Rudy Giuliani screws up and admits Donald Trump colluded with Russia
Rudy’s Giuliani’s worsening descent into – well, whatever the hell is wrong with him – has turned him into the world’s most hilariously incompetent lawyer. His frequent screw-ups, laughable lies, and accidental admissions are good entertainment (if you’re not being represented by him). It also sometimes allows us a window into Donald Trump’s supposed-to-be secret defense strategy, and what Trump is about to do next. It’s happened again.
Rudy Giuliani appeared on ABC This Week and was asked if Roger Stone told Donald Trump in advance about the WikiLeaks plot against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Rudy initially answered “no” but then changed it to “I don’t believe so.” Then he added this: “If Roger Stone gave anybody a heads up about WikiLeaks leaks, it’s not a crime.” So there it is.
Rudy just gave away that Roger Stone did tell Donald Trump in advance, and that Trump worries that it’s going to come out, and that Trump has already decided that he’ll then claim it wasn’t illegal. Considering that WikiLeaks was obviously conspiring with Russia during the election, and that Stone also communicated with the Russian hackers who stole the emails which were then supplied to WikiLeaks, this is a backdoor confession on Rudy’s part that Trump was indeed colluding with Russia.
We also now have confirmation of what we’ve long come to suspect. Once it’s proven that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians to try to alter the outcome of the election, he’s going to capitalize on the confusion as to the definition of the word “collusion.” Everyone knows that a conspiracy is illegal if it’s a conspiracy to commit a crime. But not every knows that collusion means the same thing as conspiracy. So when it’s proven that Trump colluded with Russia and committed crimes in the process, that collusion will be a crime.
From the start it’s been clear that in the end, Donald Trump was only going to have two potential defenses to fall back on. The first would be to play naive while blaming his underlings, which he’s doing with the crimes he ordered Michael Cohen to commit. The second would be to say “Yeah I did it, so what, it’s not a crime,” which is what Rudy just told us he’s going to use in the Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report