Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former mayor of New York City and attorney for President Donald Trump Rudy Giuliani said special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation isn’t going to fizzle — it was “going to blow up on them.”
Partial transcript as follows:
HANNITY: All right. Let’s start with tonight’s breaking news. So, you got Ohr, Steele, Nellie Ohr. We got Russian lies.
GIULIANI: Can it get any worse? I mean, what do we need to know that this is a totally illegitimate investigation based on a report, a dossier that was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats — probably the biggest illegality so far, the biggest collusion so far.
HANNITY: Or conspiracy.
GIULIANI: Completely made up. Completely made up. Led to nothing except several fraudulent FISA wires.
And now, we have Mueller, who doesn’t seem to care that he’s sitting on top of a totally illegitimate investigation.
HANNITY: But the dossier, thinking about the dossier that she paid for and the fact that the FBI paid Steele, it was designed to misinform the American people with Russian lies to influence the election.
GIULIANI: Yes.
HANNITY: There’s a great irony here, if it wasn’t —
GIULIANI: Well, may be if Mueller and his band of whatever they are, Democrats, right, were fair-minded, maybe they’d investigate — maybe that’s the collusion. Maybe that’s the collusion.
HANNITY: Did you ever hear the Adam Schiff tape that we played?
GIULIANI: Yes.
HANNITY: Adam Schiff, he’s just dying to get naked pictures of Trump with a Russian on tape. There’s your evidence, Mueller. You can’t make it up. If it wasn’t so seriously — not only did they try to lie to the American people with Russian lies, now we know after the election, they tried to destroy the president with lies.
And now, they are connected to Mueller perhaps?
GIULIANI: Yes, I’ve never been involved in an investigation on either side that’s more illegitimate than this one, that is so obviously more illegitimate. And I wonder where is the sense of justice on the part of Mueller, on the part of the Justice Department.
After all, the Justice Department — this is a Justice Department investigation. He is working for Rosenstein. And at some point, you’ve got to say the irregularities, the unethical conduct —
HANNITY: Double standard.
GIULIANI: — the double standard, the way in which people who hate Trump will put into primary positions of power has completely tainted this investigation.
HANNITY: My family is families from law enforcement, my mom was a prison guard, you know, my dad, New York City, family court probation, so many cops in my family, FBI agents. I cannot believe this is such — these are — the rank-and-file are so good.
Here’s the thing, you responded today to Mueller’s latest request and you think this could be over by September. Let’s start with the request.
GIULIANI: Well, I think of it isn’t over by September, then we have a very, very serious violation of the Justice Department rules that you shouldn’t be conducting one of these investigations in the 60-day period.
Look, he’s got plenty of time to either decide — we offered him an opportunity to do a form of questioning. He can say yes or no. We can do it. If he doesn’t want to do it, he knows the answers to every question that he wants to ask. He’s going to ask them, did you tell Comey to go easy on Flynn? The president will say no I didn’t.
Hey, Bob, you know it. Why do you want to get him under oath? Do you think we’re fools?
You want to get him under oath because you want to trap him into perjury. Well, we’re not going to let you do that.
HANNITY: It’s — there’s two separate issues: collusion and so-called obstruction. There’s a report today that you said no questions on obstruction. Am I assuming here that your — that your response to him was maybe a couple of written answers only?
GIULIANI: No, I can’t tell you what it is yet because we haven’t — no, I can’t. I can’t. Jay will get very angry at me. My co-counsel —
HANNITY: I understood.
GIULIANI: — is much stricter about this than I am. So, he’ll get very angry and Jay (ph) will — I’d love to tell you.
But the reality is, the reality is he doesn’t need to ask a single question on obstruction, he has all the answers. They are not going to change. The president is not going to change his testimony.
So, stop the nonsense. You are trying to trap him into perjury because you don’t have a case.
HANNITY: Mr. Mayor, the Constitution as our good friend Mark says, Mark Levin, is on the president’s side. I agree it’s illegitimate, has been, the double standard is so glaring. We have been pointing it out now every night and with new details every night.
My question is, I wouldn’t give him a thing. You don’t owe him a thing and if he wants a fight, then there’s going to be a fight.
GIULIANI: Well, we don’t like to fight, you know that.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: Mr. Mayor, I used to watch your press conferences, I disagree with that.
GIULIANI: The reality is, the real story is not that this case isn’t going to fizzle. It’s going to blow up on them. The real question is, what we talked about before, there’s a lot more to what they did that nobody knows about yet.
HANNITY: I know some of it.
GIULIANI: A lot more — a lot more to the obstruction of justice, to the collusion, to the fake dossier.
HANNITY: Oh, I know a lot.
GIULIANI: They’re trying to bring Steele back in after he was completely discredited.
HANNITY: And then feed it to Mueller.
GIULIANI: Yes. And Mueller is going to have a lot to answer for.
HANNITY: Mr. Mayor —
GIULIANI: I said a long time ago, the investigation here has to be of the investigators, because we can’t let this happen again in American history. We may not have a president as strong as President Trump. A lesser president could have really been cracked by this.
HANNITY: Mueller, then you got Jeanie Rhee, you got Andrew Weissmann.
Here’s my question: we know the Department of Justice has absolutely denied congressional subpoenas. Now, I don’t — as great a lawyer as you are, I don’t think you’d get me out of trouble if I was ignoring a subpoena.
GIULIANI: No, I don’t think I could.
HANNITY: But the president has the power to go through these documents through FISA and unre — make it unredacted and let the American people see that the bulk of information was what Christopher Steele himself said wasn’t verified.
GIULIANI: Well, that’s something — that something that as his private lawyers — that he has to deal with and his government lawyers. And he’s going to do it right now.
HANNITY: Would you suggest he should?
GIULIANI: I can’t tell you what I suggest. It’s privileged.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: OK. Let me ask you about the FISA lies. The bulk of information, the Grassley-Graham memo says, came from the phony dossier that Hillary paid for. That turns out to be a lie. The author of it says he can’t corroborate it.
GIULIANI: Right.
HANNITY: Now, here’s my question: so, they used it four separate times, to spy on an American citizen, an opposition party candidate campaign associate, in the lead-up to the election, after the election. Again, what if I lied to a judge? I wouldn’t think of lying to a judge without getting my life in jail afterwards.
GIULIANI: You’d be investigated for perjury. You’d be investigated for contempt. Your career would be ruined. Your life would be ruined.
And I believe that when this plays out over the next year or two, it’s not going to be about President Trump. It’s going to get over with. It’s going to be about all the things they did.
This — you know how sometimes the cover-up is worse than the crime? In this case, the investigation was much worse than the no-crime.
HANNITY: Mr. Mayor —
GIULIANI: The president did nothing wrong.
HANNITY: My sources are telling me that when the American people get to the bottom of all of this, it will shock the heart, the soul, and the mind of any fair-minded American.
GIULIANI: I think it’s going to lead to some very strict — very big reforms, just like Watergate. It’s a different kind of Watergate. It’s on the side of the investigator.
HANNITY: OK.
GIULIANI: Corrupt investigations through and through.
HANNITY: Why would you even consider a counterproposal?
GIULIANI: When it’s over with, I will explain it to you.
(h/t RCP Video)
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