Truth and Consequences

​Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani and his legal team moved to have his trial postponed, but the judge didn’t allow it and said it would move forward as scheduled.  Afterwards, outside the courthouse, Giuliani spoke to the press –
 
"The reality is I have no cash. It's all tied up,” he said, adding -- "I don’t have a car. I don’t have a credit card. I don’t have cash.… I don’t have a penny, they have put stop orders on my Social Security account."
 
Sprinkled through that are words Giuliani uses to create sympathy and make a non-existence point, explaining things he doesn’t have – cash.  A car.  Credit card.  Cash, again.  A penny.  Social security.  All symbolic of money.  But missing in his mournful plea is the non-symbolic, actual word itself:  money.  That’s because of four words buried amidst it all – “It’s all tied up.”
 
Just to be clear, "It's all tied up" means he has money.  In fact, it means he probably has a lot.  Because if you don’t have much money and are leaving from paycheck to check, without savings, you don’t tie up your money.  And it requires a lot of money to tie it up. 
 
And if it’s “all tied up,” that means he can work on untying it, which he can then sell off.  For, y'know...cash.
 
I’m actually very sorry that Rudy Giuliani, after an admired career prosecuting criminals, being praised as “America’s Mayor,” chose to divert his life and tie his future to a racist, hate-filled, fascist sociopath and has fallen from such a high perch in society to become financially destroyed.  But that was his decision.  Of his own free will, he went on television, looked in the camera and defended his new circle of criminals who tried to undermine democracy and insisted “Truth is not truth.”  But I’m overwhelmingly more sorry that, using the office of president to shout from, he knowingly and repeatedly destroyed the lives of two people, even putting their lives at risk, as well, despite them doing absolutely nothing wrong, and who were in fact doing their civic duty as volunteers, helping run a free and fair election.
 
As a former U.S. Attorney, it’s a very safe bet that Mr. Giuliani understands how the court system, legal cases, civil offenses and penalties work.  And he, even more than most, is fully aware, having spent a lifetime making the very point in court, that there are actually consequences when you break the law.  And so his financial troubles, he most surely knows, are a direct by-product of when a jury finds you guilty of defamation to the extent of smearing, lying and ruining not just one, but two innocent people's lives, dragging them relentlessly through the mud, from the highest-profile platform.
 
Or as he might have put it before his law license was disbarred --
 
If you don’t have the cash, don’t malign and trash.