'Truth isn't truth,' Trump lawyer Giuliani claims

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Rudy Giuliani, US President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, left viewers scratching their heads on Sunday by claiming "truth isn't truth" in a media interview.

Giuliani told "Meet the Press" that discussions over a presidential interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office continue, but he would not be rushed into having Trump testify "so that he gets trapped in perjury."

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Giuliani argues that accusations of obstruction of justice against the president are reliant on the credibility of former FBI director James Comey, and that Comey and Trump have different recollections of the same conversation in February 2017.

Comey claims Trump put pressure on him over former national security adviser Michael Flynn; Trump denies mentioning Flynn.

"Donald Trump says 'I didn't talk about Flynn' with Comey. Comey says 'you did talk about it'. So tell me what the truth is," Giuliani added.

'Nothing to hide'

In a series of tweets on Sunday, Trump denied that his top lawyer has turned on him by cooperating with the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

And the president again insisted that he had "nothing to hide."

Trump denounced the New York Times for a Saturday story saying White House Counsel Don McGahn has cooperated extensively with Mueller.

The Times said McGahn had shared detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether Trump obstructed justice.

Don McGahn speaks during a discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, February 22, 2018. /VCG Photo

"I allowed him and all others to testify – I didn't have to,” Trump said in a tweet. Trump said the newspaper made it seem like McGahn had turned on the president – as White House counsel John Dean had in the Watergate investigation of former President Richard Nixon – "when in fact it is just the opposite."

As White House counsel since the beginning of the Trump administration, McGahn could have rare insight into the president's thinking.

Citing a dozen current and former White House officials and others briefed on the matter, the Times said that McGahn had shared information, some of which the investigators would not have known about.

On Saturday evening, McGahn's lawyer confirmed the White House counsel had cooperated with Mueller's team.

White House Counsel Don McGahn (L) and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow attend a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, August 16, 2018. /VCG Photo

Giuliani, Trump's outside legal counsel, said McGahn's cooperation would help bolster Trump's claims that he did nothing wrong.

Dean, who has criticized Trump in recent years, voiced support for McGahn. "McGahn is doing right!" he wrote on Twitter.

According to the New York Times, McGahn described Trump’s furor toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which the president urged McGahn to respond to it.

Behind the scenes

Jens David Ohlin, a professor of criminal law at Cornell University, said that even if McGahn told investigators he thought Trump acted lawfully his testimony would still be pivotal.

"The McGahn interviews will add a lot of detail about what was happening behind the scenes and make Mueller's account much fuller," said Ohlin.

White House Counsel Don McGahn speaks during the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, February 22, 2018. /VCG Photo

Trump has denied his campaign colluded with Russia and has repeatedly attacked the probe as illegitimate.

On Sunday, he compared Mueller with 1950s-era US Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose anti-Communist crusade eventually led to his censure by the Senate.

"Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in a period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

McGahn cautioned to investigators he never saw Trump go beyond his legal authorities.

His testimony would be even more important if Trump does not sit for an interview with Mueller.

(Cover: Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, speaks to members of the media in New York, November 22, 2016. /VCG Photo)

Source(s): Reuters