Rudy Giuliani has spent the better part of a year waging a wild, thoroughly embarrassing battle against Robert Mueller on Donald Trump’s behalf. And yet, his go-to tactics—accusing investigators of malfeasance, and issuing half-baked denials—have seemingly done little to help the president. With the special counsel closing in, Giuliani on Wednesday came out with yet another of his fumbling half-admissions. Sure, the campaign may have colluded, Trump’s lawyer acknowledged, but I promise Trump didn’t!

“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign,” Giuliani said in a truly stunning interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “I said ‘the president of the United States.’ There is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you can commit here: conspiring with the Russians to hack the D.N.C.”

This, of course, was an extraordinary backtrack from just about everything Giuliani and his client have maintained throughout the Russia probe—an admission, it seemed, of potential wrongdoing on the part of the campaign, contradicting both his and Trump’s past full-throated denials. As recently as July, when asked by Fox News whether it “is . . . still the position of you and your client that there was no collusion with the Russians whatsoever on behalf of the Trump campaign,” Giuliani responded, “correct.” The president himself has repeatedly tweeted that his campaign did “nothing wrong - no collusion!” Giuliani’s defense, it seems, has gone from “no collusion” to “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign,” and “If the collusion happened,” as he told Cuomo Wednesday evening, “it happened a long time ago.”

Giuliani’s blatant attempt to move the goal posts appears to reflect his and the Trump camp’s growing worry over Mueller’s report, which the lawyer apparently believes could drop any day now. As my colleague Gabriel Sherman reported on Wednesday, Giuliani has grown to despise his job and expects the Mueller report to be “horrific” for the president. (Giuliani did not return a call seeking comment.) His new claim smacks of a characteristically clumsy attempt to get out ahead of the special counsel.

Of course, the idea that Trump can only be incriminated if Mueller proves he personally helped Putin hack the D.N.C. is nonsense. Richard Nixon didn’t personally break into D.N.C. headquarters in the Watergate building, but he nevertheless faced possible indictment over the burglary. It’s not clear what, if any charges, Trump could face as a result of the Russia probe. But ultimately, neither the president nor his lawyer will get to decide what constitutes a crime. Even if Trump isn’t found to have broken the law, the report could still cause significant political problems for him—and may even trigger impeachment proceedings.

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