"Something up our sleeves..."

"Something up our sleeves..."

by digby

Does Rudy Giuliani expect to be named in the Justice Department IG report? Did he have any advance knowledge that the FBI would re-open the Clinton email investigation in Oct '16?

"Oh no no absolutely not... impossible. I didn't get any leaked information from the FBI" #MTP
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) June 3, 2018



The Inspector General Report that has the entire right wing on pins and needles wasn't just about the all important Clinton emails. He was also tasked with seeing if Rudy Giuliani had been working hand in glove with the FBI in New York and knew that the Weiner laptop story was going to blow one way or the other.

I remember seeing this in the moment. Look at the demented childike glee written all over his face at just after the 2 minute mark:



That morning on Fox and Friends he'd said this:

Brian Kilmeade, a Fox News host, asked Mr. Giuliani about the presidential campaign during its last two weeks.

“Does Donald Trump plan anything except a series of inspiring rallies?” Mr. Kilmeade asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Giuliani replied.

Another host, Ainsley Earhardt, jumped in.

“What?” she asked.

“Ha-ha-ha,” Mr. Giuliani laughed. “You’ll see.”

Appearing to enjoy his own coy reply, Mr. Giuliani resumed chuckling: “Ha-ha-ha.”

“When will this happen?” Ms. Earhardt asked.

“We got a couple of surprises left,” Mr. Giuliani said, smiling.


(Here is the liar saying he was talking about some advertising they were doing on the week-end.)

Rudy is almost as loose lipped as Kevin McCarthy

He wasn't the only one:
Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, married to middle son Eric, hinted on ‘Fox & Friends’ this morning that the Republican nominee may be holding onto an ‘October surprise’ to drop on Hillary Clinton.

‘Well there’s still a couple days left in October,’ said Lara Trump. ‘We’ve got some stuff up our sleeve.’
This piece by the late Wayne Barret remains the Rosetta Stone of the Rudy/FBI story:
Two days before FBI director James Comey rocked the world last week, Rudy Giuliani was on Fox, where he volunteered, un-prodded by any question: “I think he’s [Donald Trump] got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”

Pressed for specifics, he said: “We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around.”

The man who now leads “lock-her-up” chants at Trump rallies spent decades of his life as a federal prosecutor and then mayor working closely with the FBI, and especially its New York office. One of Giuliani’s security firms employed a former head of the New York FBI office, and other alumni of it. It was agents of that office, probing Anthony Weiner’s alleged sexting of a minor, who pressed Comey to authorize the review of possible Hillary Clinton-related emails on a Weiner device that led to the explosive letter the director wrote Congress.

Hours after Comey’s letter about the renewed probe was leaked on Friday, Giuliani went on a radio show and attributed the director’s surprise action to “the pressure of a group of FBI agents who don’t look at it politically.”

“The other rumor that I get is that there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI about the original conclusion [not to charge Clinton] being completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face to the FBI’s integrity,” said Giuliani. “I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents.”

Read the whole thing if you haven't. The FBI is under siege from the Trumpies today. But that doesn't mean there aren't Trumpies in the FBI. The Inspector General might even be one of them for all we know...

.