We’ve said this more than once, but it bears repeating: Rudy Giuliani is the world’s worst lawyer.
He honestly gives example after example of it, from his unhinged television interviews to his prominent, constant displaying of his piano teeth and awkward grimacing. But after today’s bombshell revelations in open court from Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney for Donald Trump, that he committed crimes in coordination with and at the direction of his former boss, anything other than silence from Rudy was always going to be just a terrible idea.
Unfortunately for Trump and his legal team, Rudy Giuliani is a stranger in the strange land of silence.
So on perhaps the worst day so far for Donald Trump in the entirety of his presidency so far — the deepest hole he has yet been in — Rudy decided to pick up a shovel and start digging. Speaking to reporters, Giuliani told them there was:
…no allegation of any wrongdoing against the President in the government’s charges.”
Giuliani is hanging on to the barest of threads: The charging documents do not say “Donald Trump” on them. They instead say “Individual-1,” who, after Cohen’s testimony, was identified as Trump. But because no one put ink to paper with Trump’s name, in Rudy’s brain it means that the President is accused of nothing.
That’s at odds with not just all common sense, but with logic and reason. As Cohen’s lawyer immediately said following the court appearance by his client,
Today he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?
— Lanny Davis (@LannyDavis) August 21, 2018
Why indeed?
The fact is, there isn’t a universe in which Cohen, acting at the direction of Donald Trump, committed a crime while Trump did not.
Featured image via screen capture
