Rudy Giuliani says recent court setbacks faced by Robert Mueller’s team of prosecutors has thrown them for a loop, and says it’s only a matter of time before they wrap up without any case against President Trump.
“I think it got delayed by the judge’s rather fierce criticism of their lack of authorization and their inability to produce any,” he told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “They’re scrambling around right now.”
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III accused Mueller’s team on Friday of trying to squeeze former Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort with charges of bank and tax fraud to get to Trump, and wondered if the special counsel is seeking “unfettered power” in the investigation.
Trump cheered the judge’s tough take on Mueller’s charges, and Giuliani said the probe against Trump “should be over by now” because of “no proof of a Russian connection of any kind with the president” — something the president has said repeatedly.
“I don’t know if he [Mueller] has [found a Russia connection] with anybody else, but we’ll see,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani said Trump’s lawyers have not yet decided if Trump will speak with Mueller’s team. He said his team’s “next steps” are to “master all the facts” and “see what happens” in Manafort’s case in Virginia.
[Trump says he’d ‘love’ to talk to Mueller, but wants to be ‘treated fairly’]
“And how does that affect our case and our willingness to further cooperate with them?” he said. “Each time that we’ve gotten near making an agreement, they’ve done something wrong and it’s set it back.”
Giuliani elaborated those “wrong” things done by Mueller include the FBI’s April raid of Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney, and the “leak” of the questions the special counsel’s team wants to ask the president.
But while Giuliani is hopeful it ends soon, others think it’s not even close.
“The conventional wisdom is that there’s still a ways to go. Criminal investigations that are complicated take years to wrap up,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told the Washington Examiner.
Mariotti said Mueller pushing to interview Trump suggests he is coming to the end “to at least some part of the investigation.”
“He’s going to have to have all of his evidence and all his ducks in a row before then,” Mariotti said, explaining he probably would only get to sit down with Trump once.
