President Donald Trump issued an unconditional pardon to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani Monday. There were 72 others on that list. They were all part of the efforts to clarify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Read any report of the pardon in the mainstream media and you will see Giuliani described as wanting to “overturn” that election. Somehow, it is still anathema to question anything about how that election was run and how the ballots were tabulated. Yet we all saw evidence of fraud with ballot boxes being shifted around on trucks and dropped off at a polling station to be counted. Maybe there was never enough uncertainty to change the results but should Americans be intimidated, harassed, threatened and criminally charged for daring to demand answers about a presidential election?
This doesn’t mean the lawfare is entirely over for Giuliani. It’s a federal pardon and doesn’t affect the state law that he is alleged to have contravened and it won’t reverse any of the defamation cases – including one that awarded $150 million to the plaintiffs – that he had to endure during the four dark years of former President Joe Biden.
But it’s a beginning, after a life dominated by lawfare for Trump’s former personal lawyer. The legal burden was designed to break Giuliani and to convince Americans that you too will be spending most of your life in courtrooms if you dare to question elections. The attorney was disbarred in New York and Washington and at one point almost had to surrender his New York Yankees memorabilia to satisfy the insatiable courts.
“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 presidential election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” Trump announced Monday.
The president noted in the proclamation that the pardon secured “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of presidential electors, whether or not recognized by any state or state official in connection with the 2020 presidential election, as well as for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 presidential election.”
As Rudy went from charge to lawsuit over the past four years, he must have felt alone. Trump was out of office and at times it looked like he would either stay in the political wilderness or be jailed for one of the ridiculous charges that he had to endure during the remorseless lawfare that he experienced.
Giuliani, for a lot of us, will forever be remembered as “America’s Mayor” for the way he conducted his duties and for the incredible leadership he displayed as the embattled mayor of New York City in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Giuliani was the can-do guy who tirelessly worked to assure the terrified citizens of America’s greatest city that everything was going to be okay; that the situation was under control; that there was light at the end of the tunnel. These assurances might all be cliches to some degree, but in the wake of a cataclysm, someone has to say them and someone has to personify hope, security and normalcy. The mayor wasn’t just speaking to the citizens of his city but to all Americans, who were wondering just what the hell had happened and where it was going from here. Giuliani’s calm demeanor and articulate speech told all Americans that this madness was going to end; that New York City and the United States was going to get back to business and get through this horror.
If you were old enough to remember 9/11, it will be a day that you won’t forget because it did seem like time stood still for a few days as the enormity of this historical event became evident. It really doesn’t matter whether you believe this was an Islamic extremist operation that the incompetence of the FBI and CIA failed to stop or even if you are convinced it was an inside job. No matter how the blame should be apportioned, this was a catastrophe and someone had to lead the way back to America. Giuliani was that man and he should always be remembered for unflinchingly seizing that role and hitting the ball over the fence of Yankee Stadium.
Even before 9/11, Giuliani was a great mayor, the mayor that took New York City out of its ghetto period when much of the city looked like a war zone. Crime was rampant, people were afraid to walk the streets and the subway was replete with graffiti – Giuliani told the police to start arresting people for defacing public transit. And it worked.
Of course, the Big Apple has not begun to recover from the mass immigration of the Biden administration, when five star hotels were turned into hostels for illegals and crime skyrocketed. All the work achieved by America’s Mayor seems like a distant memory.
But Trump is fighting crime in Washington DC and Chicago with the National Guard so maybe there’s hope for New York to look like Rudy’s shining city again.
At least the task of restoring the luster to an American hero named Rudy Giuliani began this week.
