Frogwalk this motherfucker:
Rudy Giuliani dared House Democrats to take him to court Tuesday, declaring he won’t comply in their “abomination” of an impeachment inquiry despite facing a subpoena over his shady campaign to find political dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine.
Having decided to not cooperate, the ex-mayor said he has parted ways with his attorney, Jon Sale, for the time being, claiming it would be “silly to have a lawyer when I don’t need one.”
However, Giuliani said he may rehire Sale if Democrats hold him in contempt over his refusal to cooperate with the subpoena, which requests documents and testimony on his Trump-endorsed attempts to strong-arm Ukrainian officials into investigating unfounded corruption claims about Biden’s family before the 2020 election.
“If they decide to do an enforcement, I’ll need someone to go to court with and we’ll figure that out at the time,” Giuliani told the Daily News before he was set to attend a Yankees game in the Bronx. “I’m not worried. It’s not authorized what they’re doing in secret. It’s an abomination of due process. I can’t imagine a court would tolerate what they’ve done.”
The defining characteristics of modern conservatism are racism, greed, and an open contempt for democratic processes. Lock this loudmouth motherfucker up.
catclub
No love for an almost fanatical dedication to the Pope.
I’ll come in again.
MJS
“I can’t imagine a court would tolerate what they’ve done.” Rudy continues to self-identify as the worst attorney, ever.
catclub
If any of the cases of the executive branch (or people like Giuliani)
ignoring subpeonas stands. Blame Dick Cheney as the godfather of the strategy.
WereBear
And because we didn’t stop them there, we have to stop them here.
trollhattan
Adam Schiff must be uttering some variation of, “As you wish.” right now. Giuliani and Dersh simply can’t help themselves when there’s a camera within, say, seventy miles. Please proceed, mayor.
Juju
Also take away the coffin he sleeps in, and his soil from the homeland.
Yutsano
If only we knew someone on the New York bar who could possibly bring up an ethics complaint against our ex-Mayor here…
NotMax
Fill in the blanks.
Giuliani is to law as _____ is to _____.
Kay (not the front-pager)
Goddam it, it wasn’t a campaign to find political dirt, it was a campaign to manufacture political dirt!
It’s like calling what the Russians did in 2016 “meddling.” @#%@$#^
Roger Moore
@catclub:
FTFY.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I know Bolton’s comment and Giuliani doing a drug deal are a metaphor, but I can’t help hoping it’s true.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
Trump is to presidenting.
germy
The trailer really captures the Fox energy.
https://screenrant.com/bombshell-movie-trailer-theron-kidman-robbie/
Aleta
I have a fantasy of moving the offices of the WH, upper administration and Congress to inside the walls of a high security prison. And these hearings too. So that every one of them has to pass in and out each day. See if ‘scared straight’ happens. And prison reform too.
Cacti
@catclub:
‘Cept Rudy isn’t a co-equal branch of government. He’s a private citizen with zero Constitutional authority to defy a Congressional subpoena.
germy
@NotMax:
Cole is to mopping.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I assume Sale knows to get a big retainer up front from this screwball
Aleta
toxic discharge is to a river
mrmoshpotato
May I suggest this also be filed under ‘Assholes’? Because – yes.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
Ugh. This looks as if it’s glamorizing Fox News.
Ryan
Also too Russian money. Those lawyers aren’t free. Come to think of it, neither are tickets to Yankee games.
hells littlest angel
It would be cruel and unusual punishment for Rudy’s cellmate, but, yeah.
HeleninEire
@germy: Everyone put your pencils down. We have a winner.
Yutsano
That word “modern” is pulling a lot of weight there JC.
J R in WV
@Cacti:
Would like very much to see Rudy taken from his hotel room at the Trump Glorious Washington Old Post Office Hotel at 3 am in handcuffs after missing his appointment with Congressman Schiff. Then given the choice between testifying, or spending the next several months in the general population in a DC Metro Jail…
Beth in VA
@Kay (not the front-pager): Exactly. The main deliverable they wanted wasn’t an investigation by Ukraine, because it wouldn’t find anything. What they wanted was a public announcement from Ukraine’s government that an investigation was on-going. Because at that point, the US media (looking at you, NY Times) would take the ball and run with it through the remainder of the campaign season.
JaySinWA
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It is possible, although not likely that Bolten was aware of the Nevada attempt to get a marijuana licence after the application period had closed. It was part of the indictment for the 4 (2 Florida and 2 west coast). Yes drug deals are a part of this, but it is not clear how far up the US chain that goes. It almost certainly is part of the Ukraine and Russian end.
