. ( Not allegedly .)

And to make matters worse, just when his DOJ all-access meal ticket gets revoked, Rudy's being abandoned by the one guy with pockets deep enough to pay the millions of dollars in legal fees about to land in his inbox. Because, all joking aside, the last paragraph of the latest New York Times story about the president's clown lawyer makes it clear that Rudy Giuliani knows exactly how much trouble he's in.

Mr. Giuliani recently added four new lawyers to his team: Arthur L. Aidala, a former Brooklyn prosecutor and former Fox News commentator; Barry Kamins, a retired New York Supreme Court justice and law professor; the retired New York Appellate Division Justice John Leventhal; and Michael T. Jaccarino, a former Brooklyn prosecutor.

That's not Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Lin Wood. Those are serious lawyers, and they're going to charge serious money. Money Giuliani very clearly does not have . Which is perhaps why his good buddy Bernie Kerik, who seems to think a pardon will make us all forget that he pleaded guilty to eight felony tax charges, is yapping like an attack pug about Trump abandoning poor Roodles.

"I want to know what the @GOP did with the quarter of $1 billion they collected for the election legal fight. Lawyers and law firms that didn't do shit were paid lots of money and the people that worked their ass off, got nothing," he tweeted , in apparent reference to Republicans' aggressive fundraising "for" post-election litigation. Note that Kerik excoriates the party apparatchiks, but refuses to criticize the Trump campaign , which raised the bulk of the cash.

Apparently this is all Ronna Romney McDaniels's fault.

AGREED! @RudyGiuliani did more for the president than all of them combined. The day after the election, they walked… https: //t.co/szskz7yIhB

— Bernard B. Kerik (@Bernard B. Kerik) 1620139767.0 

If the Tsar only knew!

In reality, multiple outlets including the Times have reported that Trump himself blocked payments to Giuliani after his efforts to overturn the election resulted in a Four Seasons Total Dumpster Fire. Because coffee is for closers, Rudy! Which meant Giuliani got $200,000 to defray his costs, and nothing for his time.

And $200,000 won't keep Rudy in hair dye, much less pay for a team of lawyers with four-figure hourly rates. So Kerik is apparently putting the squeeze on Trumpland to cough it up. He wants them to cover Rudy's civil liability in the defamation suits filed by Dominion and Smartmatic based on the Big Lie election claims — which is at least colorably related to the funds solicited for post-election litigation. It's not clear exactly why Kerik thinks it would be appropriate to use that money on charges arising from alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. If the reporting is correct that the investigation is focused on Giuliani's attempts to oust Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, then it's got nothing to do with Rudy's cackhanded efforts to overturn the election.

But Team Rudy have never been sticklers for detail.

"I do think he should be indemnified," Giuliani's obnoxious son Andrew told ABC News. "I think all those Americans that donated after Nov. 3, they were donating for the legal defense fund. My father ran the legal team at that point. So I think it's very easy to make a very strong case for the fact that he and all the lawyers that worked on there should be indemnified."

Again, he's not explaining how the FARA violation relates to post-election litigation. And it's "very easy to make a very strong case for the fact" that a competent lawyer would have a written retainer agreement specifying the scope of work and wouldn't have to publicly shame his client to get paid after the fact.

Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz, an IRL lawyer who may have gone totally off the rails but isn't a complete idiot, has a more coherent theory as to why Trump needs to get involved in Rudy's criminal woes.

"Hope the people whose information is privileged, like Donald Trump, would join the lawsuit and say look you can't see my stuff," Dershowitz told CNN , hoping that the former president would seek to become a party to the suit seeking to exclude information seized in the raid based on attorney-client privilege. He's already done it once when Michael Cohen's office got raided, and it's a safe bet Judge J. Paul Oetken is going to hear from Team Trump as the privilege review of Rudy's phones gets underway.

That doesn't mean that Trump is going to pick up Rudy's tab, though. While the RNC got out the checkbook for Don Jr., there's no guarantee it will extend the family discount to the help. So good luck, Roodles! Looks like your best bet is to show 'em you can do a lot more damage pissing into the tent than out of it.

Better drink lots of water, big guy!

[ NYT ]

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