Lionel Nation - What’s Wrong with Giuliani’s New Hampshire Crash Story?

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Sept. 2, 2025 - Lionel Nation

29:30

What’s Wrong with Giuliani’s New Hampshire Crash Story?

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	Let me start off by giving you the obligatory I have nothing but respect for Rudy Giuliani.
	What Rudy Giuliani did for my city during his tenure cannot even be explained in terms of how great it was.
	Especially now when we have this Zoran Mom Dani who threatens to destroy everything that we hold dear in my beloved republic, in my beloved city of New York.
	It makes the contrast even greater.
	I've often been concerned about Rudy a little bit lately because with all the stuff that's going on, his mental health, his physical health, his physical health, his emotional health, with all that's going on, I've concerned.
	I've been concerned about him.
	So I want to tell you flat out, I love the guy.
	I am not in any way suggesting anything otherwise.
	I love the guy.
	But the story about the accident has been a little odd.
	Not in terms of blaming him, but just in terms of the reportage, the stories.
	There's a lot of things that are just missing.
	So what I've done is I've put together, I think, a careful...
	It just treats the incident as an evolving story whose edges and the narrative are a little indistinct.
	And it catalogs the questions that I, as a meticulous editor or as a prosecutor, would want answered before closing the file, before moving forward.
	And the point is not to indict Rudy Giuliani or his team or anybody for that matter.
	But to outline where the public narrative feels kind of underdeveloped, where basic facts are fuzzy, and where routine verification might and could prevent premature certainties.
	That's all.
	It's a very nice way of saying this.
	So let's talk about the I-93 incident.
	This is a prosecutorial reading of an unfinished story.
	This is me reading the facts of the case.
	First, let's look at what's undisputed.
	So far, as of now, on the night of August 30, just a couple of days ago, Rudy Giuliani was a passenger in a rented Ford Bronco driven by advisor Ted Goodman.
	They were northbound on Interstate 93 in New Hampshire.
	And by the way, that fact alone, I kept asking, was he the passenger?
	Was he the driver?
	And the stories that were initially presented never even had that.
	But people were so quick with the my thoughts and prayers, my thoughts and prayers.
	Nobody said, Wait a minute, is he driving?
	And the only thing I'm thinking of is I always say, I'm sorry, when you're driving was there alcohol involved not that I'm saying this but I but I always want to know who's doing the driving so at some point that evening Giuliani's team says he assisted a woman who flagged him down claiming to be a domestic violence victim okay now I'll let that go think about that all right Later,
	while the Bronco continued north, it was struck from behind by a Honda HRV driven by a 19-year-old woman.
	Both vehicles impacted the median.
	Giuliani sustained injuries including a thoracic vertebra fracture, a vertebral fracture, lacerations, contusions, and damage to his left arm and leg.
	New Hampshire State Police and HSP have stated that they were responding to a domestic violence call on the southbound side of I ninety three and while en route witnessed an unrelated crash on the northbound side.
	That is the collision involving Giuliani's spokesperson has emphasized the crash was not a targeted attack and that's good.
	That's very good.
	Now those are the anchors, right?
	Those are the facts.
	Everything else as yet lives in the space between initial statements, partial photographs.
	In fact, some of the X photos were from the wrong accident.
	It was a terrible accident from two years ago.
	So you've got to be careful with this.
	And there were partial photographs and the speed of the news cycle because a lot of it has to do in the way it's reported, not necessarily what Rudy Giuliani or his team or anybody for that matter would be saying.
	It's the way it's reported.
	Okay, so that's the core.
	That's the basis.
	Now, the next point is the core tension, the, you know, two parallel events, two directions of travel.
	Interesting.
	Let's look at this.
	There are essentially two stories running at once, concomitantly, simultaneously.
	One, a domestic violence episode occurring on the southbound side.
	This is police confirmed.
	And a rear end collision involving Giuliani's northbound Bronco.
	a police witness but described as unrelated to the domestic violence call.
	Now, the mystery is not that both happen.
	It's that the public has been offered limited connective tissue, so to speak, explaining how Giuliani's team's claim of assisting a victim intersects, if at all, with the police-confirmed domestic violence event on the opposite, what, carriageway, they call it.
	You following this?
	Now.
	Let's look at questions a careful reader would ask.
	Again, just in the way it was reported, not in anything that Rudy Giuliani or his spokespeople said.
	Where exactly along I ninety three did the alleged flag down occur?
	And when?
	Was the woman on foot in the southbound breakdown lane when assistance was rendered?
	On an overpass, in a median crossover?
