Another day, another Onion-esque headline. Rolling Stone is reporting that Jack Smith is probing both Rudy Giuliani’s drinking (that should be classic: oh, to read that transcript) and Donald Trump’s reliance on same. Giuliani has long been the court jester to Trump’s MAGA monarch, but never so much as when he lost the 2020 election and Rudy told him, “Not to worry.”
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office has repeatedly grilled witnesses about Rudy Giuliani’s drinking on and after election day, investigating whether Donald Trump was knowingly relying on an inebriated attorney while trying to overturn a presidential election.
In their questioning of multiple witnesses, Smith’s team of federal investigators have asked questions about how seemingly intoxicated Giuliani was during the weeks he was giving Trump advice on how to cling to power, according to a source who’s been in the room with Smith’s team, one witness’s attorney, and a third person familiar with the matter. […]
Furthermore, the special counsel’s office has probed how drunk witnesses and others believed Giuliani to be during specific and consequential moments of the tumultuous Trump-Biden presidential transition. Investigators asked for details that showed precisely how these witnesses knew firsthand the attorney was drinking while counseling Trump on subverting and overturning the 2020 presidential election.
Federal prosecutors often aren’t interested in investigating mere alcohol consumption. But according to lawyers and witnesses who’ve been in the room with special counsel investigators, Smith and his team are interested in this subject because it could help demonstrate that Trump was implementing the counsel of somebody he knew to be under the influence and perhaps not thinking clearly. If that were the case, it could add to federal prosecutors’ argument that Trump behaved with willful recklessness in his attempts nullify the 2020 election — by relying heavily on a lawyer he believed to be working while inebriated, and another who he bashed for spouting “crazy” conspiracy theories that Trump ran with anyway.
Election night in the White House must have been a complete zoo. There was Rudy, getting tanked, and Sidney Powell, who I don’t think needs any chemical assistance to do her best insanity, and they’re cobbling together a plan to both salve Trump’s fee fees and somehow pull a miracle out of a hat and keep him in power. So Rudy comes up with the idea, “Just say you won.” And we know that Mark Meadows was initially shocked by that, Bob Woodward reported that in his book, but eventually Meadows went along with it, because he’s a spineless Republican.
And if federal prosecutors were to make this argument in court, it could undermine Trump and his legal team’s “advice of counsel” defense. To avoid legal consequences or even possible prison time, the ex-president is already wielding this legal defense to try to scapegoat lawyers who advised him on overturning the election — even though these attorneys were only acting on Trump’s behalf, or doing what Trump had instructed them to do.
“In order to rely upon an advice of counsel defense, the defendant has to, number one, have made full disclosure of all material facts to the attorney,” explains Mitchell Epner, a former Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey. “That requires that the attorney understands what’s being told to them. If you know that your attorney is drunk, that does not count as making full disclosure of all material facts.”
This is an interesting legal point. “Your Honor, I fully disclosed all material facts to my lawyer.” “Yes, Sir, but was that before or after he passed out?” The devil is in the details, right?
And it gets nuttier. This next paragraph is a howler.
Defendants looking to rely on that defense also have to have “reasonably followed the attorney’s recommended course of conduct in good faith,” according to Epner. “Now if, for example, Trump was getting two sets of advice from an attorney: one before 4 p.m. and when the attorney hadn’t been drinking and a second, much more aggressive set of advice after 4 p.m., when he had been drinking and this was a pattern, it would not be reasonable to rely on the drunk advice.”
Full disclosure: They don’t teach you this in law school. At least, they didn’t. I’m sure they will now. I’m dead certain that the Trump case(s) will be studied for many years to come, not just in history class but definitely in law school. Maybe what we should do is create a small notebook called Lawyer’s Drinking Guide and this can be an executive gift. It will be a little black book, like address books used to be, and in it you record how many drinks your lawyer has had and when it’s a prudent moment to stop listening to the guy.
Last year, when the House select committee probing the Jan. 6 attack held public hearings, the panel aired video clips of depositions of Trump brass, which included senior Trump adviser Jason Miller telling congressional investigators: “I think the mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president” on Election Night.
When these clips went viral, Giuliani angrily responded in a tweet that he “REFUSED all alcohol that evening,” and that he was “disgusted and outraged at the out right lie.”
Rudy is shocked, we tell you, shocked. And in all reality, if Trump was listening to a drunk and it’s pretty obvious that’s the case, what does that say for his judgement?
And don’t forget: all the while this insanity was going on, we had the likes of the MyPillow guy and the Overstock owner, in the Oval Office, kicking in their two cents. Somehow housewares peddlers have been elevated to presidential adviser status, that’s a new one. But in Trump world, anything goes. Now Trump world is going. It’s high time.
These RW RICH had “delusions” of GRANDEUR & White Supremacist’ domination, when Trump won his Election! It’s gone down-hill ever since! The “Karmic” avenger, knows where they live! Bring it, Warriors for Justice!
The answer to the question of “why” is because Rudy told him what he wanted to hear. Same goes for pillow guy and overstock guy.
I agree. Trump will follow the advice of anybody who tells him exactly what he wants to hear. If Rudy had to get shitfaced to do that, fine, to Trump that would have been an inconsequential detail — the more reckless the advice the better. I understand the concept of reasonableness in making sure an attorney understands what’s being told to him, but in this case it’s a legal fiction. We know that Trump was bullshitting Giuliani, and Giuliani, running on high-octane booze, was bullshitting right back. And if there was anybody else there, they were your typical spineless Republican yes-men or yes-women. I can assure you there was no reasonableness anywhere in the room. But hey, if reasonableness is the legal standard, go right ahead Jack.
Damn! Now the taxpayers are going to be billed an additional cost of breathalyzers in all the offices of the white house, congress, and the Supreme Court. Might as well add the secret service, the state houses, all judges…hell, every public office in the land. Clearly we have wandered off the path of democracy due to frat boys continuing party central. Time to cue up Beerbong Brett’s angry scowl!!!
What a choice to make. Listen to the batsh!t insane or the slurring drunk.
Aren’t we all so thankful he only employed The Best People.