Giuliani spends weekend making things up about Ukraine and blaming the State Department

Rudy Giuliani is having a wild ride.

On Thursday night, he went on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” and showed off text messages that he says show the State Department had full knowledge of his Ukranian adventuring. Lost in his performance was the fact that it doesn’t actually make things better for Trump if the State Department also signed on to this scheme.

This is particularly true given that the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, doesn’t even have any idea whether Giuliani has any level of security clearance. If the State Department is helping Trump’s personal attorney conduct diplomacy absent any security protections, that is an additional — and huge — problem.

Sunday, Fox News revealed that two other conservative attorneys — also presumably without security clearances — have been assisting Giuliani in his quest to discredit the Bidens with baseless conspiracy theories.

Fox host Chris Wallace said that attorney Joe diGenova and his wife, attorney Victoria Toensing, were working with Giuliani “off the books apart from the administration” and that “the only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump.” However, over on a different Fox Sunday show, “Sunday Morning Futures,” Giuliani denied working with any other attorneys.

“Sunday Morning Futures” wasn’t Giuliani’s only Sunday show appearance. CBS News had him on “Face the Nation,” where he proceeded to insist again that the State Department had given his antics its blessing. He said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was aware of his attempts to get Ukraine’s government to help undermine former Vice President Joe Biden and that he did this “at the request of the State Department.” He went on to brag, “I also have a thank you from them from doing a good job.”

But it was Giuliani’s performance on ABC’s “This Week” that was his most over-the-top. He insisted there is a “load of evidence the Ukrainians created false information, that they were asked by the Obama White House to do it in January of 2016.” He went on to say the Ukrainians came to him, not the other way around, saying they had “shocking evidence” that the Russian collusion happened in Ukraine, with Hillary Clinton, and was funded by George Soros. He waved around what he asserted were affidavits supporting his fevered imaginings and said they had been online for months.

Giuliani also rambled on at length about whether he’d cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. First, he said, “I wouldn’t cooperate with [House Intelligence Chair] Adam Schiff” and said Schiff should be “removed.” Host George Stephanopoulos responded, “So that’s your answer, you’re not going to cooperate?” Giuliani, ignoring his own words of mere seconds previous, said, “I didn’t say that. I said I will consider it.”

Trump’s first homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, also appeared on “The Week” and said he was “deeply disturbed” that Trump kept pushing to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on the Bidens. Bossert also explained he informed Trump the conspiracy that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the Democrats and has the DNC server, has been “debunked” and “has got to go.”

Meanwhile, Giuliani’s Twitter feed has started to resemble that of his boss. There’s the all-caps tweet about the “CORRUPT MEDIA” and that no one is investigating Democratic corruption because they are “[s]tuck in the swamp!

Giuliani’s grip on reality is as tenuous as Trump’s, and he’s getting way too much airtime to spread his dangerous, debunked lies.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.