Bizarre, Lawyering, Politics

Giuliani: I Am Afraid My Gravestone Will Read “He Lied For Trump”

I have been critical of interviews given by Trump’s counsel Rudy Giuliani and the continued need to walk back from comments that either undermine or contradict his client. This weekend was no exception, though some of the coverage was unfair as I previously discussed. Now he is facing questions after an interview with the New Yorker where he observed “I am afraid it will be on my gravestone… ‘Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.’” Even as a joke, it was not the type of statement that advances the interests of your client. Trump himself is an unpredictable client but that is not an excuse to mirror your client as an unpredictable counsel.

Here is the exchange:

Saying things for Trump, not always being truthful about it—do you ever worry that this will be your legacy? Does that ever worry you in any way?

Absolutely. I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. “Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.” Somehow, I don’t think that will be it. But, if it is, so what do I care? I’ll be dead. I figure I can explain it to St. Peter. He will be on my side, because I am, so far . . . I don’t think, as a lawyer, I ever said anything that’s untruthful. I have a sense of ethics that is as high as anybody you can imagine. I’ve been doing this forever. I am doing what I believe in. I may not always be right, but I am doing what I believe.

I really do not understand why the Trump team cannot maintain a single coherent position without continuing controversies. I understand that Trump is a difficult client who has repeatedly said things that undermine his own defense and frustrate his counsel. Giuliani is in a difficult position but the casual approach to these interviews has only magnified the problems.


68 thoughts on “Giuliani: I Am Afraid My Gravestone Will Read “He Lied For Trump””

  1. Rudy, WAS a great man. So I thought. I never could have predicted he would destroy his legacy for a scum bag.

  2. Off topic:

    Interesting article in Alternet about how Muslim women helped the Americans win the War of Independence.

    1. That is interesting…..don’t put yourself out providing a link to that article, or its title, or the author, or the date of the article.

    2. sounds like complete bullsh#t David.

      In mean mean time : How the Old Media is now caught playing Double Live Gonzo! LOL:)

      CNN/NBC/MSNBC, etc., seems they’ve a bad case of Cat Scratch Fever from the Commie Islamist Terrorist b*tches next door:

  5. From my station in life I find this type of matter perplexing.

    First I wonder how much money Mr. Giuliani receives for each television appearance. I have no idea what it is, if any. It must be a fair amount to entice someone of his stature to provide the commentary. Perhaps the aggregate of these interviews results in a higher lifestyle opportunity. From that perspective I could agree with the benefit in engaging in this business opportunity.

    But on another point if one makes as a result in one of these interviews a national embarrassment of himself I can probably say that the money isn’t worth it. At least I can say that I’ve earned a comfortable living as such that I’m thankful that I am not forced into situations where I must necessarily devolve into buffoonery in order to pay the bills.

    But I guess another life strategy would be to be so beholden to money, that one develops an impressive degree of fortitude and resolve to ignore such ignoble controversies to rake in as much cash as possible. But it’s not a strategy I care to adopt.

  7. Obama’s gravestone is going to read:

    Peter Strzok to Lisa Page, “We’ll stop it.”

    Lisa Page to Peter Strzok, “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing.”

    Lisa Page to Congress, “The texts mean what they texts say.”
    ________________________________________________

    BO, Lisa and Pete are keeping your cell warm for you.

    1. Nothing says success to trolls like a 39% Gallup poll approval and a 59% disapproval….

  8. Rudy G is warming up Trump’s base for when the sh*t hits the fan. Put some bad news out there first, then the jury won’t be so shocked when other bad news hits. Plus, Rudy’s behavior is a nice shining object that the talking heads just can’t stop themselves from running to a TV studio and give their opinion.

    1. Don Jr. and Ivanka are facing the same legal jeopardy as Trump with respect to the Trump Tower Moscow deal. The subornation of perjury claim in the BuzzFeed story is the least of that legal jeopardy. Besides, Cohen was in a joint defense agreement with Trump before Cohen testified to Congress in 2017. It seems somewhat unlikely that Trump’s lawyers would participate in suborning perjury from Cohen. But, then again, there’s always the precedent of Watergate to remember.

      Also, Trump paid a fair bit of money for the special master review that would’ve showed any tapes, records or emails of Trump, Don Jr., Ivanka or anyone else at the Trump Organization suborning perjury from Cohen over Cohen’s testimony to Congress in 2017 about the Trump Tower Moscow deal. They found just such tapes made by Cohen about the hush money payments. So Giuliani already knew that it would be Trump’s word against Cohen’s on the subornation of perjury about the Trump Tower deal.

