Rudy Giuliani’s arrest

| 7:00 pm EST February 17, 2020
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After two weeks of the media pushing the narrative that Donald Trump has become “emboldened” by his acquittal and will therefore magically get reelected, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that the sky is indeed falling, and that Trump can simply wave a magic wand and get away with anything he wants. Unfortunately, no amount of facts or evidence seems to get in the way of this pervasive fatalism.

Today I was asked if there’s any chance Rudy Giuliani will still be arrested before the election. Of course there is. I can’t predict whether it’ll happen, but I can tell you that the fatalists are smoking something when they insist that Rudy is now somehow magically untouchable. As always, let’s set aside the media narratives and look at the facts and evidence.

This past week Bill Barr meddled in the DOJ’s prison sentencing recommendation in the Roger Stone case, reducing it by a number of years. But this doesn’t actually do anything. Sentencing is 100% at the sole discretion of the judge. It’s right there in the name – the DOJ only gets to make a recommendation. Barr merely changed the recommendation down to something closer to what the judge was always planning to give Stone. The only thing Barr is accomplishing is to create the illusion that he’s helping Trump and Stone, presumably for the benefit of an increasingly oblivious Trump.

Also this past week, Barr had to finally admit that his sham criminal case against longtime Trump adversary Andrew McCabe was going nowhere. As per usual, Barr’s play was to spend months merely pretending that he was making progress in taking down McCabe on Trump’s behalf. But eventually the gig was up, and Barr had to admit that he doesn’t have the ability to wave a magic wand and put McCabe in prison.

Even as Barr continues his shell game of trying to keep Trump under the impression that Barr is capable of actually making things happen, the SDNY leaked to the media this week that the criminal case against Rudy Giuliani is still ongoing. In other words, the SDNY believes it can still take Rudy down – and it believes that by keeping everything out in the open, it’ll reduce Barr’s odds of being able to get in the way. This makes sense, considering Barr wasn’t able to do anything to stop Trump’s henchmen Lev and Igor from being arrested.

Again, no one (at least no one outside of the SDNY) can say for sure whether Rudy Giuliani will be arrested before the election. But the facts and evidence make abundantly clear that Bill Barr doesn’t have nearly as much muscle as he wants Donald Trump to believe he has. Trump and Barr aren’t evil wizards with magic wands. They’re just bumbling crooks who are trying – sometimes succeeding, and sometimes failing – to stay one step ahead in their ongoing crime spree.