Mnemosyne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Somebody posted a story yesterday saying that Rudy’s Ukrainian buddies have cornered the market on marijuana dispensaries in the Bay Area so, yeah, they may literally be (legal) drug dealers.
Amazing what you can do when you have Russian oligarchs backing you …
Joe Falco
If Democrats can’t find this behavior as being in contempt of Congress then the Republic may as well be doomed. Trump is Caesar and the Democrats are the Roman Senate. I know I’m overreacting, but this is just putting me in a dour mood. Rudy Collude-y needs a stay in a 6 x 8 on Rikers.
Keith P.
@J R in WV: So would his wife LOL!
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: I’m just imagining them hauling pallets of cash to the IRS office that can take cash near to them just so they can make their quarterly payments.
oldster
I hope that Schiff and Pelosi are talking right now about when to issue the subpoenas.
Congress has the power, unless they give it away. And if they give it away, they will never get it back.
(Oh, until a Republican congress faces a Democratic president, at which point it will suddenly be a co-equal branch with solemn majestic powers of the ultimate legislature of the land and the authentic voice of the voting populace. Fuck these people.)
JaySinWA
@JaySinWA: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/marijuana-plot-parnas-fruman-giuliania-indictment-nevada
Drugs along with Lawyers, guns and money.
@Mnemosyne: part of this crew was in the Nevada caper.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
The pot plot thickens a day later.
Everywhere I look, Rooskies!
JaySinWA
@trollhattan:
All the way down.
Ksmiami
Jail the fucker.
Aleta
I’ve been thinking of him and his ‘restore the authority and power of the presidency’ distortion a lot lately. What Cheny’s lies have brought today; imo not coincidentally.
I remember, as perhaps one of the first things he did, when he called in (iirc) oil co. execs (who else? do we even know?) for talks on energy policy.
What I remember (there could be mistakes in this): when people (like Dems and environmentalists) wanted to know who came and what they requested, Cheney and lawyers argued the right of the exec branch to keep that information private. Because that information was from ‘advisors’ and the VP office had a right to executive-branch privacy. Were they campaign contributors? Did they benefit from subsequent energy policy? Was Haliburton there? They said we had no right to know. Though it was contested, I don’t have accurate memory of what was eventually disclosed and what not.
When talk of ‘Bush doesn’t look so bad now, next to Trump’ appeared the media, the question and comparison left me cold, because there’s a continuation going on of information suppression, cronyism, stonewalling, profiteering … .
waspuppet
Can we stop giving them the fig leaf of calling it “modern”? They’ve been like this for 50 years and they’re only getting worse.
HalfAssedHomesteader
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Power is a drug.
jl
@trollhattan: The crazed dash for cash that was going on under the political corruption and feckless foreign policy disasters and humiliations would have been huge just on their own any other time. Will be interesting to read about them when the info comes out.
Looks like Giuliani’s lawyer decided an insanity defense wouldn’t work out, so quit right after writing the bugger off letter to Congress. Will be lots of interesting news after Giuliani implodes.
Giuliani has always wanted to be the center of attention, and he’s hit the jackpot beyond his wildest dreams.
Joe Falco
@Aleta:
Good lord, I still remember the man-sized safe Cheney kept around. There were always jokes about what need did Cheney have for that thing around and what he locked away in there.
Mary G
Rudy’s going through his usual scorched earth divorce from wife 3, and she’s getting $42,000 a month and petitioning to have the court up to it the $230,000 a month they spent when they were married. He’s supposedly worth millions on paper, but has locked a lot of it up so she can’t get at it, and had to borrow $100,000 from a friend to pay property taxes. So no, he can’t pay a lawyer. From Splinter in September:
So he’s in a big bind. He didn’t succeed in getting Ukraine to smear Hunter Biden, so Twitler’s not going to cough up (probably wouldn’t have even if Rudy had delivered), his Russian buddies are in jail, and he’s under investigation himself. Good. No one deserves it more. He is scum among scum.
J R in WV
I can’t help but wonder if a $12,000 cigar smells as much like a burning dog turd as a $1.17 cigar.
I’m sure they are as carcinogenic which is a good thing, as long as Rudy is smoking them. If I were she, I would have divorced him the moment he fired up a cigar in my presence!
Just One More Canuck
@NotMax: the Flintstones are to anthropology
Uncle Omar
@hells littlest angel: @#22 With any luck he’ll end sharing a cell with one of the Mob guys he sent up while he was the USAtt’y in NYC.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Uncle Omar: One would think they would have a decent argument for Prosecutor incompetence for an appeal by now.
Barbara
You haven’t “dropped” your attorney just because you aren’t calling him every day. This is the kind of thing that means nothing but might impress a few people too stupid or naive to know how attorney client relationships actually work.
