Donald Trump’s outside counsel emerged Thursday in Scotland to say that ‘the American people would revolt’ if the sitting president were impeached.
Rudy Giuliani had been missing in action since the downfall on Tuesday of two former associates of the president, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.
Cohen and his attorney accused the president of directing criminal acts and said that Trump’s conduct makes him a felon. Giuliani, who is often a fixture on television, hit back in a statement, but made no appearances on the president’s behalf.
He said Thursday, hours after Trump said he could not understand how somebody could be kicked out whose doing a great job, that the president had been completely cleared by the Michael Cohen affair and there was no reason he should be impeached.
Mr Giuliani, Mr Trump’s personal counsel, was speaking during a golf trip to Scotland.
Donald Trump’s outside counsel emerged Thursday in Scotland to say that ‘the American people would revolt’ if the sitting president were impeached
Mr Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to eight charges, including campaign finance violations that he said he carried out in co-ordination with Mr Trump.
Speaking to a Sky News journalist from what appears to be Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire, Mr Giuliani said: ‘He (Mr Trump) didn’t collude with the Russians, he didn’t obstruct justice, everything Cohen says has been disproved.
‘You could only impeach him for political reasons and the American people would revolt against that.’
Mr Giuliani, wearing a Trump Scotland cap and speaking from his golf buggy, told the broadcaster: ‘The tape recordings say very clearly that Cohen did it on his own, didn’t tell the president until much later.
‘It demonstrates that Cohen’s a liar and the US attorney in the southern district of New York extraordinarily called him a liar.’
He added: ‘The reality is that the president has completely been vindicated by the whole Cohen incident.’
Mr Trump told US media on Thursday that he believed the country’s economy would crash if he was impeached.
In an interview with Fox & Friends, the president said: ‘If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor.’