After months assailing Robert Mueller as a supposedly biased and unethical prosecutor before the release of his report, Rudy Giuliani shrugged at the news that House Democrats had subpoenaed the special counsel to testify later this month: “Who cares?”
The answer is that a lot of people care what Mueller has to say about President Donald Trump, including many of the former federal prosecutors whose investigations during the 1980s catapulted Giuliani to fame as the hard-hitting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. In interviews with The Daily Beast, Giuliani’s former Justice Department colleagues spoke of Mueller in glowing terms, and most said that his report had set out a triable obstruction of justice case against Trump. Many expressed deep disappointment in Giuliani’s attacks on Mueller and the FBI, albeit with a grudging recognition that his approach has been effective.
To Giuliani, at least, whatever Mueller tells Congress about his client comes too late. “When I started everyone trusted Mueller and we[r]e contemplating impeachment,” he told me in a text-message interview this week. “When we finished more people distrusted Mueller’s unethical group of angry Dems.”
When Rudolph W. Giuliani resigned in January, 1989 after an acclaimed five-and-a-half-year run as U.S. attorney in Manhattan, reporters from the courthouse press room presented the soon-to-be mayoral candidate with a sketch of him ascending into heaven on a puff of clouds.
There was more than a touch of press-room sarcasm in that gift, but at the same time, the late artist Joe Papin’s drawing captured not only the hype but also the hope that surrounded this rising star in 1980s New York. No one—least of all the assistant U.S. attorneys who felt fortunate to have worked for Giuliani—could have imagined his incarnation 30 years later as the prosecutor-trashing defense lawyer for another rising star from that era, a certain celebrity real-estate developer.
I covered the Manhattan federal court beat back then, and it caught my attention that 30 or more lawyers who’d worked with him were among the more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors who signed a statementdeclaring that “Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
“Rudy’s behavior has sparked a particular kind of outrage. He might as well be Roy Cohn.”
The surprise to me was not that so many experienced lawyers thought that the Mueller report set out a crime, contrary to Attorney General William Barr’s spin. Rather, it was the statement’s reference to Giuliani and alleged witness tampering:
“Some of this tampering and intimidation, including the dangling of pardons, was done in plain sight via tweets and public statements; other such behavior was done via private messages through private attorneys, such as Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani’s message to Cohen’s lawyer that Cohen should ‘[s]leep well tonight[], you have friends in high places.’”
That’s a particularly strong accusation within the buttoned-down world of former federal prosecutors, who tend to parse their words carefully.
“I have heard not one person defend him,” said Mary Shannon Little, a former assistant U.S. attorney who was involved in investigations that led to Giuliani’s two biggest political corruption cases, which grew from scandals in the New York City Parking Violations Bureau and Wedtech Corp., a politically connected defense contractor. “Rudy’s behavior has sparked a particular kind of outrage. He might as well be Roy Cohn.”
Giuliani told me he wasn’t surprised by the ex-prosecutors’ statement but is disappointed:
“My former Assistants, except for a few, are quintessential Eastern elite and subscribe to that way of seeing politics,” he responded. “I am not surprised at their viewpoint, just disappointed as to why they want to insert themselves in a negative way regarding me. I have fond memories of them and don’t expect gratuitous and ill-informed second guessing from them.”
I didn’t know the politics of the assistant U.S. attorneys I covered during the 1980s. They were very smart young lawyers who went to work prosecuting cases for the Reagan administration—not exactly a left-wing breeding ground. More to the point, they worked for the “Sovereign District of New York,” a nickname that respects the office’s prestige and independence from political interference.
As would be expected in a high-stakes investigation, many Southern District prosecutors from that era have played a role in the Trump-Russia saga, which Giuliani called a “Super Bowl” case. Lawyers at various times for Andrew McCabe, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, James Comey and Rick Gates were all former federal prosecutors in Manhattan. At the heart of the struggle is the brinkmanship between Giuliani and former FBI director Comey, whom Giuliani hired as an assistant U.S. attorney in 1987. “It was my dream job,” Comey wrote in his book A Higher Loyalty. “I would work for a man who was already becoming legendary: Rudy Giuliani.”
Elliott Jacobson had a similar feeling when Giuliani hired him in 1985, launching a Justice Department career of more than three decades. But Jacobson, who signed the ex-prosecutors’ statement, is disillusioned. He was particularly disturbed by Giuliani’s comment that FBI agents who executed a search warrant for former Trump lawyer Cohen’s office were like “stormtroopers.” Contrary to what Trump and Giuliani claimed, he said, searches of lawyers’ offices were done “all the time,” with proper safeguards and oversight.
“Rudy would have been the first to go after a guy like Michael Cohen and use a search warrant to do that,” Jacobson said. “The Rudy I knew was a fearless corruption prosecutor. I don’t think he would’ve had any question in going after this guy. He is in my view a different person.”
Another former prosecutor under Giuliani, who asked not to be identified, said that a column Jacobson wrote last year for the New York Law Journalarticulated how many Southern District alumni feel. “What happened to Rudy Giuliani? Where is the sharp-as-a-tack, reform-minded, valiant corruption fighter who was one of my mentors and role models?” Jacobson asked.
“I think we’re all floored by Rudy,” said Peter Sobol, who signed the former prosecutors’ statement.
Benito Romano, who served as the No. 3 official in Giuliani’s office and then became U.S. attorney on an interim basis after Giuliani moved on, was among those I recalled as being close to him. He did not sign the online statement, but said that “for me, the evidence seems to be clear” on the obstruction case against Trump. “This is not a close call.” On Giuliani’s role for the defense he said only, “No comment.”
There are more quotes from people who defend Giuliani as a defense lawyer for the president while saying that Mueller’s findings are incontrovertible. It’s an interesting piece, that requires a subscription (at least today — I assume it will be set free in a day or so.)
Personally, I think Rudy was always an asshole and remains one to this day. They were always wrong about him. He was a ruthless political operator without any honor or principles as a prosecutor and he remains so today as a defense attorney. It’s just that when he was a prosecutor he was constrained by certain institutional boundaries and he focused his unethical ambition on taking on bad actors instead of defending them.
He hasn’t changed. People don’t change that much. He was always like Roy Cohn.
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