You'll never guess what Rudy Giuliani's up to now!
MSNBC's Alex Witt talks about his latest demands for an interview between Bob Mueller and Donald Trump.
"The Times reports that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani says special counsel Robert Mueller needs to prove he has evidence that the president committed a crime and Mr. Trump's testimony is essential to completing the investigation," Witt said.
"And a tweet that former trump attorney John Dowd tells him that he initially trusted Mueller but came to think that he was out to get the president."
MSNBC legal analyst Katy Fang talked about what Rudy is trying to do.
"So I have a new nickname for Rudy Giuliani, I call him Slow-Roll Giuliani because every time these negotiations have gone down in terms of Trump sitting for an interview with Robert Mueller and the team, the line gets pushed back and back," she said.
"I want to remind everybody, Giuliani is the lawyer, but it is not the law that Mueller has to give all the evidence that shows that Donald Trump has committed a crime prior to Donald Trump sitting for an interview. I recall the fact that former president Clinton negotiated conditions under which he sat for an interview with Ken Starr, the special prosecutor back then. However, the conditions included things like closed circuit television feed during the course of the interview. It did not include things like Giuliani saying the evidence before Donald Trump will sit down. It becomes a non-starter, I believe. for the Robert Mueller team. At that rate, why not prosecute Donald Trump for a crime if you have probable cause that he has committed that crime?"
"That's interesting. I'm trying to figure out then the reasoning behind the request and whether or not Giuliani can make it. Could it fall into the category of discovery for the president's defense?" Witt said.
"Yeah. And they are trying to obviously, being the Trump team courtesy of Rudy Giuliani, trying to fish and see what they can get in terms of what evidence does Robert Mueller have, but there's no legal obligation for him to do that," Fang said.
"More importantly, it doesn't mean it's a precondition for Trump to sit down. It's effectively giving ammunition in the PR battle being waged by Donald Trump and his surrogates including Rudy Giuliani to suggest that, hey, look, we're trying to negotiate with Robert Mueller, and he's being unreasonable in that he will not concede to what we're looking for. So it ends up being this circular argument between the two sides. In the end, you'll probably see a court-waged battle to see whether or not Trump can be subpoenaed to testify."
Fang also noted that the Mueller team is handing off some investigations to DOJ career prosecutors and FBI agents, providing for the ability to continue and conduct investigations.
