House impeachment inquiry just dropped a bomb on Rudy Giuliani – and it’s terrible news for Donald Trump
When House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff appeared on the Rachel Maddow show last night, he seemed almost giddy about whatever it was that he couldn’t tell us about. He vaguely confirmed that he had Lev Parnas on his team, which was seemingly bad news for Rudy Giuliani. Now it turns out Schiff has had even more up his sleeve, in a way that goes beyond Parnas, and is absolutely terrible news for Giuliani – and for Donald Trump.
When the House Intelligence Committee released its impeachment report today, it revealed that it has extensive phone records which show that Rudy Giuliani and the Trump White House were directly coordinating at essentially every step of the Ukraine extortion plot. Remarkably, the House obtained the phone records not from a witness, but from AT&T and Verizon. This is a huge deal for a couple reasons.
First, it means that Donald Trump is going to have a much harder time trying to distance himself from Rudy Giuliani’s actions. Trump has already publicly hinted that as a last ditch effort, he’s eventually going to claim Rudy was acting as a lone wolf and was committing these crimes on his own without anyone’s knowledge. The fact that Rudy was speaking by phone with Trump’s Office of Management and Budget is proof that the decision to hold up U.S. military aid was being directly coordinated with Rudy’s criminal antics in Ukraine.
Second, this shows that Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee have been sitting on far more evidence than they’ve been using in their televised impeachment hearings. Schiff, a former prosecutor, has been releasing evidence in escalating stages. This suggests that he’s got even more evidence coming. Keep in mind that the report he released today apparently doesn’t include anything that he says he’s gotten from Lev Parnas. There’s clearly more to come.
