“There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians,” President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union Sunday morning.
Rudy Giuliani: There’s nothing wrong with taking info from Russians
Giuliani makes the Sunday TV rounds, saying Trump did not do anything illegal.
The remark came after Tapper asked Giuliani to comment on a statement from Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who responded to the findings of the Mueller report by saying he was “appalled” members of the Trump campaign “welcomed help from Russia.”
“Stop the bull. Stop the pious act,” Giuliani said of Romney, alleging the Utah senator accepted “dirt” on people while running against President Barack Obama in 2012.
Tapper pressed the lawyer, asking him if there was a difference between taking opposition research from Americans and taking it from American adversaries.
“What a hypocrite. Any candidate in the world — in America — would take information,” Giuliani said before concluding, “Who says it’s even illegal?”
The former New York City mayor also appeared on Meet the Press Sunday morning, and told Chuck Todd he agrees Russian interference in the 2016 election was designed to help the president and his election efforts.
Todd asked Giuliani whether there was anything wrong with a campaign using information stolen by foreign adversaries. Giuliani said, “Depends on the stolen material,” and attempted to rebuke the media for providing coverage using stolen information.
As Vox’s Aaron Rupar reported, Trump pivoted on his messaging about the Mueller report fairly quickly. Ahead of the report’s release, the president said it was proof of “total exoneration.” Friday he tweeted Mueller’s work was “total bullshit.” Late Friday and through the weekend, Trump tweeted claims that the report proved there was “no collusion, no obstruction!”
Tapper asked Giuliani about this contradiction.
The former mayor laughed and said in the report, “Some things are false, a lot of things are questionable.”
Giuliani went on to claim the report is biased against the president, and argued it leans too heavily on the testimony of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. According to Giuliani, “Cohen’s incapable of telling the truth.” He told Tapper Cohen lied to Mueller about the offer of a presidential pardon.
In March, Cohen’s legal team admitted he had asked for a pardon, presumably for remaining fiercely loyal to the president for months after a raid in 2018. As Vox’s Andrew Prokop noted then: “What’s not yet entirely clear is whether this was mainly a case of Cohen seeking a pardon to no avail or whether he received an encouraging response from Trump’s team on the topic.” Cohen has suggested it was the latter; Giuliani suggests it was the former.
Before the Mueller report was released, Giuliani announced a “counter report” prepared by the president’s lawyers would be made public. This report would presumably counter many of the allegations outlined in the Mueller report. It has yet to materialize, but Giuliani said it could still see the light of day, just “not tomorrow.” Also, “not the day after.”
Pressed on when this elusive report would be released, the president’s lawyer said he believes it will come out after Attorney General William Barr and special counsel Robert Mueller testify before Congress.
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