<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump\u2019s attorney, says special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to avoid a \u201cfishing\u201d expedition by narrowing the subject of questions in an effort to get the president to submit to an interview with the prosecutor.<\/p>\n
Mr. Giuliani also says he thinks fired FBI Director James B. Comey is \u201cnot going to be worth anything as a witness\u201d and thus less a threat to the president.<\/p>\n
Mr. Giuliani told The Washington Times that Mr. Mueller\u2019s team displayed a good-faith effort during a Wednesday meeting that might result in an interview in July and a final Mueller report by Labor Day.<\/p>\n
SEE ALSO: Robert Mueller files unredacted copy of Russia investigation memo in Manafort case <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s eliminated a lot of subjects that would have indicated he was fishing,\u201d Mr. Giuliani told The Times on Thursday. \u201cHe\u2019s eliminated those, and he\u2019s into a much more relevant area where we know the answers and we know the answers really can\u2019t be effectively contradicted.\u201d<\/p>\n He declined to specify what topics have been dropped.<\/p>\n He has contended from the start that there is no evidence of Trump collusion in Russian election interference. The other two major topics: whether the president somehow obstructed justice in the firing of Mr. Comey, a Mueller friend, and whether he might commit perjury in answering questions under oath.<\/p>\n SEE ALSO: Giuliani eviscerates Comey, says ex-FBI boss won\u2019t be \u2018worth anything\u2019 as witness <\/strong><\/p>\n Mr. Giuliani is a longtime Trump friend who was brought in to try to bring an end to Mr. Mueller\u2019s inquiry. He said a final agreement on testifying would include the subjects; an exchange of questions and any Trump objections; a place and time; and a schedule for a final report.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019m telling you, none has been agreed to,\u201d he said, putting the chance of an interview at 50-50. He said he could agree to a two- to three-hour interview.<\/p>\n On perjury, the issue would be Mr. Comey\u2019s word in contemporaneous memos he wrote of discussions with the president versus Mr. Trump\u2019s recollection.<\/p>\n Mr. Comey leaked his memos to the press with the express purpose of prompting the appointment of a special counsel. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein complied.<\/p>\n Mr. Comey said Mr. Trump urged him to end an investigation into retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, his brief national security adviser. Mr. Trump said he did not.<\/p>\n Mr. Giuliani said Mr. Comey has revealed himself to be a leaker of confidential material.<\/p>\n He also believes Mr. Comey\u2019s credibility will be damaged by an upcoming report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on how the director handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have a problem with him under oath,\u201d Mr. Giuliani said. \u201cWhat we have a problem is they\u2019re using somebody else as the arbiter of truth, like Comey. We think when Horowitz gets finished with him he\u2019s not going to be worth anything as a witness.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Giuliani said he wants Mr. Mueller to \u201cshow a realistic attitude toward the guy I think was going to be their chief witness, Comey, who is falling apart in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked whether Mr. Mueller\u2019s team believes they have evidence of collusion, Mr. Giuliani said, \u201cActually, when you press them really hard, they say they can put this together and that together. But do they have any hard evidence of it? Do they have evidence that could be sustained in some kind of a proceeding? No.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about Mr. Mueller\u2019s strategy, Mr. Giuliani said:<\/p>\n \u201cI think they are relying more on obstruction and they wish perjury from their point of view than they are on collusion with the Russians. I think every time they\u2019ve gone up the collusion alley it\u2019s gone nowhere. That becomes the biggest obstacle to our testifying. Why are we going to get them to use the president\u2019s word against himself? He\u2019s already given all the explanations that they need to make a decision in his public comments. His comments under oath are not going to be materially different than this public comments. And if they would be we would tell them that. \u2018On further reflection, he remembers this and that.\u2019 So far, there haven\u2019t been too many further reflections.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Giuliani said the Mueller team understands that Mr. Trump could not sit for questioning before the proposed summit with North Korea on June 12.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course Mueller agrees with that,\u201d he said. \u201cI think he\u2019s anxious to wrap up because he\u2019s become a bit of a target now. He realized he would get nowhere if he tried to do it now. We couldn\u2019t prepare. He couldn\u2019t force him if he went to court. It might jeopardize his ability to question him at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Giuliani previously said one agreement he procured is that Mr. Mueller agrees he cannot legally indict the president.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer, says that special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to avoid a “fishing” expedition by narrowing the subject of questions in an effort to get the president to Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump\u2019s attorney, says special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to avoid a \u201cfishing\u201d expedition by narrowing the subject of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[276],"tags":[34,549,550],"class_list":["post-3042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics","tag-robert-mueller","tag-rudolph-w-giuliani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}