It must have been super hard for Rudy Giuliani to stay relatively under the radar these past few weeks.
But the former New York City mayor, Trump lawyer, and central figure in the Ukraine scandal reemerged in a big way on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning— to the point where the hosts gave him the proverbial hook to get him to shut up.
In a rambling interview that lasted over 12 minutes, Giuliani promised to release new evidence of corruption involving the Biden family and the Ukraine on his podcast, which drops at noon today.
“I’m going to expose, over the next two weeks, shocking crimes at the highest levels of both governments,” Giuliani said. “While the Senate is listening to a totally phony group of stories about non-impeachable offenses…it’s a total waste of money, it’s a complete show on the part of the Democrats, and they should be sued for or conspiracy to defraud the United States. And they should pay for that hearing.”
While Giuliani refused to testify in House impeachment investigation and thus far hasn’t been called in the Senate trial, he’s been an outsized influence on the ongoing impeachment. During his closing remarks last night, House Intelligence chair and impeachment “manager” Adam Schiff referred directly to the Trump associate.
Giuliani maintained that he simply stumbled upon evidence of corruption involving Joe Biden while investigating other evidence of corruption in Ukraine, claiming he had no idea that the former vice president would run for president this year. (Biden was reportedly telling people he could beat Trump as early as 2017.)
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While “Fox & Friends” hosts mostly let Giuliani throw out wild accusations — including that Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor whom Biden pushed to be fired because his office was failing to prosecute corruption, was hospitalized with mercury poisoning — Giuliani did face the slightest of pushback from co-host Brian Kilmeade. “Would you say that the way you approached it, in the short term, has made things worse for the president?”
“No, I would say the way I approached it was for the benefit of the American people,” Giuliani responded, calling Kilmeade “totally naive” for expecting an investigation to go through official channels rather than, well, Giuliani freelancing it.
Later, Giuliani accused Biden of “selling out” America on multiple occasions. “This ends, hopefully, with Biden finally being put under investigation…instead of putting them under investigation, they’re coming after me. They want to kill me,” Giuliani practically yelled, before clarifying: “Kill me, in terms of reputation. Shokin, they’re trying to really kill.”
Giuliani also alleged that Democrats aside from Biden are involved in corruption in the Ukraine. “There’s a lot more Democratic corruption in the Ukraine than you ever thought. You think it’s just the Bidens?” Giuliani said.
Finally, the hosts had enough. “I have a feeling you could go clear until noon until your podcast starts,” co-host Steve Doocy said. Giuliani kept going.
“Rudy,” Doocy pleaded. “We’re done!”
Cover: Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney to President Donald Trump, speaks during Turning Point USA’s 5th annual Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019. (John McCall/Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
