Giuliani points to reversal on Trump Tower letter: ‘This is the reason you don’t let the president testify’

Rudy Giuliani on Sunday used the revelation that President Trump dictated a letter about a 2016 meeting between his campaign aides and a Russian lawyer to bolster an argument for why the president should not sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller.

“This is the reason you don’t let the president testify,” Giuliani said on ABC’s “This Week.”

He argued that it would pose a problem in an FBI interview if “our recollection keeps changing, or we’re not even asked a question and somebody makes an assumption.”

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Giuliani appeared on Sunday morning shows one day after The New York Times reported that Trump’s lawyers wrote to Mueller in January arguing that the president cannot commit obstruction of justice in the special counsel’s probe because of his constitutional authority over the investigation.

The letter also states that Trump dictated a statement to The New York Times about the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., other Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

Jay Sekulow, one of President Trump’s attorneys who wrote the letter to Mueller, and the White House had previously denied the president dictated the letter.

Giuliani said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that Sekulow was “uninformed” when he denied last year that Trump had any involvement in crafting the statement.

“This is a point that maybe wasn’t clarified in terms of recollection and his understanding of it,” Giuliani said. “And what Jay did was he immediately corrected it.”

Giuliani sought to connect the changing narrative around the Trump Tower meeting to the dangers of the president sitting for an interview with Mueller. He argued that making a false statement to a reporter is not a crime, but doing so to the FBI is.

“So that’s the wisdom of not having a president testify,” he said. “It’s one thing to do it with a lawyer, it’s another to do it with your client.”

Trump has said publicly he’d be willing to do an interview with Mueller’s team. However, his lawyers have warned against the idea. Giuliani on Sunday said the president’s legal team is “leaning toward” not agreeing to the interview.