Rudy Guiliani Tries to Disappear Last 18 Months in Bonkers, Rambling CNN Interview: ‘I Didn’t Do an Oppo Research Campaign’ on Biden

At the end of wide-ranging interview on the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani engaged in a rambling, factually-challenged, and often-incoherent argument with CNN host Chris Cuomo about the very public role that Giuliani has played he attacking  the reputation of Joe Biden over the past 18 months while acting as President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.

“You say we have to get back to decency,” Cuomo said, segueing into the discussion. “We had our fights about what you were doing in Ukraine and what that was about. I believe it was an obvious political research campaign to take down Biden.”

“I didn’t do an oppo research campaign, I’m a lawyer,” Giuliani insisted, despite a wealth of evidence and his own statements — many of them on Cuomo’s show — to the contrary. “This all goes back. I finished what I was doing a year ago. So it was part of my representation of my client to show that a lot of the information from the Steele dossier, a lot of the information that was attributed to sources and other sources came from the Ukraine. I was able to prove that.”

Among the false claims in Giuliani’s statement, he was notably once again pushing a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine was the real source of 2016 election meddling.

In fact, Giuliani, last May, openly admitted to “meddling in an investigation” by Ukraine, with the sole intent of encouraging that country to probe the former vice president and his son, Hunter Biden, on corruption charges. Then, last September, the former mayor offered a forceful denial to Chris Cuomo that he pushed Ukraine to investigate Biden — only to admit doing so moments later in the very same interview. And less than a year ago, in the midst of the Trump impeachment hearings, while the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine was debunking Giuliani’s corruption claims against the Bidens as “not credible” and tantamount to a “conspiracy theory,” Giuliani was still boasting to Glenn Beck that he was digging dirt on Trump’s likely 2020 rival.

“I was collecting information as a defense lawyer to defend my client,” Giuliani insisted, however, to Cuomo on Friday.

“I’m not accusing you of trying to defend your client. You’re looking for information to frame Biden and make him look as bad as what Trump looked,” Cuomo said, not buying Giuliani’s rebuttal.

“I wasn’t trying to frame Biden. I was told that Biden got bribed,” Giuliani protested.

“Yeah, you were told by shady people,” Cuomo pushed back. “The new prosecutor over there, said once and for all, Biden had nothing to do with what’s wrong with Burisma. I’m not saying the company is okay, the prosecutors are not part of the company’s problems. That’s what I’m saying, you know that’s what he said.”

“Biden, Biden — the Biden family got anywhere from 8 to $10 million, some of it laundered, I got the documents,” Giuliani said, reprising a familiar claim — and his bold promises to release documents to prove it — that stretch as far back as one year ago.

“If you’re upset that [Biden’s] son is making deals he shouldn’t make, you have Ivanka Trump getting trademarks from China, she just got one in the last week,” Cuomo shot back. “She’s working for the United States of America and cutting her own business deals. Why would you support trump ever if you are worried about that?”

“Look, I, I…” Giuliani said, shaking his head, before evading the point about the president’s daughter by trying to flip the question back on Cuomo. “If you’re worried about the conduct, you should be worried that Biden’s son has the Chinese business as his partner.”

When Cuomo noted there is no proof that Hunter Biden has made any money from the business, Giuliani disagreed.

After more crosstalk, Giuliani again denied acting as a political hit man for Trump and, again, contradicted reality.

“If people had paid attention to the dates, they would have seen that I did it well before Biden was even a candidate for president,” Giuliani falsely claimed. Biden announced his Democratic presidential run in late April 2019, while Giuliani was admitting to still investigating and interviewing sources about Biden throughout that same year.

Cuomo then noted that Andrii Derkach, one of Giuliani’s sources pushing corruption allegations against Biden, was just sanctioned by the Trump Treasury Department for running a “covert intelligence operation” as a Russian agent the day before.

“He’s no part of my report. My report to the State Department was rendered five months before I knew his name,” Giuliani said, dodging the question.

“Why would you meet with this guy?” Cuomo pressed. “He’s called by our government to be a Russian operative and a propaganda pusher,

Giuliani’s response was to tie Derkach’s testimony to an NGO allegedly embezzling foreign aid that was sponsored by liberal billionaire and conservative boogeyman George Soros.

“You know our government sees Andrii Derkach as a guy that should not be respected or trusted and they think he’s a propagandist…” Cuomo reiterated.

“That’s okay, they can see him that way. He is not,” Giuliani boldly claimed, before dismissing the Trump sanctions that allude to a plot to push misinformation about Biden. “He doesn’t have a single bit of information about Biden.”

“That seems to be true,” Cuomo said, as the bonkers segment finally wound down.

Watch the video above, via CNN.