Trump’s Legal Team Crafting Report To Delegitimize Robert Mueller’s Russia Probe
President Donald Trump’s legal team is putting together a report that will seek to delegitimize Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, the Daily Beast reports.
In an interview with the outlet, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that the first part of the report would examine whether the “initiation of the investigation was…legitimate or not.” Meaning, the first section of the report will allege possible conflicts of interests. The second section of Trump legal team’s report will respond to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s allegations.
Interestingly, Giuliani admitted that, since the president’s legal team does not know what Mueller’s findings will look like, crafting a report will be challenging, at the very least.
“Since we have to guess what it is, [our report so far] is quite voluminous,” Giuliani told the Daily Beast, adding that he is dedicated to “pairing” the document down.
“The first half of it is 58 pages, and second half isn’t done yet…It needs an executive summary if it goes over a hundred,” President Trump’s lawyer said, but also indicated most of what’s being put together by him and the rest of Trump’s legal team can already be found on Google.
Giuliani and his colleagues have not conducted any original interviews or investigation for the present draft.
Glenn Kirschner, a retired federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., explained to the Daily Beast that what Trump’s legal team is doing is virtually unheard of; authoring a rebuttal report prior to the investigation’s findings being made public is far from standard practice.
“This sounds to me like pure PR nonsense. They are making an announcement that they will issue a rebuttal to a report that we don’t know when it is coming out or what it will contain.”
According to Kirschner, apart from being an obvious PR maneuver, the report is meant to “poison the well” for Mueller, since Trump refuses to admit any wrongdoing.
Giuliani indicated that most of what’s being put together by him and his Trump-defending colleagues currently can already be found on Google https://t.co/9T2j8Kn8so
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) August 30, 2018
A section of the report may be devoted to Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, Giuliani said. Cohen, as the Business Insider noted, flipped on his former client, and Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, alleged that Cohen is willing to provide Mueller with information about the Trump campaign’s coordination with the Kremlin. By pleading guilty, Cohen implicated Trump in federal crimes, which gives the president’s legal team another reason to include him in the report.
Apart from Giuliani, Jay Sekulow and Marty Raskin are taking part in crafting the document. According to Sekulow, the report will “include issues related to the commencement of this investigation through the legal issues of it.”
According to Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump is aware of the report and of his legal team’s strategy.
An individual briefed on the matter told the Daily Beast that the document will be ready in the next two to three weeks.
As the New York Post reported, President Trump has accused Mueller’s team of trying to meddle in midterm elections, repeatedly called the Russia probe a “witch hunt,” and launched ad hominem attacks on Robert Mueller. His legal team’s effort to discredit Robert Mueller and his investigation, therefore, does not come as a surprise.
