Trump lawyer vows to break ‘silence’
Giuliani says US president backs his public attacks on Mueller probe
Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s newest lawyer, said the president and his legal team are pursuing a more public and aggressive strategy towards Robert Mueller’s investigation as they try to pressure the special counsel to wrap up quickly.
“We have to speak out now, we have no other remedy,” Giuliani, a former New York mayor, said in an interview. “The president is being harmed in his ability to conduct the business of his presidency.”
Giuliani said that Trump and Jay Sekulow, Trump’s other main lawyer in the inquiry, agreed on the new strategy recently.
‘Patience wearing out’
In a string of nearly daily television appearances over the past week, Giuliani said he has tried to make clear that the president’s patience has worn out on the investigation into Russian election meddling that Mueller has overseen for almost a year.
“We will no longer be a punching bag for the liberal media, for people who created crimes in their own fantastical mind and out of anger they lost the election,” he said. “We are at the point where we are saying: ‘Let’s get to the end. We are coming up on the one-year anniversary. You have nothing’.”
Trump has also issued more frequent condemnations of Mueller’s probe in recent weeks. On Monday, he tweeted, “Is this Phoney Witch Hunt going to go on even longer so it wrongfully impacts the Mid-Term Elections, which is what the Democrats always intended? Republicans better get tough and smart before it is too late!”
Giuliani, who joined Trump’s legal team late last month, spoke after days of a shifting narrative about the hush money paid to porn star Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
He surprised some Trump advisers by saying last week that Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, made the payment to ensure the allegation didn’t come out right before the election. He later clarified the remarks, saying he’s getting up to speed on Trump’s cases.