This is . . . not good.
Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, accidentally butt-dialed an NBC reporter — twice — and left 3-minute voice mails where he is overheard talking about Bahrain, Ukraine and Hunter Biden:
Stop what you're doing and read this. Giuliani butt-dialed an NBC reporter and left a third party conversation on voice mail: “The problem is we need some money. We need a few hundred thousand." .https://t.co/mBh7oqhpPW via @nbcnews
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) October 25, 2019
HBO’s “Veep” is a documentary:
Veep is real pic.twitter.com/rR1VcsXmSd
— Hunter Schwarz (@hunterschwarz) October 25, 2019
There doesn’t seem to be anything incriminating on the recording, but at one point Rudy says “the problem is we need money”:
Rudy Giuliani butt-dialed an NBC reporter and could be overheard telling another man: “The problem is we need some money.”https://t.co/dgWQB0ANQT
— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) October 25, 2019
Just “a few hundred thousand”:
"Is Robert around?" Giuliani asks.
"He's in Turkey," the man responds.
Giuliani replies instantly. "The problem is we need some money."
The two men then go silent. Nine seconds pass. No word is spoken. Then Giuliani chimes in again.
"We need a few hundred thousand," he says. https://t.co/LMzUJ6PZnk
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 25, 2019
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Luckily for Giuliani, the mailbox had a 3-minute limit:
Very lucky for Rudy that the reporter had a three-minute limit on voicemails. https://t.co/P5xPuYggdv
— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) October 25, 2019
One call came in when the reporter was asleep:
The call came in at 11:07 p.m. and went to voicemail; the reporter was asleep.
The other was when the reporter was at a family birthday party:
The late-night Giuliani butt dial came 18 days after a midafternoon Giuliani butt dial.
The first one happened when the NBC News reporter was at a fifth-birthday party for an extended family member in Central Jersey.
It was 3:37 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, and a pink unicorn piñata had just been strung up around a tree in the backyard.
Amid his 3-year-old daughter’s excitement, the reporter decided to let Giuliani’s call go to his voicemail.
Maybe NBC shouldn’t have outed him?
Just think what we might have learned if we didn't alert Rudy Giuliani to his butt-dialing problem.
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) October 25, 2019
What’s worse for the president is that this appears to be a pattern. From The Daily Mail’s David Martosko:
I once saw Rudy Giuliani in the Fox News green room in Washington. As I walked in, he and a young producer were leaving for a studio, and he was just finishing telling her a story. It ended with: "And I butt-dialed him! Can you believe it?" https://t.co/mOwZ2y200z
— David Martosko (@dmartosko) October 25, 2019
From Axios’ Jonathan Swan:
While we’re telling Rudy butt dial stories… he once texted me a voice memo recording of himself talking to a guy. I couldn’t make any sense of it or figure out how he managed to text me a recording inadvertently. https://t.co/SZT09jnOEv
— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) October 25, 2019
And from the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey:
everyone has a good Rudy butt dial story. I've heard him on what sounded like a plane, at the airport, at what sounded like a bar. "SIR, SIR! HELLO!" Alas.
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) October 25, 2019
So, what have other reporters heard on these calls?
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