UPDATE: NBC News has corrected earlier reporting that federal agents wiretapped Michael Cohen's phone lines. The news outlet now says agents were monitoring calls to and from Cohen used a pen register but were not listening in to what was being said.
The Daily Beast spoke with former NYC mayor and new Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani Thursday, and Giuliani says he does not believe federal investigators wiretapped Michael Cohen.
“Us lawyers have talked about it, we don’t believe it’s true,” Giuliani told The Daily Beast. “We think it’s going to turn out to be untrue because it would be totally illegal. You can’t wiretap a lawyer, you certainly can’t wiretap his client who’s not involved in the investigation. No one has suggested that Trump was involved in that investigation. So they’re going to wiretap the lawyer, his client, and his client the president of the United States? I don’t think so, not if they want to stay out of jail. Disclosing a wiretap is a federal felony. I never took ‘em home when I was a U.S. attorney.”
Giuliani said that he found out about the wiretap news from NBC News’ report, which cited “two people with knowledge of the legal proceedings,” and not from Cohen himself. He believed someone in the Justice Department was behind the leak.
“Nobody else would know about it,” Giuliani said. “Cohen didn’t know about it, so it has to be the FBI, the independent counsel, or the Justice Department.”
“Anybody who says that I’m exaggerating when I say that this is an out-of-control investigation and they’re acting like storm troopers––give me a break, baby! They prove it every day.”
Though Giuliani insisted otherwise, lawyers can, in fact, be wiretapped under special circumstances, according to legal experts.
Giuliani also told The Hill he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the federal investigators from the Southern District of New York.
“I am waiting for the Attorney General to step in, in his role as defender of justice, and put these people under investigation,” Giuliani said, reacting to an NBC News report that phones belonging to Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney, had been tapped by investigators.
The former New York City mayor argued that the reported wiretapping of Cohen, if true, was a blatant transgression of attorney-client privilege.
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It is extraordinary, by any measure, for a member of the president’s personal legal team to suggest that the attorney general should intervene in an investigation that affects the president.
Giuliani first attacked the FBI during Wednesday night's interview with Sean Hannity, calling the agents who raided Cohen's office, home, and hotel room "stormtroopers." He defended his remarks Thursday.
Giuliani also hit back at criticism — including from fired FBI Director James Comey — about his use of the term “stormtroopers” in relation to the FBI raids last month on Cohen’s home, office and hotel room.
On Twitter, Comey wrote: “I know the New York FBI. There are no “stormtroopers” there; just a group of people devoted to the rule of law and the truth. Our country would be better off if our leaders tried to be like them, rather than comparing them to Nazis.”
Giuliani countered that he had not made a Nazi comparison, arguing, “there are stormtroopers all over.”
But, he added, “If you don’t like it, don’t act that way.”
Giuliani: I Don’t Believe That Michael Cohen Was Wiretapped (Daily Beast)
EXCLUSIVE: Giuliani calls for Sessions to 'step in' on Cohen investigation (The Hill)