      What Giuliani does not yet know–because he’s not supposed to know it yet–is exactly what Cohen told Mueller about his briefings with Trump, Don Jr. and Ivanka about the Trump Tower Moscow deal, itself. And that means that the subornation of perjury claim in the BuzzFeed story is a red herring of the lesser devil sort to divert attention from the actual legal jeopardy facing at least three members of the Trump family.

      I still think Giuliani planted that story in BuzzFeed for the express purpose of bellyaching about Fake News.

  9. Guiliana’s gravestone is going to read “Obama’s “deep state” forces used the FISA court rather than regular court because it’s “low standard” made it easier to obtain warrants to “investigate” candidate and President Trump.”

    1. If Christopher Wray DID NOT KNOW of FBI corruption, he is incompetent.

      If Christopher Wray DID KNOW of FBI purification, he is complicit.

  10. Giuliani’s statements to the media, like this one, are rhetorical distraction. His real legal work is in defusing malicious and fake news attacks against Trump:

    “President Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani told Fox News on Monday that his team communicated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office about last week’s BuzzFeed News article alleging that Trump ordered his former lawyer attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress — and agreed a significant portion of it was false.”

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/giuliani-says-his-team-communicated-with-muellers-team-on-buzzfeed-news-article-agreed-much-of-it-false

  11. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Giuliani? Regardless of how “difficult” his client is, his wounds are self-inflicted. A good lawyer gets his or her client under control, especially as to refraining from making public statements, or they get out. Why have a lawyer at all if you’re just going to do and say as you please anyway? Why waste your time advising someone who doesn’t respect you or your advice and who makes their situation much, much worse?

    And, no, media coverage has not been unfair or biased. Rudy has lied and said things that contradict what Trump has said, especially as to Trump engaging in ongoing negotiations with Russia while he was a candidate, despite denying this multiple times. Then, Rudy tries to either walk it back or claim he was mis-quoted. If Trump and/or Giuliani were smart, they’d just shut up and let various legal proceedings run their course, but they can’t because when the cameras are on, they have to perform. Their need for attention will be their undoing, and it will not be the fault of the “mainstream media”, although Faux News will claim it is due to biased and unfair reporting.

    1. what you know about being a good lawyer fits in a thimble.
      there is no powerful client on the scale of Trump who is “under control’

      1. There is the lawyer. There is the client. Each plays a role in dealing with a situation. The role of the lawyer is to advise as to the law and how it applies to the situation and how to obtain the best result. You can’t be the lawyer if your client won’t allow you to help them because they believe their judgment to be superior to yours. In that situation, you have no business being involved because you cannot help the client. They really don’t want what you have to offer. I’ve been a lawyer for 36 years now. I won’t continue representing someone who intentionally ignores sound advice and does as they please, because it increases the likelihood that the outcome will not be favorable. It’s like being a physician. There is no point in conducting tests, performing an examination, arriving at a diagnosis and prescribing a medication if the patient thinks they know more than you do and won’t take the medication or won’t take it as prescribed. You are wasting your efforts. Pearls before swine. Sometimes all they want someone with a license to bail them out when they mess up or get into trouble.

        Smart people seek and value sound advice. Even a smart physician knows when to ask for help from another physician, especially involving themselves or someone they are close to. Every smart lawyer I know looks for outside legal advice as to personal or family matters.

        Then you have someone like Trump who isn’t very smart and who is pathologically narcissistic. He must have attention and craves praise and adulation. He can’t stand it when news media do not say flattering things about him. He can’t stand still when someone like Cohen says things that make him look bad. He must lash out–return insult for insult because he is thin-skinned and vindictive. He initially agreed to sign the bill to open the government, then Ann Coulter told him he’d lose the support of his base, so now we have the standoff and people are getting hurt. Trump doesn’t care, because it’s all about him. Faux News is there to pivot, accuse mainstream media of being biased and unfair, and people are suffering.

        I don’t know how to describe Giuliani–he’s doing a lousy job of representing Trump and I don’t know if it’s because he’s far past his prime and doesn’t realize the significance of the admissions he is making or if there is some strategy. I suspect it’s because Trump thinks he must control news media and must put something out there to get attention, so Rudy does the news show circuits. BTW: how long has it been since there was a White House press briefing? Why won’t Trump show up for these events, anyway?

