President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe into obstruction of justice by the president will wrap up by Sept. 1 because allowing it to continue longer could improperly influence the mid-term elections in November, according to a report on Sunday.
Mueller’s office released a timeline of its investigation to him two weeks ago while he was negotiating with prosecutors over whether Trump would testify, Giuliani told the New York Times[1].
The former mayor of New York City urged that investigation end soon offering as an example the firestorm former FBI Director James Comey ignited when he announced weeks before the 2016 election that he was reopening the probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server.
Democrats and Clinton have blamed Comey’s decision for costing her the election.
“You don’t want another repeat of the 2016 election where you get contrary reports at the end and you don’t know how it affected the election,” Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, told the newspaper.
The report said Mueller’s findings on obstruction would not mean that the special counsel’s work is completed.
He is also looking into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election.
Giuliani told the Times he wants the case to come down to a question of Comey’s credibility as opposed to Trump’s.
Soon after Trump entered the White House the president asked the former G-man to drop the investigation into his national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to memos from Comey.
“We want the concentration of this to be on Comey versus the president’s credibility, and I think we win that and people get that,” Giuliani said.
References
- ^ Giuliani told the New York Times (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ This report originally appeared on NYPost.com. (nypost.com)