In a move that more closely resembles an organized crime syndicate than a normal presidential administration, former New York City Mayor and current Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani is publicly proclaiming that President Donald Trump plans to deploy his pardon privileges to spare favored targets of Robert Mueller’s investigation from legal repercussions. What’s more, Giuliani is just announcing Trump’s intention to undertake an unprecedented abuse of executive power right to reporters.

Chris Sommerfeldt of the New York Daily News, reported Friday evening:

In one of his most forceful attacks on the special counsel yet, Rudy Giuliani on Friday claimed the Russia investigation could get “cleaned up” with “presidential pardons” in light of ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort being sent to jail. “When the whole thing is over, things might get cleaned up with some presidential pardons,” the former New York mayor told the Daily News.

Giuliani’s decision to essentially broadcast the White House’s intentions came mere hours after Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, had his bail revoked by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who ordered him to prison. Manafort, who had been previously living under house arrest, is facing a new round of allegations which accuse him of using various encrypted forms of communication to contact other witnesses in the Mueller probe for the purpose of tampering with their testimony.


Manafort made some of these communications himself. Other communications were undertaken by his associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, who Mueller has described as linked to Russian intelligence.

On Wednesday, it was reported that Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime attorney and self-styled “fixer,” had dropped his legal team. ABC News, who broke the original story, suggested that Cohen’s decision to dismiss his counsel might be a sign of his intention to start cooperating with federal prosecutors. But subsequent reports that followed in the wake of the original story noted that Cohen had not yet had a meeting with prosecutors to discuss the terms of possible cooperation, which meant that Cohen’s abrupt decision to go without counsel signaled something else entirely: a distress signal to the White House.

Person close to Cohen says he hasn’t flipped yet, “he’s sending up a smoke signal to Trump: I need help.” — Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) June 13, 2018

Given these events, the timing was ripe enough for Giuliani to offer these kind of assurances. That he used the media as a megaphone to communicate Trump’s intention to help them skate is, nevertheless, an extraordinary development. While Trump allies have suggested that Trump would attempt to resolve the Mueller probe in this fashion — for example, Trump White House hanger-on Roger Stone told the Washington Post that Trump’s pardon of conservative crank Dinesh D’Souza served as a signal that the president intended to use his “even more awesome powers” for this self-serving purpose — this suggestion had not previously been offered up by a member of the White House legal team.

For his part, Donald Trump spent part of his day hedging his bets by making another one of his periodic attempts to suggest that he and Manafort did not have serious dealings with one another. On Twitter, Trump acted as if he was a bemused observer of Manafort’s fate.

Wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort, who has represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and many other top political people and campaigns. Didn’t know Manafort was the head of the Mob. What about Comey and Crooked Hillary and all of the others? Very unfair! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2018

The New York Daily News reported that Giuliani also found the charges against Manafort to be unfair. “You put a guy in jail if he’s trying to kill witnesses, not just talking to witnesses,” said Giuliani, who has a decade’s worth of prosecutorial experience and yet somehow is not familiar with the relevant statutes concerning witness tampering.