Joe Bidens Campaign Asks Networks to Stop Booking Rudy Giuliani

Joe Bidens presidential campaign is asking the networks to stop booking Rudy Giuliani, writing that President Donald Trumps personal lawyer “has made very clear that his only obligation is to protect Donald Trump, and that he will willingly lie to do so.”

In a letter to the networks, campaign officials Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield wrote the networks that “while you have been aggressive in pushing back on him in real time, it is well known that the dedicated liar always has the advantage, pushing out outlandish falsehoods and disinformation in the knowledge that it is hard for the corrections to catch up. Giving Rudy Giuliani valuable time on your air to push these lies in the first place is a disservice to your audience and a disservice to journalism.”

Giuliani has been a prized guest on network news shows as the whistleblower scandal has unfolded. Giuliani has vigorously defended Trump while making a number of varying claims about Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Hes also sparred with some anchors, like CNNs Chris Cuomo, as they have tried to challenge the veracity of his allegations.

The letter was sent to network news presidents, chief anchors and Sunday show executive producers at ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. It was provided to Deadline by a source inside the campaign. Spokespersons for the networks did not have immediate comment.

Dunn and Bedingfield wrote that “we do not believe you should be giving legitimacy to someone who has publicly said he is concerned his tombstone will say he lied for Donald Trump, — but if you do, you need to give an equivalent amount of time to a surrogate for the Biden campaign. Vice President Biden and his campaign are the target of these attacks. Saying simply that you will put a Democrat on, at a time when there are many declared candidates for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, is neither fair treatment nor equal treatment.”

They also expressed frustration over a Giuliani appearance on Face the Nation on Sunday. They said that during the broadcast, Giuliani he “attacked the credibility of the former Ukrainian prosecutor on whom he has previously staked most of his harebrained case against Biden when the prosecutor said definitively he believed there was
nothing here to investigate.”

One of Giulianis central allegations focuses on Hunter Bidens role as a director of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, while his father was vice president. That raised ethical concerns at the time, but according to Politifact, there is no evidence that Biden talked to his son in a substantive way about the company or that his call to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor was an effort to end an investigation into Burisma.

The whistleblower complaint centers on a July 25 call that Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which the president asked Zelensky to launch an investigation into the Bidens. Trump has acknowledged making the request, but denies that there was any pressure or “quid pro quo,” or a promise to release U.S. aid to the Ukraine in exchange for starting such a probe.

Theres a reason that Giuliani is booked so much: Hes a central figure in the whistleblower scandal who has been accessible to many media outlets. Plus, his guest spots have generated considerable attention beyond the shows themselves, as some of his most colorful and contentious moments have gone viral in social media.

Last week, in an appearance on Laura Ingrahams Fox News show, The Ingraham Angle, Giuliani insisted that the State Department knew what he was doing when he met with Ukrainian officials to ask them about investigations in that country, including those surrounding the Bidens. He even shared text messages that he said came from Kurt Volker, the U.S. special envoy. Volker resigned on Friday.

“They basically knew everything I was doing,” Giuliani said on Ingrahams show.

The Biden campaign letter reflects their concern that, even if media outlets have found no wrongdoing on the part of Joe Biden and his son, it will still have a negative impact on his candidacy.

“While you have been aggressive in pushing back on him in real time, it is well known that the dedicated liar
always has the advantage, pushing out outlandish falsehoods and disinformation in the knowledge that it is hard for the corrections to catch up,” Dunn and Bedingfield wrote in their letter.

The full text of the Biden campaign letter is below:

All —

We are writing today with grave concern that you continue to book Rudy Giuliani on your air to
spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump. While you often fact
check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough. By giving
him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and
desperate lies into the national conversation.

We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a
surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly
lie in order to advance his own narrative.

Just today, for example, he tried to resurrect the argument that Vice President Bidens
anti-corruption work in Ukraine was intended to benefit his son, when every single independent
outlet has reported that the Vice President Biden was advancing the foreign policy goals of the
United States government, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank and more by pushing to oust a prosecutor who was known to be corrupt. [Wall Street
Journal, 9/21/2019; Bloomberg, 5/7/2019]

He also tried to raise completely baseless suggestions about Hunter Bidens work in China that
have been pushed by conservative mouthpiece Peter Schweizer and have been roundly
debunked as false in mainstream outlets. He spouted this while pointedly avoiding answering
directly a question abouRead More – Source