Ed Pilkington: Ukraine imbroglio confirms Giuliani's as Trump's most off-kilter advocate

By Dilip -

On Thursday night Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and troubleshooter-in-chief, went on CNN to defend his boss against the latest scandal swirling round him. Hours before Giuliani went on air, it had been reported that Trump had provoked a whistleblower complaint within the US intelligence services by pressuring the government of Ukraine to provide dirt that could help his bid for re-election. The information is thought to have related to Trump’s main presidential rival, the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. 

A few minutes into the interview, pugnacious anchor Chris Cuomo got to the point.
Cuomo: “Did you ask the Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?”
Giuliani: “No. Actually I didn’t.”
Crystal clear. Except that 83 words and about 30 seconds later, Cuomo asked the question again.
Cuomo: “So, you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?”
Giuliani: “Of course I did.”

That Giuliani was prepared so blatantly to contradict himself on live TV in the service of the president perfectly encapsulates his transformation. “America’s Mayor”, the hero of 9/11, has metamorphosed into what the New Yorker dubbed “Trump’s clown”.

Donald Trump Is Asking A Foreign Country To Help Him Win. Again
The day after Mueller’s testimony, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pressured Zelensky to help him win the 2020 election by investigating former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. In the weeks that followed, Trump refused to grant Zelensky a meeting and halted $250 million of authorized military aid to the country, raising the possibility that the president was, as The Washington Post put it in an unsigned editorial, “not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign” but using U.S. military aid to “extort it.” That allegation, if true, would unambiguously constitute an impeachable offense,” national security expert Benjamin Wittes wrote Friday. “That would be a very big deal indeed.”

This is not the first time Giuliani has incurred ridicule and rebuke in the cause of protecting his longtime friend – no, client. In the final days of the 2016 election the lawyer was almost the only person willing to speak in favor of Trump after the “grab ’em by the pussy” tape was aired.

As the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in that election reached its climax, Giuliani threw lawyerly restraint to the winds and repeatedly denounced the inquiry as a witch-hunt. Last August, he uttered words that will forever haunt him: “Truth isn’t truth.”

But of all the scraps in which Giuliani has engaged in recent months, of all the obfuscations and verbal sleights of hand, this week’s performance could prove the most damaging, both for him and for his White House buddy. America’s Mayor has tied himself in ever-tighter knots over claims that at Trump’s behest he improperly sought to coerce Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden in the hope of dredging up damaging information....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/21/ukraine-imbroglio-confirms-giulianis-as-trumps-most-off-kilter-advocate



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