President Trump never told fired FBI Director James Comey to give former national security adviser Michael Flynn “a break,” according to his lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
“There was no conversation about Michael Flynn,” Giuliani said Sunday during an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.” “That is what he will testify to if he’s asked that question.”
Trump’s outside legal counsel has been at loggerheads with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team for months as they negotiate the terms under which the president would agree to testify before federal prosecutors for the ongoing Russia investigation.
Giuliani’s denial over whether Trump pressured Comey to go easy on Flynn as part of the FBI’s examination of Flynn’s foreign contacts contradicts an interview the former New York City mayor gave in July to ABC. The conversation is crucial to Mueller’s probe because investigators are also looking into whether the exchange amounts to an obstruction of justice.
“I’m saying the conversation never took place,” Giuliani said Sunday, adding there is a difference between Trump telling Comey to give Flynn “a break” and explicitly directing him to drop the matter.
“But if it did take place and here’s the conversation that’s alleged, it is not illegal to have said that,” he continued.
Flynn resigned as national security adviser in February 2017 amid reports he had misled Trump administration officials about his communications with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., before the president’s inauguration. Flynn pleaded guilty in November 2017 to lying to the FBI about the interactions.
Comey himself claims Trump talked to him about Flynn. “I hope you can let this go,” Trump told him in the Oval Office in February 2017, per one of the ex-FBI director’s memos detailing his exchanges with the president.
