Earlier this week, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported that Rudy Giuliani, who has served as one of President Donald Trump’s lawyers since April, is falling out of favor in the White House because of a “series of erratic television interviews” this week. “Trump thinks he’s saying too much,” an unnamed source told Sherman. This is a story we’ve heard before: Back in May, the Associated Press reported that Trump was “growing increasingly irritated with lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s frequently off-message media blitz.” And it is a story we’ll probably hear again.

It’s all noise.

The Russia investigation’s myriad threads can be overwhelming to follow, even for the most dedicated observer. The intense secrecy surrounding special counsel Robert Mueller’s work, while giving him a degree of insulation from political attacks, has also made it hard for the public to discern where his investigation stands and where it’s headed. After all, it’s not just Mueller and his team who aren’t talking; few of his targets are, either. Into that epistemic void leaped Giuliani, who gives journalists a steady streams of quotes and comments about the investigation.

This dynamic is increasingly untenable for journalists—or ought to be. Giuliani’s statements cannot be verified, since Mueller would never confirm or deny them, and his modus operandi is clear. He says outlandish things, like that presidents can “probably” pardon themselves or that Trump couldn’t be prosecuted if he murdered James Comey, in order to control the news cycle and muddle the narrative about the Russia investigation, the hush money to former mistresses, and so on.

Finding the signal in this noise is easy enough: Ignore Rudy Giuliani, and pay attention to the narratives that aren’t making daily headlines.

