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President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, tells ABC News he has been “encouraged by recent communications with the special counsel” as the two parties continue conversations about a potential interview with the president.
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Giuliani says no one from the special counsel’s office has contacted him or the president’s legal team to disagree with his public statements over the last 24 hours that Robert Mueller’s prosecutors have told the president’s lawyers they do not believe they have the authority to indict the president.
Mueller’s team, which is notoriously tight-lipped, has not responded to a request for comment.
“They can’t indict,” Giuliani repeated to ABC News after first telling the New York Times the same on Wednesday.
A Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel opinion in 2000 said the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting president would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.
Giuliani, along with Trump lawyers Jay Sekulow and Marty and Jane Raskin, say they have had only one in-person meeting with Mueller since Giuliani joined the president’s team. Giuliani believes another meeting will happen once the two parties get closer to agreeing on some sort of interview.
Giuliani also repeated Trump wants to sit down for an interview but no final decision has been made.
For his part, President Trump said earlier this month he would “love to” talk to Mueller.
“Nobody wants to speak more than me — in fact, against my lawyers. Because most lawyers say, ‘Never speak with anybody.’ I would love to speak, because we’ve done nothing wrong,” Trump said May 4.
“I have to find that we’re going to be treated fairly,” Trump added. “Because everybody sees it now and it’s a pure witch hunt.”
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