Rudy Giuliani on Monday said Monday House press secretary Sarah Sanders and President Trump’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow made “a mistake” when they told reporters Trump had a limited role in drafting a statement on behalf of Donald Trump Jr. regarding the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer.
“You think maybe somebody could have made a mistake?” Giuliani said during an interview on CNN when asked why they lied after a letter exchanged between Trump’s attorneys and special counsel Robert Mueller, made public by the New York Times on Saturday, mentioned that Trump dictated the statement.
“I got a few things wrong at the beginning of the investigation, meaning my knowledge. This is a complex investigation,” he continued.
Giuliani added that the possibility of making incorrect statements was a “danger” of going under oath, something he and and his colleagues are keeping in mind as they weigh whether to advise Trump to grant Mueller and his federal investigators an interview.
“You can make a mistake and then, if you want to, you could say it’s a lie. But it was a mistake. I swear to God, it was a mistake,” he said.
The statement that Trump dictated indicated that the Trump Tower meeting between top campaign officials and Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016 was ostensibly about adoptions, when other emails showed it had been arranged on the pretense of sharing political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Giuliani said Sunday that Trump’s legal counsel was “leaning toward not” agreeing to a sit-down interview between the president and Mueller’s team.