	Was there any safe, lawful mechanism by which someone on one side of a divided interstate could have signaled a car traveling in the opposite direction.
	Then we got to ask, did Giuliani's team exit the interstate cross legally via an interchange and re-enter southbound to assist?
	Or did the flag down happen off the interstate before the northbound segment began?
	Don't know.
	Again, from reading the stories.
	Remember, from reading the news stories.
	Now, if a 911 call was made by Giuliani or Goodman, the dispatcher timestamp and cell sector location, you know, by pinging and triangulating should exist.
	Do those records, it's a little early to find out now, but do those records geographically match NHSP's southbound domestic violence call?
	Now, none of these questions imply deception.
	They illustrate how two true things can still feel narratively disjointed until times, distances, and locations are stitched and strung together, sutured together with ordinary evidentiary detail.
	That makes sense to you?
	Now the next.
	The rear ended claim versus front end damage photos.
	Now this is something that people are looking at.
	Circulating photos.
	And again, these have to be authenticated.
	These photos may be wrong, but circulating images depict significant front end damage to a black SUV presumed to be the Bronco crumpled hood and deployed airbags.
	Damage patterns that casual observers often associate with the car that did the hitting, not the car that was hit.
	Again, these all have to be verified.
	If there's a mistake, then fine.
	But that visual, understandably, seeded not doubt.
	Let me also say that I'm not doubting anything.
	I'm talking, if anything, I'm doubting the accuracy or what we need to know more of.
	Now, a prosecutor's lens would avoid snap judgments.
	Modern collisions frequently feature secondary impacts.
	You know, a genuine rear impact can shove a vehicle forward into a barrier or another object, producing a front-end crush in addition to rear damage.
	And I've seen some incredible work from accident reconstruction specialists.
	And how they do this is just incredible because it's just twisted and they can base their findings and their conclusions on skid marks and the like.
	High-speed events can also trigger airbag deployment.
	independent of where the first contact occurred.
	So the front end damage does not on its own, in and of itself, negate a rear end origin story.
	But that's what I would look at just for my own purposes.
	So what could resolve this quickly?
	Full scene diagrams, crash data retrieval or CDR from both vehicles.
	Most late model Fords and Honda's store pre-impact speed and braking and throttle and seatbelt status along with airbag deployment timing.
	Keep in mind, remember, your car, especially today, do are vehicles.
	This is a walking laboratory of what happened.
	And absolute, the onboard information, the data provides so much information that we just never had years ago when I was in the throes of mass unit prosecution.
	Now, photographs of both vehicles, rear and front damage, not just one angle, have to be looked at.
	Skid or yaw marks, mapping, median scarring, debris field analysis, kind of the standard stuff that comes along with comprehensive reports.
	And with those, the rear end characterization became a matter of record rather than debate, which is fine.
	Now, the domestic violence assistance narrative.
	This is interesting.
	The missing routine corroboration.
	Giuliani's spokesperson says he called 911, rendered assistance, and waited for police before continuing north.
	NHSP confirms a domestic violence call, but publicly does not mention Giuliani's presence at the at the at the domestic violence scene that silence is not evidence against him agencies often keep victim adjacent details tight while while investigations are active but still there's an interesting fact pattern as striking as a as a former mayor u.s attorney assisting a domestic violence victim on the highway typically generates basic
	public facing corroboration for example we received a call from a motorist who stopped to help the absence of that acknowledgement at least from what we see is not a contradiction it's a gap And routine items that would kind of tie up things, very interesting.
	The 911 audio, even redacted.
	showing the caller's voice time and mile marker, which is very interesting.
	A brief NHSP notation confirming that an adult male reported stopping to assist at the domestic violence scene.
	Body cam timestamps of the first units arriving, the first responders, so to speak, arriving southbound against the alleged waiting period.
	All this is interesting.
	Again, again, I can't say enough.
	None of this presumes fabrication or prevarication or anything, but it's the standard scaffolding that converts a media bullet point into a documented event, something that you can.
	go to court with something that you can work with now also you look at lane geometry and plausibility.
	Critics highlight the physical improbability of a southbound pedestrian flagging down a northbound vehicle separated by concrete barrier and travel lanes at highway speeds.
	That's what we're hearing.
	Remember, everything I'm saying barring a confusion, a mistake.
	So remember, it's all a proviso.
	But that skepticism or that question is fair, but it's also incomplete.
	See, people in crisis sometimes do dangerous things on interstates.
	Moreover, flagged down could be an imprecise shorthand for a scenario that occurred off the interstate at a ramp rest area or a gas station that preceded the I-93 segment.