        1. i can see from your other posts that you have probably zero experience with criminal defendants. i have just a little experience there but some. ask your online friend mark m the teabagger how much criminal defendants cooperate with their lawyers. Of course some do some dont and some make it their very strategy to not-cooperate with their lawyers to gum things up and try and set up an ineffective assistance of counsel later.

          Political clients in which i have some experience are a lot like the criminal defendant because they have an agenda and view cases as a cost of doing business and are not deterred by them in the same way that doctors are.

          Doctors i have more experience. I Find that doctors are notoriously overly scared about compliance and quake in their boots before the feds for constant fear of medicaid and medicare fraud prosecutions. And perhaps they are wise to be so cautioous. But compared to others they are very responsive to counsel.

          As for representing lawyers now i have done that a lot. And sure they look to outside counsel and they also look to family if they got em.

          When you are trying to make money as a lawyer, trying to meet payroll, trying to keep the lights on and the bills paid, you have to work with clients who are not the most cooperative and can’t just pick and choose. In picking this client Rudy picked a hard client and a maze of hard cases. You’re really mocking a guy who is at the top of the big leagues and I at least am barely in the minor leagues. I don’t know where you are but you must be very high up, far bigger fish than me, if you can seriously mock what Rudy is doing.

          Now if it was me criticizing him I would just say ignore all the press, But that shows why Rudy has that client, and I do not. Doesnt it. Because for a client like that all the usual “Rules” are out the window!

          1. As to representing criminal defendants, I don’t do this, but my best lawyer friend does. When they won’t listen, when they aren’t realistic about the likelihood of prevailing at trial, and when facts don’t faze them, he dumps them. Wanna know why? Because when they get convicted, after they’ve cooled their heels in prison for awhile and haven’t been high on drugs for a time and when the reality of 80 years in prison sinks in, they’ll get their grandma to mortgage the house, hire a lawyer and seek post conviction relief, based on ineffective assistance of counsel. When that happens, he’ll be forced to sit for hours for a deposition, unpaid, and go through every document, prove how many times he visited them in jail, how long he stayed, prove that he told the defendant the risk of not taking the plea deal, prove that the defendant turned it down knowing the consequences, prove that he told them to tell the truth, prove he explained that juries aren’t sympathetic to child molesters, and so forth. The former client won’t win, the PC lawyer gets lots of money, grandma is now in debt, and in the end, t’s not worth it. You end up losing money and your reputation.

            On the civil side, if you have a client that gets a very good offer, and who isn’t likely to do better at trial, but who just isn’t realistic, or who is listening to their boyfriend or girlfriend instead of their lawyer, it’s best to pass the file to someone else. When things hit the fan, they’ll forget how strongly you tried to explain the downside of their case, they’ll forget your explanation as to how similar cases turned out, and so forth. It’ll be all your fault. Again, not worth it. One of a lawyer’s jobs is to try to get the client to see that their perspective of the facts is not the only perspective.

            Trump is not listening. He is no different from any other client. He is someone who has never been accountable for his conduct. His ego has always been his guiding light, and his emotional problems prevent him from taking his lawyer’s advice, unless his lawyer is incompetent, which just might be the case. Giuliani is clearly making things worse.

            1. what you describe is called cherry picking. that’s fine if that’s a lawyer’s choice but don’t be too hard on the lawyers who pick up where the cherry pickers left off. you can call them bottom feeders and I am sure i have handled many cases that were passed over by big law firm cherry pickers intent on only taking the easy cases. If you’re a silkstocking lawyer why bother? leave the difficult people to the B team is the attitude.

              but you can’t call Rudy a bottom feeder. He’s a top dog and this is a historic case and he’s riding the storm out however he can.

              1. Rudy’s working the day glo bozo file for free, zip, zilch, nada. As if his performance will bring any any non-insane clients who catch one of his “performances.” He’d do better advertising for Chapter 7s on Craigslist.

                to kurtzie

                1. I’m not sure how you would know that Mark?
                  Oh, you’re just speculating.

                  Of course with all the free name recognition he will get from this he will never need to advertise again. Not that he didn’t already have yuuuge name recognition already, and an incredible career spanning decades, at the highest levels of practice of law & politics. Unlike lil ole me a nobody out here in flyover. What would I know anyways. But maybe this is Rudy’s last gig and he’s just doing it for fun.

                  I accept that I can’t really begin to fathom what life is like for a lawyer at that level. And I think I don’t want to ever experience it either. Obscurity in the hinterlands with the other rubes is just fine for me.

