Giuliani Says There’s ‘Nothing Wrong’ With the Trump Campaign ‘Taking Information from Russians’
Rudy Giuliani is all over the place today. The president’s
lawyer appeared on three Sunday morning news shows to bash the recently
released report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and to defend his boss,
Donald Trump.
Giuliani always
says crazy things on TV—like when he declared that “truth isn’t truth”—and
one of his more egregious comments on Sunday was made to CNN’s Jack Tapper.
Tapper asked New York’s former mayor to respond to a statement by Sen. Mitt
Romney following the Mueller report’s release. Romney, a former Republican
presidential candidate, said he was “sickened at the extent and pervasiveness
of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the
land, including the President.”
He added that he is “appalled” that members of Trump’s
presidential campaign, including Trump’s son Don Jr. and his son-in-law Jared
Kushner, “welcomed help from Russia—including information that had been
illegally obtained; that none of them acted to inform American law enforcement;
and that the campaign chairman was actively promoting Russian interests in
Ukraine.”
Giuliani responded to that statement by telling Tapper that
Romney should, “Stop the bull. Stop this pious act…” He added that, “Any
candidate in the whole world, in America, would take information.” Giuliani
then tried to argue that news outlets like The
Washington Post were “just as wrong” as the Trump campaign because the newspaper
prints information from foreign sources.
Then he dropped this observation (my emphasis): “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians. It depends
on where it came from.”
He added later
that, “There’s no crime. We’re going to get into morality? That isn’t what prosecutors
look at—morality.”
Perhaps not, but hopefully
voters will in 2020.
On Fox News Sunday,
Giuliani told host Chris Wallace that the Mueller report was filled with
“calumny, lies, and distortion.” He argued that had Trump fired Mueller, as the
report notes Trump had asked former
White House counsel Don McGahn to do, it wouldn’t have been obstruction of
justice. That’s because Mueller, who had only been on the job a month at that
point, had hired a staff of “questionable” people linked to Hillary Clinton,
Giuliani claimed.
Giuliani also accused McGahn of
telling differing versions of the events to Mueller.
On NBC’s Meet the
Press, host Chuck Todd asked Giuliani if it’s acceptable for political
campaigns “to work with materials stolen by foreign adversaries.” Giuliani
replied, “Well, it depends on the stolen materials.”
He repeated his accusations against the news media, and then
called Clinton and her associates “sneaky,” “dishonest,” and “dishonorable.”
As Politico pointed out, in addition to Trump’s order for McGahn
to fire Mueller, the special counsel’s report notes nine
other cases in which Trump may have obstructed justice, a matter that is
now up to Congress to investigate.