Oh come on, Rudy Giuliani

| 11:30 pm EDT October 23, 2019
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About a week ago, Rudy Giuliani learned through the media that he’s the target of a federal criminal investigation that’s already snared his henchmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. This prompted Rudy to part ways with the attorney who had been representing him in the impeachment inquiry, and announce on Twitter that he doesn’t need a lawyer going forward.

This made sense to no one but Rudy, of course. He’s going to be indicted and arrested, and he’ll need a criminal defense attorney to represent him at the resulting court proceedings. Even if Donald Trump were to pardon Rudy on federal charges, New York State would presumably sweep in with parallel state level charges, and Rudy would still end up arrested and on trial. That’s on top of the court battle he’ll be fighting over the House impeachment inquiry subpoena.

There was no scenario in which Rudy wasn’t going to need a lawyer unless he was planning to represent himself, which meant he must have been planning to represent himself. That would be an absurd and self defeating move, but Rudy is all about absurd and self defeating moves. But when Parnas and Fruman appeared in court on Wednesday, they tried to invoke executive privilege, which is a clever way of dragging Donald Trump into their trial and making the whole thing his problem.

Shortly thereafter, Palmer Report noted that Rudy Giuliani finally came to life on Twitter after a prolonged quiet period, and made a point of asserting that all of his actions with regard to Ukraine were on Trump’s behalf. In other words, if Lev and Igor are making their crimes Trump’s problem, so is Rudy. After Rudy posted that tweet, CNN reported that he’s now looking for a lawyer after all. So what’s going on here? To borrow Trump’s words, you’d have to ask Rudy.