An Op-Ed by in The Washington Post….
These days, it would appear that Giuliani has refashioned himself as another figure from history, and the magic — if you could call it that — is not so uplifting. As President Trump’s supposedly unpaid personal attorney, he brings to mind Donald Segretti, the infamous dirty trickster of the 1972 Richard Nixon campaign who helped introduce the profane but unforgettable term “ratf—ing” into the political lexicon.
If you are old enough, you will remember Segretti from the Watergate investigation. One of his classic moves when he was 30 years old and working at the Committee for the Re-election of the President was helping to orchestrate what became known as the “Canuck letter” — a letter to the editor fabricated by a Nixon White House aide that claimed Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, a leading contender for the 1972 Democratic nomination, had condoned a slur for Americans of French-Canadian descent….
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Giuliani, unlike Segretti, does not rely on cutouts to do all of his dirty work. In the Trump era, when you see the former New York mayor on television, he is usually spewing unfounded conspiracy theories, his favorites involving Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Ukraine. He has enlisted an array of shady operators in the region to help him in the effort.
His latest gambit was a leak to the New York Post of questionably sourced materials that purport to come from a laptop that may or may not have belonged to Biden’s son. I will not link to the story here, but you can find it if you are interested. Trump and his supporters are flogging it everywhere they can, and claiming they are being censored by skeptical social media companies trying to put the brakes on their efforts to spread what could well be misinformation….
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…getting to the truth was never really the point for Segretti’s legatee Rudy Giuliani. He seems to have made a bet that getting this stuff into the water would be enough…..
image….vanityfair.com
More in the WashPost on the Rudy/NY Post attempted political hit job on Joe Biden….
How do we know the email is authentic?
We do not. The New York Post published PDF printouts of several emails allegedly taken from the laptop, but for the “smoking-gun” email, it shows only a photo made the day before the story was posted, according to Thomas Rid, the author of “Active Measures,” a book on disinformation. “There is no header information, no metadata.” The Washington Post has not been able to independently verify or authenticate these emails, as requests to make the laptop hard drive available for inspection have not been granted. The New York Post said it obtained the material from former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a personal lawyer to President Trump…
More…
Rudy’s daughter incidentally is proudly voting for Biden….
And then there is this ……
Giuliani Was Target of Russian Intelligence Operation
“U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence,” the Washington Post reports.
“The warnings were based on multiple sources, including intercepted communications, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to Ukraine, where he was gathering information that he thought would expose corrupt acts by former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.”
“The intelligence raised concerns that Giuliani was being used to feed Russian misinformation to the president, the former officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and conversations.”