President Trump reportedly blamed Rudy Giuliani over the weekend of instigating the special counsel investigation into Russian election meddling by refusing to accept an early offer to be his attorney general, a move that would have put the former New York City mayor in charge of the agency overseeing the federal probe.
A source familiar with the conversation told Vanity Fair on Tuesday that Trump and Giuliani got into an argument at the president’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club over the weekend, during which Trump blamed his outside attorney for helping to bring about the Russia probe.
“I offered you attorney general, but you insisted on being secretary of state,” the president allegedly told Giuliani, adding that “none of this would be happening” if he had accepted Trump’s original offer.
Giuliani was one of four names floated by transition officials as a contender for secretary of state back when Trump was assembling his Cabinet. However, the former federal prosecutor withdrew his name from consideration after spending several weeks jockeying for the position on air — something that frustrated the president-elect, aides said at the time.
“The whole thing was becoming kind of very confusing and very difficult for the president-elect, and my desire to be in the Cabinet was great, but it wasn’t that great,” Giuliani told Fox News in December 2016, adding that he decided he could be more effective “being on the outside and continuing to be his close friend and adviser.”
Trump has previously blamed Attorney General Jeff Sessions for allowing the Russia investigation to grow into a “witch-hunt” by recusing himself from the probe and paving the way for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to oversee it instead. Sessions has repeatedly said he based his recusal on his previous role as an outside adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016.
[More: Trump calls on Jeff Sessions to end Russia probe ‘right now’]
The president’s frustration with Giuliani and his attorney general comes as a 12-member jury nears its final verdict for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on 18 counts of bank and tax fraud, and as federal investigators are reportedly preparing charges against his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Both men have become central figures in the special counsel investigation, which is about to enter its sixteenth month.