Kenneth Fair
@J R in WV: Why not just pull him out of ALCS Game 3? You know where he’s going to be for the next couple of hours.
mrmoshpotato
@waspuppet: What if we call it modern conservative fascism?
mrmoshpotato
Ummm…what? Congress isn’t authorized to subpoena his fucknuts, fascist ass?
I’d like to see where that’s written.
mrmoshpotato
@Kenneth Fair: That idea sounds like a home run.
I’ll see myself out.
Roger Moore
@mrmoshpotato:
But Doughy Pantload has assured me that fascism is a liberal ideology!
mrmoshpotato
@Roger Moore: Hell of a time we live in where I seriously have to ask which Doughy Pantload you’re talking about.
Uncle Cosmo
@mrmoshpotato: Can’t do it until he fails to show up at the specified time.
IOW American’s Goombah has to balk first (for the runners to advance).
Hold the door, I’ll be right behind you.
trollhattan
@Aleta:
Didn’t they go as far as trying to make the WH visitor log classified?
The current shitstorm is blurring my recollections of the Cheney-Bush-Cheney maladministration, which at the time really was as vile and corrupt as they came. Hoo-boy.
Mnemosyne
I’m skeptical that there is any LEO in the country who would be willing to arrest the sainted Rudy 9/11, but I hope it happens. Preferably after 5 pm on Friday so his ass gets to sit in jail overnight while his lawyers scramble to find a judge willing to free him.
mrmoshpotato
@Uncle Cosmo: Good one!
Uncle Cosmo
They say that anyone who represents himself has a fool for a client.
IOW Ghouliani will see his next attorney when he goes to shave in the morning.
Presuming he has a reflection. (Pro tip: Not a good bet.)
Roger Moore
@mrmoshpotato:
You just need to look in the Balloon Juice Lexicon under “D”.
Keith P.
@Mary G: It seems like by now his wives’ attorney’s have gotten wise to Ghouliani’s (it’s October) cheap lawyer tricks and know where he’s stashing his money. I think even TV anchors are getting wise to it, although I fully expect Rudy to try to marry Donald Trump in an attempt to keep them from testifying against each other.
Wilson Heath
Alexa, remind me of the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege and order all the popcorn.
I’d mention attorneys being their own worst clients, but, if this plays out according to his professed plan, he should be disbarred shortly.
Aleta
@trollhattan: I only remember the T adminis trying to making it secret, and continuing to withhold some of it, quite early on.
Now I want to look for whether Cheney-Bush tried that. Someone should write about ties between things Cheney-Bush did and the abuses of Trump, before the impeachment gets rolling.
mrmoshpotato
@Wilson Heath: Standby. Alexa is still doing all the crimes for the Trump trash crime family. It’s a lot of crimes, and she probably doesn’t realize she’s being set up as the fall guy (fall umm… digital assistant?).
mrmoshpotato
@Keith P.: For Rudy, it’s always October.
craigie
I have come to the conclusion that Rudy Colludy is actually still working for the SDNY, undercover, in order to ensure that Trump goes to jail. It’s the only thing that explains this level of overt public idiocy.
Chris T.
@J R in WV: I imagine it’s a dozen $1000 cigars.
Not that that’s much better.
Roger Moore
@mrmoshpotato:
Sorry, Trump barely knows Alexa. She was never an important part of his administration. All she ever did was order all the coffee.
NotMax
Copious kudos to all who responded. Not a clunker in the bunch!
Shall add a movie-related one.
… as Sydney Greenstreet is to track and field.
Ilefttxwhenannlost
@Roger Moore: whore skeezy john
Raoul
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My first reaction today when I saw that Rudy had ‘parted ways’ with Sale was that the lawyer fired the client. I guess we’ll see if Rudy ever does have his represent him again. I ain’t convinced Rudy cut him loose.
TomatoQueen
@Raoul: I think you’re right. If, and I’m almost certain of this, the Jon Sale who is mentioned is the same Jon Sale who was my ex-husb’s law professor a zillion years ago, I am surprised he was persuaded to take Rudy on at all, but people do change. The Jon Sale I remember was very very flamboyant (not a good match) but just too bright to do this for more than ten minutes and out of a sense of amusement.
Tehanu
@Beth in VA:
Why, I’m beginning to think the NYT isn’t part of the liberal media!
tokyokie
@J R in WV:
Late to the thread, but I’d prefer that Rude-E be served, cuffed, and dragged out of his kickback box seat in Yankee Stadium during Team Evil’s next home playoff game.
Johannes
@Juju: Finally, some common sense suggestions for the Giuliani problem!