President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Tuesday that the president will not sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team until his legal team gets all documents related to the FBI’s use of an informant.
“We need all the documents before we can decide whether we are going to do an interview,” Giuliani told The Washington Post in an interview.
Giuliani added that the fact Mueller is trying to interview the president suggests that the probe is coming to an end.
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“I don’t think they would have asked to interview him until they are pretty much finished with everything,” he said. “They’re only going to get one shot at him. They know that. You look pretty amateurish if you interview him and you don’t have all the facts gathered.”
Mueller has sought to negotiate an interview with Trump as part of his team’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice. Trump’s lawyers, however, have been reluctant to grant such an interview.
Trump and his allies have raised concerns in recent weeks about the FBI’s use of a top-secret informant, who met with three of Trump’s campaign advisers in 2016 in the early months of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s role in the election.
Trump has claimed that the FBI planted a mole in his campaign and sought to spy on his team for political purposes. No evidence has emerged to suggest that the FBI improperly spied on Trump’s campaign.
Last week, select lawmakers met with top Justice Department officials to discuss the use of the informant amid pressure from Trump.
Trump has fired off a number of tweets in recent days decrying the Russia probe and suggesting wrongdoing by the FBI, the Justice Department and special counsel investigators. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that investigators were planning on “meddling” in the 2018 midterm elections.
Giuliani told the Post on Tuesday that the president’s attacks are “working.”
“As an effective politician, you’re not going to do something that you don’t think is working,” Giuliani told the Post.