Two of Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani's Ukrainian associates are now under federal indictment. A dozen or so witnesses have just testified to Congress, under oath, that Giuliani helped orchestrate a campaign to extort the Ukrainian government, withholding support for the at-war nation as a means of pressuring that government to publicly announce supposed "investigations" of Trump's political enemies.
But Rudy Giuliani may be the dumbest lawyer alive, so his reaction has been to ... keep doing it?
The New York Times reports that Giuliani flew to Europe for meetings this week with some of the allegedly corrupt Ukrainian ex-officials identified at the heart of Giuliani's efforts to stoke one conspiracy theory that the Russian government was innocent of 2016 election hacking and another alleging corruption by potential Trump election opponent Joe Biden.
Giuliani met on Tuesday in Budapest with disgraced Ukrainian ex-prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, pivotal in Giuliani's smear campaign against U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, whom Giuliani wanted removed for opposing his Ukrainian schemes. He then met Wednesday in Kyiv with Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn Kulyk, other identified participants in those schemes.
We can only speculate on why Giuliani is choosing this week to meet in person with key figures in the House impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump. It could be one last effort to coordinate preferred stories, as Giuliani waits to learn whether he himself will be indicted. It could be a frantic ongoing effort, still coordinated with Trump or not, and possibly still related to Trump Attorney General William Barr's own bizarre personal investigation of the same conspiracy theories, to craft allegations against either Biden or CrowdStrike gaudy enough to disrupt House impeachment proceedings or a looming Senate impeachment trial.
What we know for certain from this is only that Giuliani is absolutely undeterred, even as numerous witnesses testify to his role in an international extortion scheme—and that federal law enforcement officials are still willing to let him leave the country.
For all we know, Giuliani might be consulting with his allies on available Vienna real estate. If it gets too hot in the United States, "America's Mayor" might need to suddenly relocate.
