After starting more political fires than he put out, Rudy Giuliani lowered his media profile recently, though Donald Trump’s lawyer did sit down yesterday with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who had some interesting exchanges with the former mayor.
The host asked, for example, “Is there an innocent explanation why so many Trump associates were meeting with Russians during the campaign?” Giuliani replied, “It wasn’t that many.”
As the Republican lawyer made the comment, viewers saw on screen a list of 16 Trump associates who met with Russians during the Kremlin’s operation against our elections.
In the same interview, Blitzer asked why no one from Trump World reported Russian outreach to law enforcement authorities. “If a hostile adversary is coming to you and saying we have information that can help you win the election and hurt Hillary Clinton, isn’t that something you should tell the FBI about?” Giuliani struggled to answer.
But of particular interest was Giuliani’s perspective on allegations that the president obstructed justice: From the network transcript:
“I have a pretty good idea of the rest of what they have. And what you’re going to find out with obstruction is, this is a matter of interpretation.
“There’s not some new fact, some new startling fact about it, about — you know all the facts about obstruction. You can interpret them several different ways, which is why it was a difficult question.”
Hmm. That’s not quite what his client has said on the subject.
In fact, just yesterday, Trump told reporters that the Mueller report, which the president has not read, specifically claimed the document concluded there was “no obstruction.” A day earlier, Trump said via Twitter that he’d been “totally” exonerated on the question of obstruction of justice.
And yet, there was his lawyer yesterday, arguing that the obstruction question is “a matter of interpretation.”
Are we to believe, then, that some might examine the evidence and conclude that Trump did cross legal lines? Perhaps full disclosure on the Mueller report would help answer the question.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."