Days after Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty last week to lying to Congress as part of the federal Russia investigation, Rudy Giuliani accused special counsels like Robert Mueller of prosecuting “people at any cost.”
“This is what’s wrong with these special prosecutors and independent counsels: They think they’re God,” Giuliani, Trump’s lead personal lawyer, told John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” radio program in an interview that aired Sunday. “They think they know the only truth that exists, even if there’s a lot of doubt about it. They seem to want to [prosecute] people at any cost, including the cost of ethical behavior or the rights of people. And because 70 to 80 percent of the mainstream media is biased, they let them get away with it.”
Cohen last week pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to “knowingly and willfully” making “a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation” to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in 2017 about a Trump real estate project in Moscow. Despite his plea deal and cooperation with Mueller’s Russia probe, Cohen could still face up to six months in prison for the charge.
“It’s no secret that he wanted to be [White House] chief of staff or he wanted to have some very high position in the government, and the president didn’t think he was up to it, which I guess turns out to be absolutely correct,” Giuliani said Sunday of Cohen. “I have to suspect that that ultimately created some kind of bitterness, and when this pressure was applied to him I just don’t think he withstood it.”
Last week Mueller’s office also accused former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of breaking his own plea deal by misleading the FBI and the special counsel’s team. Manafort’s alleged violation puts at risk a 10-year cap on the time he would have to serve in prison.
Mueller has so far indicted more than 30 people and a handful of companies over the course of his inquiry.
