Rudy May Have Just Made Mueller’s Job Far Easier
Rudy Giuliani’s interview with Chris Cuomo last night probably made Robert Mueller’s job a lot easier. Giuliani basically admitted that the Trump campaign actually did collude with the Russians, but claimed that Trump himself did not do so personally. According to Rudy, “I never said there was no collusion between people in the campaign and Russians…Trump said he didn’t [collude with Russians]. He didn’t say nobody did”.
Giuliani had made a similar statement back in July, 2018 on Fox News but at that time he exempted “the top 4 or 5 people” in the campaign from collusion, saying they were the only ones he had checked with. Yesterday’s statement made it pretty clear that Trump was going to throw everyone under the bus in an attempt to avoid the collusion charge. That certainly includes Manafort and may now include Kushner and Don Jr.
If you were any of those people who actually had been colluding with the Russians and you heard what Rudy said, I would think you would be considering coming clean to Robert Mueller quickly. As everyone involved in a criminal investigation knows, the last ones in the investigator’s door are often the ones who takes the rap. Trump has made it clear he will protect none of these people so their choice is pretty clear.
Of course, the whole idea that Trump can feign ignorance about collusion while virtually everyone around him was doing so is farcical to begin with. Trump himself asked the Russians to hack Hillary’s email and the Russians began to do so immediately afterward. His campaign had over 100 contacts with the Russians. His son said he “would love” any help the Russians could give. His campaign manager was sharing private polling information with the Russians. Every member of his campaign continually lied about their contacts with the Russians. I could go on and on, but you get the point.
More pernicious is the unstated underlying assumption of Giuliani’s comment and that is that if we can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump was actively colluding or part of the conspiracy, then Trump should be able to continue his presidency without consequence. As @nycsouthpaw points out, the legal concept of respondeat superior, translated “let the master answer”, means that “a person is responsible for the acts of a person he employs if those acts are taken in the course of the employment”. That concept has fallen by the wayside when dealing with white collar crime, for a variety of largely weak and bogus reasons. At this point, Trump’s ignorance must be considered either willful or just another blatant lie, with the probability leaning heavily toward the latter.This same dismissive attitude toward actual crime is evident in the consistent downplaying of the President’s brazen, willful, and, yes, criminal violations of federal election laws, which now includes passing out bags of cash from Trump Tower.
Of course, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Yet the media continues to fall in the trap of requiring legal proof of Trump’s guilt in order to impeach him politically. Republicans have hidden behind this façade for most of Trump’s term. It’s becoming increasingly hard for that to continue. Giuliani’s astounding retreats on collusion has left just one man standing, Donald Trump. It won’t be long before he falls too.