When will the hammer drop on Rudy Giuliani?
A few of you have asked me why Rudy Giuliani hasn’t been arrested yet. After all, his alleged co-conspirators Lev and Igor were arrested more than a year ago, and the Feds at the SDNY have surely had time to complete their criminal case against Giuliani.
It’s impossible to know for sure what’s going on behind the scenes in a criminal case, but two possibilities come to mind. The first would be that Bill Barr has managed to pressure the SDNY into not arresting Rudy Giuliani. This could be the case, but I would question whether Barr truly has that much muscle, considering how weakly he’s tried and failed to meddle in the Flynn, Stone, Cohen, Lev, Igor, and Bannon cases.
The second possibility is that the SDNY doesn’t want to bring a criminal case against Rudy Giuliani right now when it would merely help Donald Trump figure out precisely what to pardon Giuliani for on his way out the door. Trump can still try to pardon Giuliani in advance by guessing what the general parameters of the charges will end up being (like Ford did for Nixon), but Trump might have a harder time covering all the bases if he doesn’t know the full extent of what Rudy is going to be charged with.
Either way, given that the Lev and Igor indictments alone spell out a clear cut criminal case against Rudy Giuliani that would make it trivial to obtain an indictment against him, it seems a given that Rudy will be arrested shortly after Donald Trump is gone from office. One thing to watch for: whether any state level criminal charges emerge against Rudy, which Trump can’t pardon.
