Giuliani: Mueller probe ‘the most corrupt’ he’s ever seen
No decision yet from lawyers on Trump interview
President Donald Trump is still weighing whether to agree to an interview in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation but there’s concern about what he sees as a corrupt and tainted probe, Trump’s lead attorney said.
Trump’s lawyers are close to making a determination, but a decision has been put off as more details emerge about “bias” on the part of investigators, Rudy Giuliani said on one of three television appearances Sunday.
“How could you expect us to just walk up our client like a lamb going to the slaughter? We wouldn’t be lawyers if we would do that,” Giuliani said on ABC’s “This Week,” striking a similar tone to comments he’s made repeatedly since he joined Trump’s team in April.
He called it “the most corrupt investigation I have ever seen,” taking his cue from the president. On Saturday, Trump tweeted about “the Rigged Witch Hunt and the ‘Special’ Counsel.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Giuliani said he doesn’t think Mueller, a former FBI director, is personally biased or corrupt but that “he’s surrounded by biased people” he failed to vet properly, including FBI agent Peter Strzok, whose anti-Trump text exchanges from 2016 fed Republican allegations of bias.
Mueller removed Strzok from his team as soon as the texts were discovered, and Mueller is a Republican.
But Giuliani said on NBC that Trump’s lawyers wouldn’t recommend an interview for the president “unless they can satisfy us that there is some basis for this investigation.”
“It’s our firm belief, and we think nothing contradicts this, the president did nothing wrong,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani also said that he has counseled the president against granting a pardon to his longtime fixer Michael Cohen.
“I have advised the president, which he understands: no discussion of pardons,” Giuliani said in an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week.” But he seemed not to rule out that the president might change his mind.
“You can’t abridge your power to do it. That’s something you can decide down the road, one way or the other,” Giuliani said.
Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who once famously said that he was prepared to “take a bullet” and “do anything” to protect him, is under intensifying scrutiny from federal prosecutors in Manhattan. They are investigating his business practices, as is the team led by Mueller, who is investigating matters connected to Cohen as part of the broader probe of Russian election interference and possible obstruction of justice by the president.
While Giuliani said he had advised Trump against pardoning Cohen, he also argued that to rule out a pardon “wouldn’t be fair to the president, wouldn’t be fair to Cohen, wouldn’t be fair to future presidents. But the fact is there’s no reason for a pardon right now.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Giuliani said that if Mueller issued a subpoena to compel Trump to testify, his legal team believes it could be quashed.