Nothing, not even Donald Trump’s regular habit of showing up to scream in front of a helicopter, provides a better example of America’s genuine plight than the media appearances of Rudy Giuliani. Trump’s personal attorney has now spent months openly telling the nation that he’s engaged in disrupting foreign policy purely for the purpose of reshaping that policy into a smear machine for Trump. He just keeps talking, apparently secure in the confidence that no one, anywhere, will ever do a damn thing about it. And, astoundingly, he seems to be right—not right about any of his claims, but fully justified in his belief that he can lie his ass off, attack U.S. and foreign officials with disdain, and receive nothing but plaudits and requests for more interviews.
In a Monday article, Giuliani openly confessed to what what multiple State Department officials had said during House testimony: He forced out U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch because, he said, “I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way. She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.” That wasn’t really a surprise. Not only had it been the universal complaint from those who were on the ground in Ukraine, but Giuliani had been open about his attempts to remove the highly respected ambassador since May.
But he wasn’t done with his attempts either to explain his actions or to disparage Yovanovitch. In a Fox News interview on Monday evening, Giuliani openly took responsibility for the ambassador’s removal. He claimed that he “forced her out, because she was corrupt.” In that interview and in a Tuesday morning tweet, Giuliani described that “corruption” as Yovanovitch refusing to give visas to Ukrainians he wanted to bring to the U.S. so they could repeat the smears Giuliani and Trump were promoting against Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
As The New York Times reported, Giuliani also made it clear that he passed his complaints along to Trump. Previous testimony also showed that Giuliani’s indicted pals Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas also passed along to Trump “concerns” about the ambassador, along with calls for her removal.
So, just repeating: Donald Trump’s personal attorney made it clear that he forced a sitting ambassador from office because she stood in the way of bringing pro-Russian officials who had been removed from office for corruption to America so that they could more effectively interfere in the 2020 election. This isn’t conjecture. This doesn’t require any leaps of deduction. This is what he’s bragging about.
Of all the people who testified before the House Intelligence Committee, just one so moved those present that when she stood to leave, the whole room stood with her, delivering a thunderous standing ovation. Not only did Marie Yovanovitch enjoy the unalloyed respect of her peers, but a few hours of listening to her speak about her career and experiences in Ukraine provided overwhelming evidence of her deep level of competence and intrinsic decency, and of the unfairness of the attacks lobbed at her by Giuliani.
That competence and decency are exactly why Giuliani sought her removal. She wasn’t in Ukraine to defend Joe Biden. She wasn’t in Ukraine to fight Donald Trump. She was in Ukraine doing America’s business, defending national security, and acting as an exemplar of America’s stand against corruption. Giuliani couldn’t stand for that. He’s making it clear—he’s making it repeatedly, loudly, explicitly clear to everyone who listens that he kneecapped Yovanovitch for her refusal to play along with his smear campaign. And that Donald Trump was with him every step of the way.
Naturally, on Monday afternoon Trump repeatedly praised both Giuliani and Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine. Actions, says Trump, that Giuliani takes “out of love.” What can be done about a man who openly brags about taking down a U.S. ambassador to clear the way for political corruption? Apparently not a damn thing. Not without removing Trump.