Donald Trump’s legal defense team originally predicted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation would end by Thanksgiving — of 2017. When Rudy Giuliani joined the president’s legal defense in April, he suggested he could help wrap up the process in “a couple of weeks.”
That was eight months ago.
It’s against this backdrop that the former New York City mayor made an unprompted call to Yahoo News, making the case that the probe needs to end.
Giuliani said the Trump legal team is focused on encouraging Mueller to end his investigation into whether the president’s campaign colluded with Russian intervention efforts in the 2016 election. He further suggested that Mueller lacks the authority to prosecute Trump.
“Our strategy is … to do everything we can to try to convince Mueller to wrap the damn thing up, and if he’s got anything, show us,” Giuliani said. “If he doesn’t have anything, you know, write your report, tell us what you have, and we’ll deal with it. He can’t prosecute him [Trump]. All he can do is write a report about him, so write the goddamned thing and get it over with now.”
If I didn’t know better, I might think the pressure is starting to get to these guys.
Giuliani’s call for the special counsel to “wrap the damn thing up” echoes similar assessments from some of the president’s Republican allies in Congress, who’ve also argued that the investigation end, even as new information further implicates Trump in wrongdoing.
But there is a degree of irony to Giuliani’s posture, because if Team Trump wants to see Mueller’s probe come to an end, there are steps the president and his allies could take to make that happen.
Trump could, for example, help the process along by agreeing to sit down for an interview with the special counsel and federal investigators. The president claimed nearly a year ago that he was eager to have that conversation, but he and his team proceeded to spend months dragging their feet and offering alternatives to full cooperation.
Mueller would almost certainly be in a position “to wrap the damn thing up” if Trump volunteered to answer some questions.
For that matter, it’d also be helpful if the president stopped condemning those who cooperate with federal investigators as “weak,” while praising the “guts” of those who refuse to answer the special counsel’s questions.
If Giuliani really wants to “get it over with,” perhaps it’s time he have a candid conversation with his boss?
Postscript: In the same interview with Yahoo News, the presidential attorney added, “Collusion isn’t even a crime. Collusion is like the biggest bunch of bulls**t.” For the record, there is no statute covering “collusion,” per se — it’s more a political term than a legal one — but cooperating with a hostile foreign power to intervene in an American election is most definitely illegal.
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."