	A precise mile marker by minute chronology would dissolve and remove most of this debate.
	And until then, again, I use the word carefully, but skepticism or confusion or questioning should remain focused on clarity rather than conclusory accusations.
	Big, big difference.
	By the way, this is standard fare for anybody who's done accident cases in civil case and lawsuits and prosecution.
	There's nothing about this that's that, you know, this isn't rocket science.
	Now, the next, the question was, this is not a targeted attack and the rental car angle.
	This is interesting.
	The spokesperson's stress on a rental vehicle, so no one knew it was him, was likely intended to relax fears of targeted violence.
	And that's good.
	And that's reasonable.
	But rental status alone doesn't prove or disprove targeting.
	You know, determined actors., determined bad guys track people, not cars, not paint colors, not descriptions.
	And I guess conversely, the most common cause of rear-wind crashes remains the mundane, inattention, speed differentials, nighttime visibility issues, and that sort of thing.
	Absence evidence to the contrary.
	The ordinary explanation is still the most probable.
	So a careful kind of a write-up or review of this would note both truths.
	Rental anonymity makes opportunistic targeting less likely.
	It cannot by itself address all hypothetical threat models, but based upon the time that we live in right now, this is critical.
	Police handling it as a standard crash is at this stage the controlling fact, which is fine.
	And then you have to look up these factors, alcohol, distraction, and other speculative magnets as we say.
	Whenever a public figure is involved in a nocturnal crash, social media race towards the three usual suspects.
	Impairment, distraction, or unsafe stopping.
	And at present, there is no public evidence supporting any of these in the case.
	A disciplined report resists that gravity unless or until the investigative record speaks, okay?
	Because field observations, you know, toxicology, if any, dashcam, traffic cam footage, and CDR kind of data, all of them take note.
	But now the better note for now is procedural.
	If Giuliani's team states they stopped and waited somewhere for police, the where and how of that stop, fully off-road or on a ramp or hazards on whatever are facts worth documenting because safe stopping protocol on divided highways is not trivial in the least then you got to look at the timelines timelines timestamps and the the the the confusion dare i say the tyranny of vagueness
	the single biggest source of mystery is time without a minute-by-minute kind of framework or chassis, so to speak, the public is left to infer and to imagine sequencing time a as the first one.
	Alleged flag down and assistance.
	Time B, police arrival at the domestic violence scene, southbound.
	Time C, northbound re-entry and travel, maybe.
	Time D, rear-end collision observed by NHSP.
	All of these represent different, not quadrants, but different parts of this.
	When A through D are published as discrete times and mapped to mile markers, the story will likely become unremarkable.
	But until then, the lack of time stamps, it creates ambiguity.
	Interesting ambiguity, immunizing ambiguity.
	Almost any sequence can be imagined, invited by this dearth, this vacuum of information.
	Anything can happen.
	And when that happens, people get real creative.
	And when they get real creative, then they come up with crazy things.
	Because remember, all they want are facts.
	The facts, ma'am.
	Just the facts.
	So what a prosecutor would request before signing off on this is what's really critical.
	Nine hundred and eleven call records, caller, time, sector, dispatch notes, that's number one.
	NHSP logs, call times, unit arrivals, roadway sites, all of the information they have, up to including body warning cameras, those are great.
	Arrival timestamps for the domestic violence response.
	The crash report with diagram and measured marks and vehicle rest positions.
	Damage recording, onboard data from both vehicles, all of the computerized information and telemetry that are on there.
	Traffic camera DOT videos were available for both the domestic violence area and the crash quarter.
	Independent witness statements, if any, these are always interesting.
	Those who describe pre-crash behavior.
	And remember, a lot of folks have phones today.
	Traffic conditions, lighting, tow and damage documentation that show all contact surfaces, you know, on both cars.
	I mean, this may sound exhausting, but none of this is exotic.
	I mean, it's what converts a headlines and press quotes vignette into a fixed narrative and a relief to our investigation.
	And the media's rush and the cost of soft focus, that's a problem.
	Look, it is.
	is absolutely plausible that most outlets treated this as a standard crash with a well-known passenger and chose under deadline pressure.
	You got to get that out to rubber stamp early official summaries.
	And how many people will abide referencing things in social media, whatever they say.
	I told you before, there was a picture of this collision that the ex-community nodes even picked up on.
	I said, this is from two years ago in Canon or wherever it was.
	So that reflex, common always in breaking news, can leave obvious follow-ups on the table.
	It's a domestic violence.
	violence assistance is a distinctive part of the story, why no location and time specific?s.
