Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer must have gotten to him

| 11:00 pm EST November 23, 2019
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out why Rudy Giuliani went on television this morning and claimed he has “insurance” against Donald Trump for the second time, and then went on Twitter this evening and tried to walk it back in bizarre fashion. Then I remembered that when people start offering awkward and non-believable alternative explanations for their own prior words, it’s not about believability – it’s about reasonable doubt.

We all knew that Rudy Giuliani was trying to send a message to Donald Trump last week when he invoked the “insurance” line the first time. After all, it was in response to a question about whether Trump might throw him under the bus. And if that somehow hadn’t been what he was really trying to say, he wouldn’t have said it again verbatim this morning.

So why would Rudy bother to hop on Twitter this evening and claim that he was actually referring to having “insurance” against Joe Biden, in case Biden tried to have him murdered? Rudy was clearly talking abut Trump, not Biden, both times he invoked that word. If you’re going to openly threaten the President of the United States on live national television, why then pretend you didn’t say what everyone just heard you say? And why bother doing it with an alternative explanation that no one is going to believe anyway?

Here’s the thing. Rudy Giuliani is pressuring Donald Trump into pardoning him by threatening to release dirt about him. He’s trying to blackmail Trump into giving him a thing of significant value. That’s extortion. It’s a felony. And he’s said it twice in public now, meaning he can’t claim he misspoke. Rudy’s lawyer must have pointed this out to him. When Rudy is eventually on trial, and one of the charges is extortion, he’s hoping he can use the ‘I was talking about Biden not Trump’ thing to gain himself a sliver of reasonable doubt with the jury. No, it won’t work.