Rudy Giuliani implied in a New Yorker article published on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump may attempt to block special counsel Robert Mueller’s report from being released.
Mueller was appointed to conduct an independent investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 U.S. federal election.
Once Mueller has completed his investigation, the magazine article says he will need to file a concluding report with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who will then have the option to release it to Congress and the public.
The New Yorker article said Mueller and Trump’s legal team have an agreement in which the White House can prevent the report from being released publicly if the content was covered under executive privilege. That agreement was struck between Mueller and Trump’s original legal team.
When asked if he thought the administration would take advantage of the agreement, Giuliani responded, “I’m sure we will.”
He added that Trump and his team are preparing a report of their own to discredit the findings in Mueller’s report, which he previously told the Daily Beast in an interview at the end of August.
“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,” Giuliani told the Beast at the time. In his recent interview with the New Yorker, Giuliani said the report was 45 pages long.
Trump has consistently referred to Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign during the 2016 federal election as a “witch hunt.”
Since being hired as Trump’s attorney this past April, Giuliani has frequently and relentlessly defended the president and criticized the Mueller investigation.
Both Trump and Giuliani have previously said a sit-down interview between the president and Mueller could be a “perjury trap.” Giuliani elaborated on this in an interview on Meet the Press, saying that an interview between Trump and Mueller could be risky for the president because “truth isn’t truth.”
He later attempted to clarify this statement.
It’s still unclear when the Mueller report will drop, though many are speculating a fall release.