President Trump’s impeachment defense team said Monday that his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was a “minor player” whose motive was misunderstood in pushing Ukraine to investigate Democrats.
“Rudy Giuliani is the House managers’ colorful distraction,” said attorney Jane Raskin during the first full day of defense arguments in Trump’s impeachment trial.
“Mr. Giuliani is just a minor player. That shiny object designed to distract you.”
Raskin hailed the former New York City mayor’s resume as a “legendary federal prosecutor” and “crime-busting mayor” who became “an internationally recognized expert on fighting corruption.” Giuliani’s work in Ukraine was to defend Trump legally as his personal attorney, not to carry out a secret political hit on behalf of the president, she said.
“Mayor Giuliani was President Trump’s personal attorney, but he was not on a political errand,” Raskin said.
Raskin argued House Democrats ignored the fact that Giuliani began looking into Ukraine to defend Trump during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“The House managers would have you believe that Mr. Giuliani is at the center of this controversy,” Raskin said. “They have anointed him the proxy villain of the tale, the leader of a rouge operation.”
Raskin said it was telling that House Democrats did not attempt to subpoena Giuliani to testify.
“He was doing what good defense attorneys do,” Raskin said. “To hear their presentation, you might think that Mayor Giuliani had parachuted into the president’s orbit in the spring of 2019 for the express purpose of carrying out a political hit job. … Mayor Giuliani began investigating Ukraine corruption and interference in the 2020 election way back in November of 2018, a full six months before Vice President Biden announced his candidacy and four months before the release of the Mueller report.”
Witnesses in House proceedings did not establish that he was executing a secret mission for Trump, Raskin said.
US diplomats testified that Trump told them in May to “talk to Rudy” about Ukraine. But Raskin noted that US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified he did not interpret the remark as an order and Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine at the time of the utterance, Kurt Volker, later testified that he thought it was “not as an instruction, just a comment.”
Raskin concluded her presentation with a defense of Giuliani’s lawyering if not his style.
“The House managers may not like his style, you may not like his style, but one might argue that he is everything Clarence Darrow said a defense lawyer must be: outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade,” Raskin said.
She hailed him as “spot on” when it came to the Russia investigation of Trump.
“The fact is, in the end, after a two year siege on the presidency, two inspector general reports, and a $32 million special counsel investigation, turns out Rudy was spot on,” Raskin said.
“It seems to me if we are keeping score on who got it right on allegations of FISA abuse, egregious misconduct at the highest level of the FBI, alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and supposed obstruction of justice in connection with the special counsel investigation, the score is Mayor Giuliani four, Mr Schiff zero.”