  12. “I have a sense of ethics that is as high as anybody you can imagine.”

    Nope. I can’t imagine ever being so high that I would connect your words and the word ‘ethical’…..your words are helping perpetuate the rape of a Country…and all the hard working people (unlike yourself) subject to their belief that rules and truth matter are being actually harmed. Do you shiv a git?

    2. becka, I have no idea how this video fits into this topic, but I do want to know if those two people died? Or were they wearing parachutes?

  13. It wasn’t a joke he was just doing a SNL version of imitating a socialist.lawyer.

  14. The gravestones of these criminals and traitors are going to read: I was a co-conspirator in the Obama Coup D’etat in America:

    Sessions, Rosenstein, Mueller/Team, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Kadzic, Yates, Baker, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Priestap, Kortan, Campbell, Steele, Simpson, Joseph Mifsud, Stefan “The Walrus” Halper, Kerry, Hillary, Huma, Mills, Brennan, Clapper, Farkas, Power, Lynch, Rice, Jarrett, Obama et al.

  15. We should treat mentally dysfunctional folks with respect. We should not place them in political office.

  16. Well we know his gravestone won’t read “Beloved Husband.” (Or “Beloved Cousin” for that matter.)

  17. Trump can’t control his mouth, and neither can Giuliani. They’re both publicity hounds, and Trump would be better served by a lawyer with more professional discretion.

    1. Those with professional discretion have no interest in defending an incompetent narcissistic megalomaniac.

  18. Wonder what Avenatti is up to these days. Professor Turley is so obsessed with Giuiliani that he’s forgotten to pay attention to his star student.

  19. ” I understand that Trump is a difficult client who has repeatedly said things that undermine his own defense and frustrate his counsel”

    Trump is the worst kind of client. One who is compelled to constantly make comments to the public, press, and the world (Twitter). One who constantly lies and poorly at that. He lies to his attorneys who hear about things from the press. There is no hope of actual innocence, the only question is degree of guilt. And he likely won’t pay them.

      1. UE – How do you see the myriad investigations ending for Trump? I watched a good part of 11 hours of Hillary’s testimony before the House and they couldn’t touch her. Trump wouldn’t last 11 minutes under oath without perjuring himself… badly.

          1. and yet Hillary lost

            Truth to power….insert other illiberal illogical platitudes that can not cover up the fact that Hillary lost….bigly

            LOLOLOLOL

            1. Hillary lost! Read the Trollville news here! And even better news: Trump approval: 39%, disapproval 59%. Go whine to Gallup Polls…

              1. i just read some polls. not gallup but another major
                not 20 but only +10 disapprove of trump.
                but +46 disapprove of Congress. LOL

              2. No real point in even holding elections, when it’s the polls that actually decide who gets to be president.

          2. Yup. He did what most people thought was virtually impossible and defeated Hillary the Honest, Hillary the Extremely Careless.
            That’s the “real reason” they hate him, and continue to whine non-stop more than 2 years after the election.

    2. oh no. Trump is the best kind of client.
      The one who has a lot of work and pays his bills.

      i want to share an excerpt from an excellent hip hop song i like by “young dolph”

      rule number one. get the money first
      rule number two. dont forget the money first.

      get paid young N get paid
      get paid young N get paid

      — set to a very entrancing rhythm! check it out.

    3. As always, you’re absolutely correct, brilliant and irrefutable.

      Can we get rid of “Affirmative Action Privilege” now? I mean, you don’t need your artifice and crutch anymore, do you?

      Oh, and wholly unconstitutional welfare, food stamps, quotas, Obamacare, forced busing, rent control, utility subsidies, social services, WIC, HAMP, HARP, HUD, HHS, TANF, SSI, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Obamaphones, “Fair Housing,” “Non-Discrimination,” “hate crime,” improperly ratified “Reconstruction” amendments (under duress of post-war military occupation), the constitutionally injurious and nationally mortal 19th amendment (the fertility rate in a “death spiral”), etc., etc., etc.?

        1. “flyering” was the old fashioned way to get the word out
          shortwave radio too I guess

              1. I’m not up on white supremacist acronyms, is that White People World Wide? You and George should hook up. I’d suggest some others but they often self-identify.

      1. well then a lot of lawyers are no good. i have represented some difficult people myself and i tell you, everyone is entitled to a lawyer, full stop. so don’t bust the lawyers chops too hard for being part of our system of justice

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