Rudy Giuliani Is Just Asking Questions
Rudy Giuliani, that great seeker of knowledge, is just asking questions. Far be it from Donald Trump's personal unpaid lawyer to suggest that Hillary Clinton had DNC staffer Seth Rich murdered for leaking emails to Julian Assange. But he's just so curious!
I’d like to know. https://t.co/fofqX2S6N7— Rudy Giuliani (@Rudy Giuliani) 1566795017.0
When reached for comment by the Daily Beast's Will Sommer, Chatty Cathy referred to "nagging coincidences," saying, "I vaguely remember it and was asking a question about whether it was ever investigated fully. [...] Don't remember if it was ever solved? Was it." A normal person might ask Mr. Google, but Rudy's a busy guy, so he just put it out for his research assistant, Mr. Twitter. And if he prolongs the agony for Seth Rich's parents by implying that their dead son was a disloyal leaker, well, "some degree of emotional pain" is just the price they have to pay for Rudy's insatiable curiosity.
Then Giuliani cited DB's story about his "questions" as further proof that the media was covering up something, texting Sommer, "Another new area of suspicion beyond a possible murder of convenience is the overreaction you all have to anyone raising any question about this unsolved murder," and "'Me thinks the Lady Protests too Much?'" Because when you get caught doing something wildly inappropriate, the best defense is a good offense.
Rudy Giuliani has been a busy, demented bee of late. Despite getting caught trying to gin up a scandal with a couple of scammy, Ukrainian-American chucklefucks and having to cancel his trip to Ukraine after telling the New York Times, "We're not meddling in an election, we're meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do," Rudy is still trying to make this Ukrainium One thing happen. He insists that Joe Biden was somehow improperly trying to help the Ukrainian natural gas company his son worked for when he pressured Ukraine to fire its corrupt prosecutor Viktor Shokin in 2016 -- despite the fact that the investigation into the company had been dormant for a year before Biden and multiple European countries called for Viktor Shokin to be fired.
The fact that the president's personal lawyer is trying to get a foreign country to initiate a criminal investigation of his political opponent would be the scandal of the century if we weren't already deep in the Ninth Circle of Hell. But now it appears that Donald Trump is enlisting the federal government to help his re-election campaign. Because of course Donald Trump would try to "prove" that Joe Biden improperly leaned on the Ukrainian government by ... improperly leaning on the Ukrainian government.
Last week, the New York Times revealed that the State Department is actively supporting Giuliani's efforts to pressure Ukrainian prosecutors to launch investigations of Joe Biden and the DNC, which Giuliani accuses of soliciting information to prove that Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort was dirrrrrrty. And he was dirty, but still it is NO FAIR for Democrats to find that out, and if the Ukrainian government put out information that helped the Clinton campaign, then HILLARY IS THE REAL COLLUSION AND DONALD TRUMP GETS TO HAVE A THIRD TERM IN OFFICE. Obviously.
Giuliani told NBC that it was the State Department who put Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak, an ally of newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, in contact with him. "Not other way around, and I told him they should not be cowered [out of] fully investigating serious possible crimes like bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and illegal interference in 2016 election." The State Department confirms that US envoy Kurt Volker -- voted most likely in his class to plead the Fifth to the House Intelligence Committee, allegedly! -- did send Yermak to Giuliani. But it's totally cool, you guys, because the president's personal lawyer is "a private citizen" who "does not speak on behalf of the U.S. Government."
For his part, Giuliani claims that he's acting as a private citizen who just cares deeply about the integrity of the Ukrainian justice system, although, as he told the New York Times, Trump "basically knows what I'm doing, sure, as his lawyer." You bet!
Yermak was in DC to strengthen ties with the US government in the face of escalating Russian aggression and is desperately seeking a face-to-face meeting between Presidents Zelensky and Trump. But it appears the price of admission may be opening a criminal investigation of the Democratic front runner, based on absolutely no evidence other than crazy shit Rudy Giuliani said.
But don't worry, Old Handsome Joe, because Rudy is just helping out by ginning up an investigation. As he told NBC, "I'm actually — he won't appreciate it — but I'm doing him a favor by trying to get it investigated now. Because it wasn't going to live through November of next year."
That's Rudy, always asking questions! Out of the goodness of his heart. He's a real humanitarian.
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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore with her wonderful husband and a houseful of teenagers. When she isn't being mad about a thing on the internet, she's hiding in plain sight in the carpool line. She's the one wearing yoga pants glaring at her phone.
