Rudy Giuliani reportedly argued that President Trump could shoot James Comey and dodge an indictment.
The rhetorical boast was made during an interview with HuffPost on Sunday, during which Giuliani, who leads Trump’s personal legal team, said the president is immune to subpoenas or indictments.
“In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted,” Giuliani said Sunday, adding “I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is.”
He noted that if Trump were to go to such an extreme as to shoot Comey, as opposed to firing the FBI director like he did last spring, the president would need to be impeached by Congress before criminal prosecution could commence. “If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day,” Giuliani said. “Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”
The comment served as a shock to Norm Eisen, a White House ethics lawyer under former President Barack Obama, who called the claim “absurd.”
“A president could not be prosecuted for murder? Really?” he said, according to HuffPost. “It is one of many absurd positions that follow from their argument. It is self-evidently wrong.”
The former New York City mayor’s boast about his client was also very reminiscent of a remark Trump made during the 2016 campaign, when he said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
Giuliani’s comments about Comey followed the publication of a letter from Trump’s legal team to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is heading the federal Russia investigation. The 20-page letter, dated Jan. 29 and first published by the New York Times this weekend, argues that Trump cannot be indicted, cannot be subpoenaed and cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice because, as president, he is “chief law enforcement officer.”
Trump fired Comey in May 2017, and now Mueller is reportedly looking into whether Trump may have obstructed justice by attempting to hamper the Russia inquiry. The special counsel is negotiating with Trump’s legal team for a sit-down interview with Trump, and while Trump has said he would do the interview, Giuliani said he is “leaning toward not” letting Trump do it.
Earlier in the day Giuliani said that although he wasn’t a member of Trump’s legal team at the time, he stands by most of it, and suggested Trump “probably does” have the power to pardon himself, though he doesn’t intend to do so.
