Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani claims special counsel Robert Mueller is willing to wall off multiple subjects in a potential Trump interview and focus on areas and avoid what he called a ‘fishing’ expedition.
He said Mueller’s team exhibited their ‘first good faith effort’ at a Wednesday meeting – speaking on a day when Trump mocked the one-year anniversary of the probe, which he again branded a ‘witch hunt.’
Trump’s lawyers also have sought to replace an interview with written questions Trump and his team could answer – though many Mueller would never accept such an arrangement.
President Donald Trump called Mueller’s probe a witch hunt, but his lawyer Rudy Giuliani says Mueller’s team made its ‘first good faith effort’ in negotiations
That has left Giuliani, who recently joined Trump’s team, to focus on limiting the scope.
‘He’s eliminated a lot of subjects that would have indicated he was fishing,’ Giuliani told the Washington Times, on a day he also got in a minor traffic accident in New York with a pedicab driver.
He told the publication: ‘He’s eliminated those and he’s into a much more relevant area where we know the answers and we know the answers really can’t be effectively contradicted.’
Giuliani predicted in the interview the probe could end by Labor Day – although multiple predictions by other Trump lawyers on timing have proven wrong.
Earlier, in an appearance on ‘Fox and Friends,’ Giuliani said Mueller’s team gave assurances they would not indict Trump.
Giuliani said Robert Mueller had ‘eliminated a lot of subjects’
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‘I asked him specifically if they realized or acknowledged they didn’t have the power to indict both under the justice department memo which gives them their power in essence, confines their power, and under the Constitution. And he said we’ll – he wouldn’t answer. And one of his assistants said they acknowledged they had to be bound by justice department policies,’ Giuliani said.
‘And then the next day or the day after they clarified it for [Trump lawyer] Jay Sekulow who was with me at the meeting that they didn’t have the power to indict and that what they’d eventually do is write a memorandum and give it to the deputy attorney general, [Rod] Rosenstein.
In another interview on Fox, Giuliani indicated he would fight a subpoena if Mueller tried to force Trump to testify in the event talks break down.
Trump’s posture is a turnaround from January, when he told reporters: ‘I am looking forward to it, actually,’ in reference to a Mueller interview.
President Donald Trump speaks as U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, center, and Mike Pompeo, U.S. secretary of state, listen during a meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), not pictured, in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. U.S., on Thursday, May 17, 2018
‘Here is the story: There has been no collusion whatsoever. There is no obstruction whatsoever. And I am looking forward to it,’ Trump said.
His advisors, including informal advisor Roger Stone, have cautioned Trump he could be stepping into a trap. He has made multiple false statements in previous deposition.
‘[Mueller] is taking advantage of the president’s loquaciousness,’ he told Laura Ingraham on Fox. ‘The fact that he is never a man who suffers from a paucity of words. And what is clear is Mr. Mueller has no evidence of Russian collusion, and so we’ve cycled all the way back around to the dismissal of Comey. [Mueller] seeks to entrap the president in some kind of process crime– perjury or obstruction,’ he said.
He called it an ‘obvious perjury trap’ and said an interview was ‘a suicide mission.’