Rudy and Jeanine, the right’s latest comedy team
by digby
Dark comedy. Very dark. C&L rolls the tape:
Following her latest unhinged rant accusing Robert Mueller of “colluding with the Democrats,” being a never-Trumper and supposedly doing his best to push them to impeach Trump during his press conference last week, Fox’s “judge” Jeanine Pirro brought on Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and asked him to weigh in on her commentary.
Rudy continued the pile-on of Mueller, and completely ignored the fact that the Mueller investigation actually made a profit for the federal government after Manafort was forced to forfeit over $46 million to the feds when he told Pirro that he should file a lawsuit against Mueller to for $17 million in order to “get that money back for the government.” Trump propagandist Pirro, of course, didn’t mention the money confiscated from Manafort:
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, jokes about serving special counsel Robert Mueller with a $17 million lawsuit following Mueller’s failure to come to a conclusion on obstruction of justice charges against Trump.
Giuliani was interviewed on Fox News’ Justice with Judge Jeanine on Saturday, telling the network host that he should sue Mueller to “get that money back for the government.”
The segment began with Jeanine Pirro asking the former New York City mayor about statements from Attorney General William Barr where he said he and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein did not understand why Mueller did not come to a conclusion on charging Trump.
“We first heard that the special counsel’s decision not to decide the obstruction issue at meet–at the March 5th meeting when he came over to the department, and we were, frankly, surprised that–that they were not going to reach a decision on obstruction,” Barr said during a May 1 Senate hearing. “We asked them a lot about the reasoning behind this and the basis for this. Special Counsel Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting, in response to our questioning, that he emphatically was not saying that but for the [Office of Legal Counsel’s] opinion he would have found obstruction. He said that in the future the facts of the case against the president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the OLC opinion, but this is not such a case. We did not understand exactly why the special counsel was not reaching a decision. And when we pressed him on it, he said that his team was still formulating the explanation.”
Pirro asked Giuliani if he understood Barr’s meaning of “not understanding” Mueller.
“I think I do,” Giuliani said. “Mueller has said a bunch of different things, but if you look at the report it says very clearly that he could not conclude that the president committed obstruction of justice but then he goes on to say ‘but I can’t exonerate him.’ So he actually did make kind of a decision, which is ‘I can’t decide whether he committed obstruction of justice.’ He wrote that.”
Giuliani went on to say that prosecutors decide if there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime and, if not, the person is exonerated.
“We don’t go ahead and write you a clean bill of health and say there’s no possibility you did it, I never remember ever doing that,” Giuliani said, prompting Pirro to agree.
Pirro then asked about Mueller’s conclusion and why Mueller failed to make a decision.
“It was a dereliction of duty,” Giuliani replied. “Why do you appoint an independent counsel, a special counsel? Theoretically you appoint them because there’s some kind of conflict, and they are supposed to make a decision.”
“So he made a decision about collusion, he couldn’t make a decision about obstruction. I think he should return half the money,” he continued, referencing the estimated $31 to $35 million spent on the almost two-year-long investigation. “If he did that for a private company….if someone appointed me a private investigator and said ‘well, you’ve got to come to two conclusions’ and I investigate and I come to one, but I say ‘gee, I can’t figure out the second one’ and they pay me $35 million, I think I have to probably give them about $17 million back.”
“I think I might bring a qui tam action to get that money back for the government,” Giuliani added as Pirro laughed at the suggestion.
They are both completely off their rockers. But that’s the sort of lunacy the Trump cult hears every single day. It’s also what their Dear Leader hears as well.
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