long before scandal erupted and the impeachment inquiry launched, Giuliani repeatedly told me & many other reporters that he regularly briefed Trump personally/incrementally on what he was doing, & was open about informally advising Trump on ukraine. This was not something...
...that the Trump attorney was shy about discussing publicly in the months leading up to the whistleblower complaint/impeachment probe. And if the president actually wanted him to knock it off, there were numerous chances for him to tell Rudy to!
little too late to simply throw up ones hands and say “oh well you know Rudy was just doin his thing.” Also, Trump said in the call memo that he was very much backing Giuliani doing all this, and has said so to the press a bunch of times since, so this is almost too dumb to argue
"'I’m having too much fun,' Giuliani added [in May], letting out a couple of chuckles. 'One day, I’m gonna have to go back to boring lawyer work.'” thedailybeast.com/trump-lawyer-r… 
A tiny throwback — per this @ErinBanco / me story, Democrats on Capitol Hill had been going after this long before the whistleblower complaint. Since at least May, Dems had been plotting a probe into Giuliani’s foreign work—not just Ukraine-related: thedailybeast.com/rudy-giulianis…
@ErinBanco I do not think any of them at the time believed this was going to be such a huge deal lol.
