Rudy Giuliani rails at Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes as mobsters once railed at him
Opinion: As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani loved it when the only defense the crooks had was to attack those who busted them.
EJ MontiniLast year, when Rudy Giuliani and others (including former President Donald Trump) were indicted in Georgia on racketeering charges tied to attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the lawyers for the mobsters Giuliani put away as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s crowed with delight.
One mob attorney said, “All of my clients who had the misfortune of being prosecuted by him are laughing now. As am I. It’s not just an ironic result but it’s a just result. He was a horribly dishonest prosecutor and the wheel of karma is about to crush him.”
The real irony is that Giuliani is now saying the same things about the prosecutors who’ve charged him, like Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
Not long ago, in an taped interview, Giuliani said of his Arizona indictment, “This is just straight out communist corruption. These people are massive crooks — the people in Arizona. They’re despicable, anti-American traitors.”
Giuliani worked to overturn Arizona's election
Giuliani and the others indicted by Mayes’s office are charged with having “schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep Unindicted Coconspirator 1 (that would be Donald Trump, of course) in office against the will of Arizona’s voters.”
You may recall how former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers told the House select committee that was investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that Giuliani tried to pressure him into not certifying the election results.
Bowers refused.
Describing his conversation with Giuliani, Bowers said, “In my recollection, he said, ‘We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence.’ ”
He spread easily debunked conspiracy theories
Giuliani also led a meeting in Phoenix, attended by numerous Republican politicians, in which unsworn “witnesses” spouted one bizarre unproven or already debunked conspiracy theory after another about the election.
At one point Giuliani said, “Let’s say there were 5 million illegal aliens in Arizona. It is beyond credulity that a few hundred thousand didn’t vote.”
The entire population of Arizona is only 7.3 million.
Just when you thought:The AZ GOP couldn't get any crazier
Also indicted with Giuliani were former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys John Eastman, Jenna Ellis and Christina Bobb, as well as Mike Roman, a Trump 2020 campaign operative.
In addition, of course, to Arizona’s 11 fake electors.
Giuliani channels the mobsters he put in prison
So how does a conspiracy-spreading criminal defendant like Giuliani defend himself against the charges?
The mobster way. Go on the attack.
Say, “This is just straight out communist corruption. These people are massive crooks — the people in Arizona. They’re despicable, anti-American traitors.”
It’s not just ironic. It’s sad.
And what Giuliani seems to have forgotten is that most of the defendants who said stuff like that about him back in the ‘80s are still in prison.
Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.
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