After realizing he’s under criminal investigation, Rudy Giuliani panics and backs down

| 9:10 am EDT June 19, 2018
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Yesterday the DOJ Inspector General more or less confirmed what Palmer Report had suspected since he first released his report last week: Rudy Giuliani was left out of the IG report because he’s under ongoing criminal investigation. Now that Rudy’s worst fears have been realized, suddenly he’s trying out a new tactic: backing down, in a very telling move.

Giuliani first got himself in trouble shortly before election day, when he went on cable news and bragged in suspiciously specific fashion that he knew the election was about to be turned on its head. Sure enough, days later, James Comey’s misleading letter about Hillary Clinton surfaced. It became clear that someone in the FBI had illegally leaked this information to Giuliani and the Donald Trump campaign. It’s why Rudy was never given a cabinet position; his confirmation hearings would have exposed this crime. Rudy then went on to lay low for more than a year, before recently resurfacing and becoming Trump’s criminal defense attorney.

This was a fairly blatant attempt on Rudy Giuliani’s part at derailing the entire Trump-Russia investigation before it could circle around and nail him for his role. Based on his comments about magically negotiating an end to the probe in impossibly rapid fashion, he seemed to understand that he had a fairly short window of time before it was going to be too late for him. Sure enough, last week’s Inspector General report, along with the Inspector General’s comments yesterday, made clear that Rudy is out of time – and screwed. So now he’s trying a whole new tactic.

Shortly after the Inspector General report was released, Rudy Giuliani publicly demanded that Special Counsel Robert Mueller be “suspended” from the Trump-Russia investigation. Now that the IG has made clear that Giuliani is under criminal investigation, Rudy is suddenly claiming that he didn’t really mean it. He told Politico in an interview last night that he was just kidding. Now that Rudy understands that he is indeed one of Mueller’s targets, is his new tactic to kiss Mueller’s butt? Donald Trump won’t like that.