Inanity defense

President Trump celebrated a National Day of Prayer Thursday by taking credit for a purported surge in Americans wishing each other “Merry Christmas” (as opposed to the godless epithet “Happy Holidays”). Despite the seasonal dissonance, what with 236 shopping days left, the phrase does befit a moment when the president’s latest addition to his legal team showered investigators with unexpected gifts.

Rudy Giuliani, formerly “America’s mayor” and currently America’s worst defense attorney, contradicted a series of presidential denials in an interview with fellow Trump enforcer Sean Hannity of Fox News on Wednesday. He said Trump had reimbursed his lawyer Michael Cohen for a preelection payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, disguised the exchange as a retainer even though Cohen did “no work” for him and, by the way, fired FBI Director Jim Comey because he wouldn’t publicly clear him in the Russia matter.

In other words, yes, Bob Mueller, there is a Santa Claus.

These revelations to the most sympathetic possible interlocutor were either the latest case of Giuliani’s career-spanning compulsion to say things he shouldn’t or, more likely, a calculated confession of troubling truths that would otherwise come out in a less friendly forum. Investigators have seized Cohen’s papers and reportedly monitored his phone lines, after all, potentially shortening the shelf life of alternative facts Trump and company have been peddling.

Whether on purpose or not, Giuliani advanced the case that his client broke laws against hiding campaign expenses and interfering with investigations. It’s a familiar phenomenon in the Trump era: a serious transgression cloaked in absurd spectacle.