Giuliani: Trump interview possible
Even on obstruction question, he says
WASHINGTON — Lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Sunday that President Donald Trump may be open to an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller even if it involves questions about whether Trump obstructed justice in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Giuliani’s comments come days before the trial of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort begins. The trial is expected to give the public its most detailed glimpse yet of evidence Mueller’s team has spent the past year accumulating.
Giuliani, who is handling the president’s response to the Mueller investigation, said the Trump legal team and Mueller’s office are in ongoing negotiations regarding the conditions for an interview with Trump. The president’s team spelled out those conditions in a proposal this month.
Giuliani said Trump’s team wants an interview largely limited to questions involving allegations of collusion between the Trump
campaign and Russia in the 2016 election, arguing that no “legal basis” exists for Trump to be questioned about obstruction. But in an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Giuliani said Trump might be willing to address obstruction in some form.
“There is a sort of area of questioning and a group of restrictions on it that we could live with, I think,” Giuliani said. “We have an outstanding offer to them. They haven’t responded in about a week to 10 days. I don’t hold that against them.”
Giuliani said Trump could make a decision this week or next on whether to sit for an interview.
Trump on Sunday took to Twitter to again criticize the investigation, alleging that he and Mueller had a nasty and contentious business relationship and calling on the special counsel to disclose such “conflicts of interest.”
Trump didn’t say what those conflicts were, but he said that before Mueller’s appointment as special counsel, Trump turned him down for the job of replacing fired FBI Director James Comey. Trump also said Comey is a “close friend” of Mueller, who led the agency before Comey.
“Is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship,” Trump said.
The Washington Post reported in July 2017 that some of Trump’s lawyers were exploring ways to limit or undercut Mueller’s probe. Citing two unnamed White House advisers, the newspaper said Mueller and the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia had a dispute over fees when Mueller resigned as a member in 2011.
A spokesman for Mueller said there was no dispute
when Mueller, who was FBI director at the time, left the club.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that he’s willing to be interviewed by Mueller’s team. But Giuliani has said Trump’s legal team is less enthusiastic because Mueller and his staff might believe witnesses who contradict Trump’s account, including Comey.
Trump has given varying reasons for firing Comey in May 2017.
“We don’t see the legal basis for a president obstructing by merely taking an action in firing somebody that he had every right to fire and about 10 good reasons to fire. So we don’t just acknowledge, though, the basis for that,” Giuliani said. “But, you know, we might consider a few questions in that area also.”
Addressing other aspects of Mueller’s investigation, Giuliani said Trump is mentioned in about a dozen of the 183 recordings that were seized by federal prosecutors investigating Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Giuliani offered few details on the nature of the exchanges or the participants in the recordings that have not been made public.
The comments by Giuliani came days after Cohen’s legal team released a recording of a September 2016 conversation between Trump and Cohen that makes it appear Trump was familiar with a deal that model Karen McDougal made to sell the rights to her story of an alleged affair with him.
Giuliani said that beyond the McDougal-related recording, “there are 12 others, maybe 11 or 12 others out of the 183, in which the president is discussed at any length by Cohen, mostly with reporters.”
Lanny Davis, an attorney and spokesman for Cohen, declined to comment.
Giuliani briefly described his view of some of those conversations, claiming that Cohen’s statements on them “take it right out of the campaign
contribution arsenal” and could protect the president from being scrutinized on potential campaign-finance law violations. But he did not offer evidence to back up those assertions.
“These are tapes I want you to read, I want you to hear them. I didn’t think I’d be able to get them out publicly,” Giuliani said. “I can’t do it. I mean, I’m not allowed to do it. We’ve not leaked a single tape.”
Cohen is under federal investigation in New York on possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign-finance violations. FBI agents in April raided Cohen’s New York City office, home and hotel room as part of the investigation, seizing records about Cohen’s clients and personal finances.
Giuliani denied that the president had any knowledge beforehand about a 2016 meeting between his campaign and Russians, as Cohen is reportedly ready to tell prosecutors.
