Rudy Giuliani, a former prosecutor, should be aware that his behavior this week is strikingly in line with that of a co-conspirator. Caught at the center of this week’s impeachment inquiry announcement over the president’s efforts to extort Ukrainian officials in exchange for help getting reelected, Giuliani certainly is not doing himself—or his client, Donald Trump—any favors by speaking out.
Given the legal mess he’s helped to create—and the fact that he makes things worse every time he opens his mouth—you’d think the former New York City mayor would be more cautious about what he says and does. Nope.
The Washington Post discovered that Giuliani was scheduled to participate on Tuesday in a two-day conference in Armenia organized by the Eurasian Economic Union. The EEU was created by Russian President Vladimir Putin to counter the European Union. Putin himself is scheduled to attend.
Equally troubling, the panel Giuliani was supposed to participate on, in a paid speaking engagement, will be moderated by Sergey Glazyev, a Putin insider and possible successor who is under U.S. economic sanctions because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Forget optics—this is just dumb. And brazen.
Giuliani canceled his attendance at the event after the Post published a story about it on Friday. That seems to be a pattern.
According to the conference’s agenda, which is online in English, Giuliani appears to be the only American who was scheduled to speak. Equally laughable, he was supposed to talk about “Digital financial technologies - new opportunities for integrating payment systems of the Eurasian continent in transport Logistics.” Right in his wheelhouse!
Someone should ask him about the new developments in transport logistics in Kazakhstan next time he’s on TV.
I find it hard to believe that Giuliani would have anything meaningful to contribute on this subject, given that in a recent interview with The Atlantic’s Elaina Plott, “his most pressing concern” the last time Plott talked to him four weeks ago was “that he had been locked out of his Instagram account.” Luckily, the three-time winner of Reddit’s “Miss Deplorable” contest was there to assist him. I wish I were making this up.
The Post explains what the EEU is:
It is the brainchild of Putin and was created in response to democratic upheavals taking place at the time in former Soviet countries. Putin has aimed to use the group to establish Russia as a bulwark against Europe and a center of gravity in the former Soviet region, describing the EEU as “a new supranational union that could become one of the poles of the modern world.”
In 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the group part of an effort to “re-Sovietize the region.”
Jesus, Rudy. If Putin and Trump’s personal lawyer bumped into each other at the conference, I wonder what they would talk about.
At any rate, Giuliani has wisely decided to cancel. Although the conference is only days away, he claimed to have been unaware what it was about, or that Putin will be there.
He didn’t cancel, however, because it was a stupid thing to do in the first place, but rather because it would become fodder for criticism by members of the news media.
“I’m not an idiot,” he told the Post. “I know you all are going after me. I know what you guys are doing with this.”
At least he finally seems to have found some situational awareness. I’m not sure he’s correct, though, about not being an idiot.