Rudy Giuliani gets what’s coming to him
Donald Trump’s criminal defense attorney Rudy Giuliani has flamed out so many times in so many ways, he doesn’t get nearly as many television bookings as he used to. But he’s still tweeting up a storm, continuing to push Trump’s disinformation, whether anyone is listening or not. After Rudy’s latest bizarre missive, it turned out a whole lot of people were listening – and it didn’t exactly go well for him.
Fox News aired a segment last month in which legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano explained that Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice antics – as spelled out in the redacted Mueller report – are very much a felony. The segment received considerable positive attention. Rudy Giuliani is somehow just now hearing about it, and he belatedly responded to it with this tweet: “I consider Judge Napolitano to be a friend so I write this with regret. An obstruction case where there is no proof of an underlying crime is questionable. If you add to it nothing actually obstructed, there’s no case.”
That’s not even close to how the law works, and people were quick to explain this to him. Law professor Jennifer Taub fired back at him on Twitter with this helpful explanation: “Incorrect. Obstruction of justice even applies to efforts to interfere with civil litigation. See U.S. v. Lundwall. Also, corrupt attempts to obstruct a proceeding even when one isn’t the subject, is a crime. Mueller’s grand jury indicted many people.”
George Conway, husband of Donald Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, then piled on by pointing directly to the DOJ website, which spells out that obstruction of justice includes any behavior that “was intended to affect the future conduct of any person in connection with his/her participation in Federal proceedings or his/her communication of information to Federal law enforcement officers.” Rudy Giuliani has yet to respond, suggesting he either knows he’s wrong, or he wandered off somewhere and got lost.
