Rudy Giuliani: Trump Won’t Answer Mueller Obstruction Questions

The president’s attorney said federal investigators’ questions on whether Trump tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election are a “no-go.”

Jonathan Lemire



NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president’s attorneys told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said questions about obstruction of justice were a “no-go.”

Giuliani’s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview the president about any efforts to obstruct the investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russians. It signals the Trump’s lawyers are committed to protecting the president from answering questions about actions the president took in office.

It’s unclear if Giuliani’s public position has been endorsed by Trump, who has said he wants to answer questions under oath. Negotiations about the scope and format of an interview are still ongoing. If the legal team holds its stance, it could force Mueller to try to subpoena the president, likely triggering a standoff that would lead to the Supreme Court.

Mueller’s office has previously sought to interview the president about the obstruction issue, including his firing last year of former FBI Director James Comey and his public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump’s legal team has argued that the president has the power to hire and fire appointees and the special counsel does not have the authority to ask him to explain those decisions. Giuliani said Thursday the team was steadfast in that position.

“That’s a no-go. That is not going to happen,” Giuliani said. “There will be no questions at all on obstruction.”

In a letter last week, Mueller’s team said it would accept written responses from Trump on questions related to Russian election interference. Giuliani suggested Thursday that Trump’s lawyers had agreed to those terms but wanted to prohibit investigators from asking follow-up questions.

“It would be in written form and if you want to follow up on our answers, justify it. Show us why you didn’t get there the first time,” Giuliani said. He said he was not categorically ruling out answering a second round of questions but the entire matter of whether there would be follow-up inquiries should be settled before the president answers anything at all.

“We aren’t going to let them spring it on us,” said Giuliani, who has served as lawyer-spokesman for the president’s personal legal team, using television interviews and public comments as a tactic in the negotiations.

In the latest letter to the legal team, Mueller’s office didn’t address obstruction questions, indicating investigators would later assess what additional information it needs from the president after receiving a response about the written submissions, according to a person familiar with the document.

The person familiar with the letter spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss the negotiations.

Though the president has publicly said he was eager to face questions from Mueller, his lawyers have been far more reluctant to make him available for an interview and have questioned whether Mueller has the right to ask him about actions that he is authorized, under the Constitution, to take as president.

Mueller’s team raised the prospect in March that it could subpoena the president, though this would unquestionably prompt a court fight.

The Supreme Court has never definitively ruled on the question of whether a president can be forced to testify, though the justices did rule in 1974 that Richard Nixon had to produce recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed.

In addition to questions about Comey and Sessions, Mueller has expressed interest in Trump’s role in drafting a statement to The New York Times about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by his son, Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer.

Trump Jr. took the meeting, emails show, after it was described as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign by providing derogatory information about Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump has said he knew nothing about the meeting before it happened.

Trump and Giuliani have led an onslaught of attacks on Mueller’s credibility, claiming that the special counsel was biased and that the entire probe was a “witch hunt.” Giuliani has also demanded that the probe suspend its activities with the midterm elections approaching, but the former mayor said Thursday he was not certain of Mueller’s intentions.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Chad Day contributed reporting from Washington.

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Guess who that russian lawyer lady met with before and after the trump tower meeting?

He will answer questions or take the fifth. It is only a question of whether it is done voluntarily or by subpoena.

They can't let him answer anything because they know he's a headcase who'd perjure himself in the first thirty seconds and spend the rest of the hour compounding it exponentially.

Trump's handlers have zero confidence in him because they know he's an idiot. The only way the scam works is if they carefully pick his audience and make sure they're all hardcore Trump-cult members. They handle this guy like a soap bubble because they know everything's a bluff, and any real questioning would expose it. Everything's optics with these con artists.

Hell, they replaced two people behind him at last night's rally because they were afraid they weren't cheering enough. One guy was raising his eyebrows at a few things Trump said and they sent somebody in to take him away and replace him. Another audience member, who didn't even appear to be doing anything odd, also got replaced by somebody who'd cheer harder. It's all a bunch of stagecraft to create the false narrative that Trump's not tanking.

Meanwhile, the dude's brain is melting out of his ears right in front of the camera. He can't even pronounce words from his extensive 400-word vocabulary anymore:



Mini-strokes? Wouldn't surprise me. Something's going on in that head. You can tell by that idiot stare of his. It gets blanker every month. He looks lost.