I think most people figured this was coming after Giuliani’s disastrous stint heading up Trump’s team fighting election fraud. We’ll get into that in a minute, but the headline here is that Trump is now hitting Giuliani where it hurts, namely not paying out anymore legal fees to the lawyer.

“Trump has instructed aides not to pay Giuliani’s legal fees” https://t.co/sbZLr2vpFj

— Erik Wasson (@elwasson) January 14, 2021

Here’s more details via The Hill.

President Trump has reportedly instructed his aides to cease payments to his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani following weeks of efforts aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Giuliani’s expenses are now being personally approved by Trump as the former’s efforts to file legal challenges in states around the country on behalf of the president appear to be winding down.

I know it’s The Washington Post giving this report, but this makes perfect sense to me. Giuliani not only didn’t deliver the goods, he did an absolutely terrible job managing the effort to challenge the election results. Instead of focusing the areas that may have provided the most fruit, he instead executed a “throw everything against the wall” strategy. All that led to was a marginalization of legitimate concerns and the parading about of absolute crazy people (such as the woman who testified in Michigan), something that gave excuse to those looking to hand wave everything away. Trump taking personal control of the payouts and cutting Giuliani off is exactly what you’d expect him to do. It’d be crazy for him not to do that.

Some are trying to play this off as Trump “gipping” Giuliani, but what the way this reads to me is that he’s just not going to keep paying Giuliani to fail. I assume prior expenses have already been covered judging by the language of the report.

Of course, Trump himself owns some responsibility for ever putting this much trust in Giuliani. Yes, I realize the President’s original law firm dumped him, but there are thousands upon thousands of lawyers in this country. I simply don’t buy that he couldn’t find anyone in the entire nation who could do a better job and who had more experience in the field of election law than Giuliani. Trump, to a fault at times, values the appearance of loyalty over expertise. That’s not a bad thing when you are dealing with bureaucracies that need to be cleaned out. It is a bad thing when you are dealing with the legal system.

I’m sure Giuliani has made enough money that he’ll be fine. The only question is whether Giuliani will ride off into the sunset or if he’ll push this issue. Will he accuse Trump of not paying him what he’s owed? I doubt it, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

(Please follow me on Twitter…@bonchieredstate)