Giuliani: No Mueller interview without informant information

President wants access to the material presented at briefing

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s legal team would advise that he refuse to submit to an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller unless the team can review classified information shared with lawmakers about the origins of the FBI investigation into Russia’s election meddling, Trump’s lawyer said Sunday.

Rudy Giuliani said if Mueller’s investigators seek a court order to compel the president to testify, his lawyers will fight it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. “I think we win it,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani downplayed chances Trump would fire Mueller, or dismiss anyone if the investigation keeps going.

Giuliani’s negotiation over interview terms focuses on a government informant who approached members of Trump’s 2016 campaign to glean intelligence on Russian efforts to sway his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump claims FBI misconduct and political bias and has denounced the informant as a spy.

Two meetings with select lawmakers, held last week, were requested by Congress. After the meetings, which included Justice Department, FBI officials, congressional leaders from both parties and Democratic and Republican leaders of the intelligence committees, Democrats said they saw no evidence to support Republican allegations that the FBI acted inappropriately.

Nonetheless, Giuliani said the Trump camp wants access to the material presented at those briefings to help prepare the president for a possible interview with Mueller.

“If they don’t show us these documents, well, we are just going to have to say no,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani also said Trump was “adamant” about wanting to agree to an interview, saying, “If he wasn’t thinking about it and it wasn’t an active possibility, we would be finished with that by now and we would have moved on to getting the investigation over with another way.”

The new wrinkle, he said, is the informant disclosure.

“We are more convinced, as we see it, that this is a rigged investigation. Now we have this whole new ‘Spygate’ thing thrown on top of it, on top of already very legitimate questions,” he said.