Recently, President Donald Trump added former mayor and longtime ally Rudy Giuliani to his legal team, and in the time since, Giuliani has carried on with an at times wild string of interviews. He kicked off intense scrutiny of his media appearances after he revealed to Sean Hannity that — despite the president’s team’s insistence to the contrary — the president had repaid his personal lawyer Michael Cohen for hush money that had been dished out to adult film star Stormy Daniels covering an affair with Trump.
Now, he’s continuing on with his campaign of attempting to represent the president in the media, and it’s ending with the president’s team in a more and more contentious position. He has shared with Bloomberg that the president’s team is aiming to use the one year anniversary of the special counsel’s Russia investigation as a jumping off point to try and get it to end.
He told the publication:
‘We are going to try as best we can to put the message out there that it has been a year, there has been no evidence presented of collusion or obstruction, and it is about time for them to end the investigation. We don’t want to signal our action if this doesn’t work — we are going to hope they listen to us — but obviously we have a Plan B and C.’
In other words, thanks to Giuliani, the president’s team has been revealed as aiming to use what are essentially mob-style tactics in their dealings with the nation’s justice system.
It’s not the first time, but the revelation means that the administration is further digging into their positions as opposed to changing their path to make it more in line with the nation’s justice system.
Concurrent to that digging in, the president’s legal team keeps changing up, too, outside of the addition of Giuliani. Just recently, the president kicked Ty Cobb off his legal team and replaced him with Emmet Flood, changing out a lawyer who had in the past tried to get him to cooperate with the Mueller probe with someone who represented President Bill Clinton during his impeachment proceedings.
The president personally has taken on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation time and time again, calling it a witch hunt at what feels like every turn. The “witches” are his own former team members according to that logic, since Mueller has so far brought charges against four of them. Three are cooperating, and one — former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort — is not.
It’s still an open question whether or not the president will cooperate with the ongoing investigation; speaking to Bloomberg, Giuliani cast doubt on whether or not Trump would sit down for an interview with the special counsel’s team.
Although it’s been reported that the special counsel’s office didn’t even share exact questions with the Trump team, Giuliani acted as though they had, perhaps going on the sample questions drawn up by the Trump legal team based on broad topics of interest shared by the special counsel’s team.
Giuliani commented:
‘It is hard to recommend an interview when the questions presented indicate they have no evidence, and it is hard not to get at least the appearance they are attempting to trap him into perjury.’
If the president can’t get his story straight and is lying about something and is caught in the act and held accountable, that’s not “trapping” him.
Whether or not the president will sit for an interview is one of a number of questions related to the Mueller probe waiting to be answered. In the meantime, the indication is that the president and his team members are digging into their mob tactics, so only further confrontations are likely incoming.
Featured Image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
