Rudy Giuliani, whose reliability as a source is questionable these days, says now that President Trump has called off his June 12th summit with Kim Jong Un, he and his client will have more time to discuss the possibility of an interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
“It certainly gives us more time to spend with him and make a decision, maybe a final one, in the next couple of weeks, whether the interview is a go or a no go,” Giuliani told POLITICO on Thursday.
Trump and Giuliani met alone for 30 minutes on Wednesday in New York at the Palace Hotel on the sidelines of a GOP campaign event. The men touched on a DOJ-lawmaker meeting scheduled for Thursday in Washington surrounding the FBI informant who approached Trump campaign officials in 2016 about their interactions with Russia officials but was also done to “get him up to date on what’s going on” on the Mueller investigation, Giuliani said.
Giuliani appeared to shift course this week on whether he thinks the president should interview with Mueller, telling the The Washington Post he now would be in favor of it. But a comparison with what he told The Wall Street Journal the day before simply highlights the ongoing inconsistency in Giuliani's public remarks.
“I guess I’d rather do the interview. It gets it over with. It makes my client happy,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “The safe course you hear every lawyer say is don’t do the interview, and that’s easy to say in the abstract. That’s much harder when you have a client who is the president of the United States and wants to be interviewed.”
Giuliani had expressed skepticism in recent days about an interview with the team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, telling the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that his decision would be no if a choice had to be made immediately. “If they said you have to do it now, the answer would have to be no,” Giuliani told the Journal.
In Wednesday morning’s interview with The Post, Giuliani said the president sometimes seesaws on whether he wants to do an interview. “There have been a few days where he says, ‘Maybe you guys are right,’ ” Giuliani said, referring to Trump attorneys who have warned against an interview. “Then he goes right back to, ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ "
Giuliani said he was concerned that the president would become a target or that the interview would be a perjury trap, because the “truth is relative.”
(...)
“They may have a different version of the truth than we do,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani also addressed concerns the president might move to fire DOJ officials overseeing the Russia investigation.
Giuliani also said the president was unlikely to make changes at the Justice Department and had no intention of firing Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein or Attorney General Jeff Sessions — all three of whom have come under sustained attack from the president.
“I don’t think he is going to make changes. I wouldn’t advise it,” he said.
(...)
Giuliani said he speaks with the president most days and that Trump appreciates the vociferous defense he gives him on TV. He attributed the president’s increasing talk about the probe on Twitter to optimism. “He feels the public opinion is turning in his favor,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani: Trump to decide on Mueller interview 'in the next couple weeks' (Politico)
In reversal, Giuliani now says Trump should do interview with Mueller team (WaPo)