President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani is so toxic and embarrassing that Senate Republicans and White House officials are actively refusing to meet with him or contact him in any way because even they understand that his trips to Ukraine make him a serious liability.
Giuliani, when he’s not still trying to dig up dirt on Trump’s political rivals in Ukraine, often appears on Fox News and other networks where he spouts conspiracies, lies and Russian propaganda in defense of Trump, often with disastrous results.
But while Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) would like Giuliani to spout his conspiracies in Congress, most Republicans would rather not be associated with him, according to a report by The Daily Beast.
“In the weeks leading up to their impeachment trial, senators on Capitol Hill are actively avoiding meeting with President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani—partly because they fear he might try to pass off Russian conspiracy theories as fact, according to interviews with more than half a dozen Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides,” the report says. “Various lawmakers, as well as administration officials and national security brass, have privately expressed concerns about Giuliani’s latest Ukraine jaunt, given that the Trump lawyer’s efforts are what helped create this Ukraine scandal and get the president impeached in the first place.”
Indeed, Trump was impeached by the House precisely because he abused his power by trying to bribe Ukraine into investigating a political rival ahead of 2020 in exchange for the military aide he had frozen, and then he obstructed Congress by refusing to cooperate with the investigation of the scandal.
“Democrat and Republican senators have steered clear of the president’s personal attorney over concern that the information he is trying to disseminate originated from figures in Ukraine known for spinning the truth or spreading outright lies,” the report continued.
That’s also clear because two associates of Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman, were indicted and arrested earlier this year on charges related to their activities with Giuliani in the Ukraine scandal.
GOP aides confirmed that the senators they work for do not want anything to do with Giuliani, even though some of them have repeated his Russian propaganda in Congress.
“’I wouldn’t trust Rudy to represent me in a parking dispute so I’d say avoid,’ a senior GOP Senate aide said tersely when asked if it was a good idea for Republican senators to meet with Giuliani to get a Ukraine briefing,” the report said. “Another top aide in a different Republican office said their senator had informed staff that they had ‘no interest at all’ in meeting with Giuliani on this, fearing it would amount to a ‘waste of time,’ if not something worse.”
They don’t even want to exchange text messages with him.
“’I do not want my name showing up in a story about what Rudy and the president discuss,’ said one senior White House official,” the report continued. “‘I don’t want my text messages with him being all over cable news,’ this official continued, referencing the incident when Trump’s personal lawyer went on Fox News and unveiled texts sent between him and Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine.”
Clearly, Giuliani is a pariah in Washington now. If he were to testify at Trump’s Senate trial, he would likely do more harm than good just by opening his mouth. Again, his appearances on news networks are often a disaster. Of course, Trump’s own association with Giuliani should be enough to cause concern among Senate Republicans, enough that they vote to remove him from office, especially if they are so concerned about Russian propaganda hurting our country. Because until they stop associating themselves with Trump, they will be associating themselves with Giuliani by proxy.
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