Giuliani said those who were said to have been present when Trump learned about the meeting also deny he knew about it. The meeting has become a central focus of Mueller’s investigation into whether anyone within Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.
“It’s just flat-out untrue,” Giuliani said on Fox News Sunday in response to reports about Cohen’s claims.
CNN reported last week that Cohen is prepared to tell federal investigators that then-candidate Trump knew and approved of the Trump Tower meeting where a Russian lawyer with links to the Kremlin was expected to deliver damaging information about Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The meeting was attended by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., as well as Manafort and Trump’s son-inlaw, Jared Kushner. Giuliani said Cohen has claimed that those present when Trump was informed about the meeting
included Trump Jr., Kushner and others.
“It seems to me his default position is to lie,” Giuliani said of Cohen, whom Giuliani in May had characterized as an “honest, honorable lawyer.”
MANAFORT TRIAL
Elsewhere, Manafort’s trial will open this week with tales of secret shell companies and millions of dollars of Ukrainian money flowing through offshore bank accounts and into the political consultant’s pocket.
But the trial is unlikely to yield answers about whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election.
Manafort’s financial crimes trial, the first arising from Mueller’s investigation, is scheduled to begin Tuesday with jury selection in Alexandria, Va. The trial will center on his Ukrainian consulting work and only briefly touch on his involvement with the president’s campaign.
But the broader implications are unmistakable.
The trial will feature testimony about the business dealings and foreign ties of a defendant whom Trump entrusted to run his campaign during a critical stretch in 2016, including during the Republican convention.
Adding to the intrigue is the expectation that Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, will testify against him after cutting a plea deal with prosecutors.
Manafort was indicted along with Gates in Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation, but he is the only American who has opted for a trial instead of cooperating with the government.
The remaining 31 individuals charged in the investigation have either reached plea agreements or are Russians seen as unlikely to enter an American courtroom. Three Russian companies have also been charged.
Prosecutors in Manafort’s
case have said they may call 35 witnesses, including five who have immunity agreements, as they try to prove that he laundered more than $30 million in Ukrainian political consulting proceeds and concealed the funds from the IRS.
Manafort was a political consultant for the pro-Russian Ukrainian political party of Viktor Yanukovych, who was deposed as Ukraine’s president in 2014. Lawyers have tangled over how much jurors will hear of Manafort’s overseas political work, particularly about his ties to Russia and other wealthy political figures.
At a recent hearing, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who will preside over the trial, warned prosecutors to restrain themselves, noting the current “antipathy” toward Russia and how “most people in this country don’t distinguish between Ukrainians and Russians.” He said he would not tolerate any pictures of Manafort and others “at a cocktail party with scantily clad women,” if they exist, a reference to Manafort’s lavish lifestyle.
Prosecutor Greg Andres reassured the judge that “there will be no pictures of scantily clad women, period,” nor photographs of Russian flags.
“I don’t anticipate that a government witness will utter the word ‘Russia,’” Andres said.
While jurors will hear painstaking detail about Manafort’s finances, they
won’t be told about Manafort’s other criminal case, in the nation’s capital, where he faces charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent and lying to the government.
Nor will they hear about the reason he’s been jailed since last month after a judge revoked his house arrest over allegations that he and a longtime associate attempted to tamper with witnesses in the case. And they won’t learn that Manafort’s co-defendant in the Washington case is a business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik, who lives in Russia and who U.S. authorities assert has connections to Russian intelligence.
Trump and his lawyers have repeatedly sought to downplay Manafort’s connection to the president, yet the trial won’t be entirely without references to the campaign.
Mueller’s team says Manafort’s position in the Trump campaign is relevant to some of the bank fraud charges. Prosecutors plan to present evidence that a chairman of one of the banks allowed Manafort to file inaccurate loan information in exchange for a job on the campaign and the promise of a job in the Trump administration. The administration job never materialized.
Information for this article was contributed by Hope Yen, Eric Tucker and Chad Day of The Associated Press; Robert Costa, Carol Leonnig and Rosalind Helderman of The Washington Post; by Ben Brody, David McLaughlin, Mark Niquette and Shannon Pettypiece of Bloomberg News.