Did Rudy Giuliani just get sold out by his co-conspirators?
When the Feds raided Rudy Giuliani’s home earlier this year, it sent a clear signal that Giuliani is going to prison. To even obtain that kind of raid warrant, prosecutors had to already have had their hands on enough evidence to nail him. Rudy has been dragging out his inevitable arrest with procedural moves in court, but once the special master phase is complete, Rudy is clearly going to be indicted. Now there’s an interesting new development.
The Guardian has published a lengthy new article revealing that federal prosecutors have zeroed in on Rudy Giuliani’s decision to take money from Ukraine officials in 2019, which is a felony FARA violation. This in and of itself isn’t new; we’ve been seeing breadcrumbs in the media all year that the Feds are in the process of nailing Rudy for taking dirty foreign money from various places. But the article itself is where it gets interesting.
The Guardian article focuses heavily on the fact that this is a federal probe into Giuliani, Victoria Toensing, and Joe DiGenova. This isn’t surprising, given that Toensing’s home was raided on the same day as Giuliani’s, and that Toensing and DiGenova are married.
But large chunks of this article seem to be written from the point of view of Toensing and DiGenova, even going so far as to spell out how they reached a point where they feared Giuliani’s 2019 Ukraine plot was crossing over into criminal territory, and tried to pull back from it.
There’s a general rule that whenever a major newspaper publishes an article like this and it’s told primarily from someone’s point of view – particularly if it paints that person as the would-be hero who tried to stop the bad thing from happening – it means that person was the source behind the article to begin with. In this case that would be Toensing and DiGenova.
So what does it mean if Toensing and DiGenova did give all these details to the Guardian for this story? For one thing, it would mean they fear going to prison and they’re hoping to shift the criminal culpability solely to Giuliani instead. That would be bad enough for Rudy. But if Toensing and DiGenova are doing this in the media, then does it mean they’re also doing the same thing with prosecutors?
The evidence is obviously in place to nail Rudy Giuliani. But if the point is to get him to flip on Donald Trump and the rest of Trump world, it’s not enough to nail him. It’s to make him realize he’s nailed so he cuts a deal now, instead of dragging it all out until after a trial. One sure way to make Giuliani realize he’s defeated is if Toensing and DiGenova are flipping on him.
We’ll see where this goes. But as I like to say, insider information like what’s in this Guardian article doesn’t just get picked up by the wind and randomly land on a reporter’s desk. Someone involved – whether it be prosecutors or witnesses or targets – always strategically chooses to leak this kind of information to the media, either to try to shape the public narrative in their favor, or to send a signal to other people involved. Keep an eye on this new Rudy narrative, because someone involved is signaling that something is finally in motion.
