When you’ve got Larry, Moe, Curly, Rudy and Rob on your side, what could go wrong? | Opinion

One after another, they just keep popping out of Rudy Giuliani’s little clown car.

The latest is a landscaper and Donald Trump groupie named Robert Hyde, who surfaced last week in the impeachment documents about Giuliani’s slapstick efforts on behalf of the president to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine.

Hyde, 40, is a Republican candidate for Congress in Connecticut. Credentials? Not great. Currently he’s got a restraining order against him for harassing and stalking a female political consultant.

Oh, one more thing: Last spring he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility in Florida after freaking out at Trump’s golf resort in Doral. He told police that a hit man was coming to kill him and the Secret Service hacked his computer.

Hyde’s back in circulation now, trying to explain his shady What’s App messages to Lev Parnas, one of the Giuliani associates in the middle of the impeachment inquiry. Parnas, a Florida businessman, has been indicted on charges that included allegedly funneling masked campaign donations to politicians in order to affect U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

House Democrats have released texts between Parnas and Hyde in which Hyde said he was in contact with operatives in Kiev that were tracking Marie Yovanovitch, the American ambassador whom Giuliani wanted Trump to fire (he did).

“She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off,” Hyde reported in one creepy exchange. Later: “They will let me know when she’s on the move.”

“Perfect,” replied Parnas.

Hyde later texted that his contacts were awaiting further instructions, for a price. “Guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money,” he said, a remark some perceived as a threat to harm the ambassador.

Hyde now says he was only joking. Parnas says he didn’t believe anything Hyde told him anyway. Giuliani says he didn’t know anything about the discussion.

FBI agents visited Hyde’s home and office last Thursday.

Rudy’s operation was actually worse than a clown show. It was a drunken remake of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the grail being the phantom Biden documents and Giuliani being the leader of the bumbling knights.

Call him Sir Stammers-a-lot.

Hyde, an ex-Marine, has said he never cared about politics until Trump arrived on the scene. He donated $55,000 to the president’s inauguration and Republican National Committee, and began hanging out at the bar at Trump’s hotel in Washington and at other Trump properties.

With pride Hyde posted photos of himself standing with Trump. He also got pictures taken with Trump’s sons, Vice President Mike Pence and other prominent GOP figures.

Hyde even attended the inauguration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose name has popped up in the Ukraine/Biden fiasco. DeSantis met at least six times with Lev Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman, who was also indicted on campaign-finance charges.

The governor has returned $50,000 in political contributions from the duo, who went to his victory party and got VIP seats at his swearing-in ceremony. DeSantis says he knew nothing about the Ukraine scheme.

His office also denied that the Parnas and Fruman — also heavy Trump donors — had accompanied DeSantis on his campaign plane, but said it was Giuliani’s private plane that brought them to his rallies.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that texts between the governor and Parnas were submitted with the impeachment evidence.

Every politician beguiled by Rudy’s crew is under a cloud that grows more toxic with the exposure of characters such as Hyde, who’s transitioning professionally from tree-trimming to public relations.

“I was never a close associate of Lev Parnas,” he stated last week. “Did I like his character, and did we have a lot of laughs and joke a little bit? Of course.”

What a wit, that guy — kidding around about a surveillance team that’s supposedly tailing a U.S. ambassador, a woman he referred to as a “bitch.”

A charitable assessment is that perhaps Hyde has some personal problems. According to the Washington Post, after spending nine days in the psychiatric facility last March, he went on social media saying “eff you and your intelligence agencies, whatever and whoever was or is effing with me.”

A less kind view is that he’s just a nitwit fan-boy of Trump who somehow connected with Giuliani’s hapless mission to nail the Bidens in Ukraine.

For the record, Hyde has posted that he’s finally taken care of his late child-support payments — another campaign negative — and that the Democrats and media are obviously out to get him.

Nonetheless, the Republican Party in Connecticut has asked him to drop out of that Congressional race. Please.

This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 12:37 PM.