Giuliani Certifiable: “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.”

With a lawyer like Rudy Gee, how can you lose?

(Easily is my first guess)

Quite long post re: timeline on the issue of “collusion” (from Axios): Cooperating or benefitting from Russian 2016 interference.

November 11, 2016: Hope Hicks denies a report that Russian experts were in contact with the Trump campaign: “It never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”

December. 18, 2016: Kellyanne Conway denies that there was any contact between the campaign and Russians: “Those conversations never happened. I hear people saying it like it’s a fact on television. That is just not only inaccurate and false, but it’s dangerous.”

February. 16, 2017: Trump says during a press conference: “I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge no person that I deal with does.”

March 2017: Donald Trump Jr. says: “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did. ... But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment.”

I note for Trump Jr: Does not June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Kushner and Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya not ring a bell – oops.

July 8, 2017: Trump Jr. responds to a Times report about the now-infamous June Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow-up.”

July 9, 2017: Trump Jr. issues a second statement, after it's revealed that he set up the meeting after being promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton. “Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

December. 28, 2017: Trump says in an interview with the Times, “There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime.”

July 29, 2018: Giuliani says on Fox News, “When I say the Trump campaign, I mean the upper levels of the Trump campaign. I have no reason to believe anybody else [colluded]. The only ones I checked with obviously are the top four or five people.”

May 16, 2018: Giuliani tells Fox News' Laura Ingraham that looking for political dirt is a common practice, but that the important thing is that the campaign didn't use it: “Even if it comes from a Russian, or a German, or an American, it doesn’t matter. And they never used it, is the main thing. They never used it. They rejected it.”

July 30, 2018: Giuliani doubles down on collusion not being a crime: “I don't even know if that's a crime, colluding with Russians. Hacking is the crime. The president didn't hack! He didn't pay for the hacking.”

December. 16, 2018: Giuliani addresses reports that Michael Cohen has given special counsel Robert Mueller valuable information about possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia: “I have no idea what they're talking about. I know that collusion is not a crime. It was over with by the time of the election.”

January. 16, 2019: Giuliani says on CNN, “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or between people in the campaign…If the collusion happened, it happened a long time ago.”

April 21, 2019, Giuliani on live TV, proof positive, I believe that shows that Giuliani is patently insane by any definition and that “collusion” in any form was at the heart of the Trump-Russian connection – even though “collusion (the word)” is not a coded crime, but everything connected with it is – a huge difference in my mind.

Here is CNN interview with Giuliani (with this 3-minute video segment) – absolutely insane man – totally and combative defending Trump.

Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday (April 21): “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.”

That remark came after Tapper asked Giuliani to comment on a statement from Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) who responded to the findings of the Mueller report saying that he was appalled members of the Trump campaign “welcomed help from Russia.”

Giuliani said about Romney, alleging he had accepted dirt on people while running for president against former President Barack Obama in 2012 saying to Tapper: “Stop the bull. Stop the pious act.”

Tapper pressed him asking him if there was a difference between taking opposition research from Americans and taking it from American adversaries.

Giuliani said before even concluding about Romney: “What a hypocrite. Any candidate in the world — in America — would take information. Who says it’s even illegal?”

Related these statements here from Former US Attorney Preet Bharara, a CNN legal analyst, said in a separate interview during the same program:

“The idea that it is OK, separate and apart from it being a criminal offense, that we should be telling future candidates in the run-up to an election in 2020 that if an adversary, a foreign adversary, is offering information against a political opponent, that it's okay and right and proper and American and patriotic, it seems he's saying, to take that information and that's okay – that's an extraordinary statement and I would hope he would retract it.”

My 2 cents and notes: Hey, Rudy Gee, you’re the lawyer and you should know this part of the law – I’m a mere novice but I found out what the law says. To wit from US Legal.com.

The offense of property possession of stolen property is made up of two parts:

First: A person charged with this offense must have property that was (or was partly) gained by theft, fraud, or any other crime.

Second: The person must have known that the property was stolen or gained by fraud. Also, if the prosecutor can show that it was obvious that a reasonable person would have thought the property was stolen and the accused failed to investigate whether it was stolen or not, he or she can be found guilty of possession of stolen property.

Plus this critical point re: hacked emails and right of free speech argument to possess & use them, etc., extract here from this lengthy article (The Atlantic):

While there is no evidence that the Trump campaign aided in the Russian hacking of Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and DNC, campaign-finance laws prohibit candidates from accepting “anything of value from a foreign national.”

The Trump campaign could face legal exposure, then, if a prosecutor could prove that Trump or his campaign associates made an agreement with Russia to publish the stolen emails — which were clearly valuable to the campaign, given how often Trump quoted from them during rallies — via a third party such as WikiLeaks, as Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, has written.

So, is that part done? I don’t think so – it may be part of those two ongoing Mueller referrals or the 12 state criminal referrals – time will tell.

Related this lawsuit address this topic (111 pages) and can be read here – cases filed in the SDNY.

Thanks for stopping by.