As President Trump seeks to de-escalate tensions with North Korea, he and his personal legal team are ratcheting up their rhetoric against special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“Now that I am back from Singapore, where we had a great result with respect to North Korea, the thought process must sadly go back to the Witch Hunt, always remembering that there was No Collusion and No Obstruction of the fabricated No Crime,” Trump tweeted last week.
The president is no longer waging this PR offensive alone, however, as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — now serving as one of Trump’s personal attorneys — is a ubiquitous presence on cable news.
Giuliani told Sean Hannity last Thursday that Mueller should immediately close his investigation based on the inspector general report released last week.
The report, authored by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, found serious malfeasance on the parts of multiple high-ranking FBI officials, including former Director James Comey.
“We are way beyond Hillary Clinton,” the former New York City mayor stated. “We now have an investigation, which, in the words of President Donald Trump, from the very beginning has been a fix, a frame-up and a witch hunt.”
“It was led by Peter Strzok, who is disgraceful, and even for the present director of the FBI to have him there tomorrow would be disgraceful,” Giuliani continued. “Every FBI agent should demand that that man be fired, and tomorrow [special counsel Robert] Mueller should suspend his investigation.”
“I checked into this last night. It’s not so. He’s not cooperating,” Giuliani told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in response to reports that longtime Trump legal fixer Michael Cohen may be about to flip. “Nor do we care, because the president did nothing wrong. We’re very comfortable if he cooperates that there’s nothing he can cooperate about with regard to President Trump.”
Like in the old Irish Spring soap commercials, Giuliani added Trump was “clean as a whistle.”
While the White House defers most questions about the Russia probe to the president’s outside counsel and even pro-Trump outside groups have mostly kept their powder dry, Giuliani has been flooding the zone in Trump’s defense. His arguments, and sometimes facts, change from interview to interview, but some Trump supporters see him keeping the president’s critics off-balance.
“I think Rudy’s doing a great job,” said former Trump 2016 political adviser Sam Nunberg. “First of all, they had nobody going out defending [Trump]. Second, Rudy has gravitas. Everybody wants to watch him. The media wants to portray him as a clown, but that just gets more and more people to watch. The more they replay and loop him, the more he is getting his message out.”
Giuliani’s public pronouncements have occasionally veered off course from Trump-Russia, requiring clean-up by the White House and administration officials. After Giuliani said at a conference that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “got back on his hands and knees and begged for” the resumption of the summit, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had to clarify, “I know Rudy. Rudy doesn’t speak for the administration when it comes to this negotiation and this set of issues.”
“Rudy Giuliani does not speak for the administration when it comes to North Korea,” White House legislative affairs director Marc Short repeated in an interview on CNN.
The White House has even been asked to weigh in on Giuliani’s personal affairs amid reports he is dating a Louisiana political operative following his separation from his third wife. “I’m not today or tomorrow or at any point ever going to comment on Rudy Giuliani’s love life,” press secretary Sarah Sanders shot back at a daily briefing.
“I have always been a big fan of Rudy and I completely agree with the Trump legal team’s decision to push back against Mueller,” said Republican strategist Chris Barron. “I think that effort has been successful — certainly polling shows Americans across the spectrum are losing faith in Mueller.
“That having been said, I think Rudy is used to being the principal, not the spokesperson,” Barron added. “My experience has always been that it’s never good if you — rather than your client — is the story.”
“Trump has hammered Mueller, and Mueller and the other actors have given him the ammunition,” said veteran pollster and political consultant Pat Caddell.
Trump loyalists emphasize the importance of fighting back, with the president on Twitter and Giuliani taking the lead on television, even as the triumvirate of Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein remain in place. “Leave them to their own worst devices,” said Nunberg, who has appeared before the Mueller grand jury and predicts the investigation will end in “disgrace” — but not for the president.
“He’s in our yard now,” Nunberg said of Mueller. “Trump people aren’t John McCain Republicans. We fight back.”
