The real reason Rudy Giuliani wants to testify to the January 6th Committee
Days after the news broke that Rudy Giuliani wants to testify to the January 6th Committee, people are still asking why he would do this. The answer is pretty straightforward, because it’s always the answer in these kinds of situations. So many others in Trump world have testified, and he doesn’t know what they’ve said about him, so he feels compelled to tell his side. Even though he’ll probably just further incriminate himself and make the DOJ’s job easier.
Rudy is a former prosecutor, so even as addled as he is, he knows this is a huge risk. But addled people often overestimate their abilities in these kinds of situations.
Rudy may take the fifth in some instances, which he’s allowed to do. But that just tells the DOJ to dig deeper on the specific questions he declined to answer. Pleading the fifth is never a magic wand.
And if Rudy tries lying his way through his testimony, they’ll just threaten him with a perjury referral (prison time), and he’ll then have to come fully clean in order to avoid the perjury referral. So you almost hope he initially tries lying.
Rudy may also be under the delusion that he’ll never get indicted for his underlying crimes, i which case he mistakenly thinks all he has to do is testify and avoid the contempt charge, and he’ll skate on everything else. Nothing works that way, but he is delusional in general.
As with all witnesses in these kinds of probes, Rudy’s initial testimony will be private. That keeps him from being able to spew conspiracy theories in front of the cameras. And it scares others into thinking they should testify to push back against whatever Rudy said about them.
If Rudy turns out to behave surprisingly well during his private testimony, maybe they’ll bring him back during public hearings. Otherwise they’ll just read aloud the incriminating bits of his testimony during the public hearings.
Lots of clueless people will yell lots of defeatist slogans in response to the notion of Giuliani testifying, but in reality this is obviously a very good development. And it’s something the defeatists swore the committee would never be able to pull off.
