According to the American Bar Association, “A lawyer has two main duties: to uphold the law while also protecting a client’s rights. To carry out these duties, a lawyer should understand the law and be an effective communicator.” But during Rudy Giuliani’s time working as the personal lawyer to then-president Donald Trump, his main jobs seemed to be: Shut up and do what you’re told, no questions asked. And if you want to make a total ass out of yourself along the way, go for it—but don’t expect to get paid for any of it.
In the past year, the man once known as America’s Mayor and Time’s Person of the Year has stood still while his career, and legacy, have crumbled around him. All because of his absurdly fierce commitment to swearing up and down, sometimes from the parking lot of a landscaping business, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that Team Trump had the receipts to prove it. Well, as it turns out, Rudy never even bothered to check those receipts.
On Thursday, CNN shared some exclusive video it had obtained of both Rudy and fellow Trump attorney Sidney Powell’s depositions given as part of the $1.3 billion defamation suit that Dominion Voting Systems has filed against Giuliani over the “Big Lie” “and his repeated claims that the voting machine company had rigged its devices to help Joe Biden win.
When asked about why he was so convinced that Dominion had actively participated in voter fraud, Giuliani stumbled through an answer in which he explained that, “We had a report that the heads of Dominion and Smartmatic, somewhere in the mid-tweens, you know 2013, 2014, whatever, went down to Venezuela for a get-to-know meeting with [President Nicolás] Maduro so they could demonstrate to Maduro the kind of vote fixing they did for [former President Hugo] Chavez.” When pressed further about this “report,” Giuliani explained that, “Before the press conference I was told about it. Sometimes I go and look myself—when stuff comes up. This time I didn’t have the time to do it.”
To recap so far: The lawyer for the sitting president of the United States, who is about to tell the world that a presidential election was rigged by one of the world’s biggest voting machine manufacturers, got his “proof” of this claim just before he stood next to a sex shop and shouted it out, but “didn’t have the time” to fully examine this proof himself.
Giuliani went on to claim that figuring out whether the information he was being fed is legit isn’t really something he thinks is necessary in his capacity. “It’s not my job, in a fast-moving case, to go out and investigate every piece of evidence that was given to me,” he said. “Otherwise, you’re never going to write a story. You’ll never come to a conclusion.”
You can watch Chris Cuomo’s full report on the tapes above.
(Via CNN)