	Okay, maybe it's a subject matter.
	If the crash was a rear end, why not publish both vehicles?
	You know, damage profiles to preempt amateur forensics.
	Or maybe they just didn't have the picture.
	Maybe just if the two events are unrelated, so why not say how far apart in miles or in minutes they were to avoid conflation?
	If that's what you're interested in, look, these emissions are not sinister.
	Please don't get all conspiratorial on me.
	They're avoidable and they matter because ambiguity is the medium, you know, the nutrient, the feeding system for speculation.
	And then there's plausible reconciliations.
	Without endorsing anyone in particular, a disciplined reader can imagine multiple non-contradictory scenarios.
	Assisted off-interstate crash later, the flag down occurs at a ramp or a service area south of the later crash.
	Nine hundred and eleven is called, units respond southbound, the Bronco proceeds north, the HRV rear ends it, secondary impact punches the Bronco into the median producing front-end crash.
	Brief southbound assist maybe via legal crossover, maybe rejoining or reconnecting to northbound.
	You know, the team exits, loops legally to southbound to assist, waits for the units and returns north.
	All of this can be kind of jumbled up in the facts.
	The crash occurring minutes later.
	All of this could have just been, oh yeah, yeah, and second thought, on second thought.
	Because a lot of this is happening very, very quickly.
	And nobody at the time is writing notes.
	Then there's a terminology mismatch.
	You know, flagged down is shorthand for approached requested help.
	Maybe it's a euphemism.
	Maybe that's one of these things.
	Maybe it's this ubiquitous word that people use.
	Maybe it was somebody just requesting help in a location, not literally divided highway shoulder to shoulder.
	Who knows?
	We don't know this.
	But each of these preserve a core claim without imputing or suggesting deception.
	There's nothing here that's per se that.
	And I keep saying that because despite what you might think, I'm not saying, aha, he's hiding something.
	I'm not.
	These are just questions I have.
	Each of what I say will be strengthened or maybe eliminated by timestamps and maps.
	That's it.
	It's very simple to rectify this.
	So what this is and what this is not is very critical.
	This is not an invitation to call anyone a liar.
	It is a request for the kind of ordinary verifiable scaffolding.
	as we say, that builds the story that responsible reporting and healthy skepticism both require.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	When you have a high-profile incident with two unusual elements, a domestic violence assist and a serious crash minutes apart, precision is necessary.
	It's not pedantry.
	It's not punctilious priggishness.
	It's hygiene.
	Until the routine disclosures and facts arrive, the story will keep, you know, breathing on its own and creating people.
	And by the way, you know, and I know, there's a lot of folks on social media who just love this stuff and they will they'll bring in everything from mk ultra to ufos to whatever it is which is fine it it we we we we have to make sure that we are certain and we've got it rid of anything that obscures what is probably a straightforward set of facts i don't want to bring up the term occam's razor because that term is
	misunderstood but you kind of get what i'm saying now A clean finality, a clean close to this file would look like a short NHSP supplemental noting, the exact times, mile markers for both events,
	911 call metadata, even if the audio is withheld, a diagram of the crash, and ideally a still or two that shows the rear damage of the Bronco and front damage on the HRV.
	Now that's it.
	Those basic, those four ingredients, I guess, convert a swirl of conjecture and supposition into a short kind of a subtle quick narrative that respects both public curiosity and the people involved.
	Now, until then, my friends, I ask you, prudence prefers and counsels neither blind credulity to use the term or cynicism or the the the delivery of the of the dread conspiracy theory just the patient and
	scientific and exact demand for ordinary facts delivered in ordinary ways, in ordinary narratives and that's it sometimes the mystery is not is not anything it's not malicious it's simply that the kind of like the natural um echo so to speak that you hear when the news moves you know faster than paperwork and people go crazy because this man like i said is a beloved beloved member
	of our community he's the hero of ours in new jersey we're so glad nobody was Well, nobody was killed.
	We wish him a speedy recovery.
	We wish him nothing but the best.
	And to reiterate, to perorate, my friends, to say yet again.
	These are just questions that I perhaps as the inveterate prosecutor, trial lawyer, somebody who's done a lot of accident cases and negligence and all that stuff.
	It's just things you want to know.
	And if there's something that we are hearing that's incorrect, or let me know, please, in the comments section below, I want to hear from you.
	What do you think, especially if you're a police officer, somebody in law enforcement, somebody who's done accident reconstruction and the like.
	So thank goodness we send you send thoughts and prayers to Mayor Giuliani and everybody else who's involved in this.
	We're so glad that it was.n't worse, it could very easily have been.
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