President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators\u2019 questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president\u2019s attorneys told The Associated Press on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Giuliani\u2019s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s efforts to interview the president about any efforts to obstruct the investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russians.<\/p>\n
It signals the Trump\u2019s lawyers are committed to protecting the president from answering questions about actions the president took in office.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear if Giuliani\u2019s public position has been endorsed by Trump, who has said he wants to answer questions under oath.<\/p>\n
Negotiations about the scope and format of an interview are still ongoing. If the legal team holds its stance, it could force Mueller to try to subpoena the president, likely triggering a standoff that would lead to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Mueller\u2019s office has previously sought to interview the president about the obstruction issue, including his firing last year of former FBI Director James Comey and his public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s legal team has argued that the president has the power to hire and fire appointees and the special counsel does not have the authority to ask him to explain those decisions. Giuliani said Thursday the team was steadfast in that position.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a no-go. That is not going to happen,\u201d Giuliani said. \u201cThere will be no questions at all on obstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a letter last week, Mueller\u2019s team said it would accept written responses from Trump on questions related to Russian election interference. Giuliani suggested Thursday that Trump\u2019s lawyers had agreed to those terms but wanted to prohibit investigators from asking follow-up questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be in written form and if you want to follow up on our answers, justify it. Show us why you didn\u2019t get there the first time,\u201d Giuliani said. He said he was not categorically ruling out answering a second round of questions but the entire matter of whether there would be follow-up inquiries should be settled before the president answers anything at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe aren\u2019t going to let them spring it on us,\u201d said Giuliani, who has served as lawyer-spokesman for the president\u2019s personal legal team, using television interviews and public comments as a tactic in the negotiations.<\/p>\n
In the latest letter to the legal team, Mueller\u2019s office didn\u2019t address obstruction questions, indicating investigators would later assess what additional information it needs from the president after receiving a response about the written submissions, according to a person familiar with the document.<\/p>\n
The person familiar with the letter spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss the negotiations.<\/p>\n
Though the president has publicly said he was eager to face questions from Mueller, his lawyers have been far more reluctant to make him available for an interview and have questioned whether Mueller has the right to ask him about actions that he is authorized, under the Constitution, to take as president.<\/p>\n
Mueller\u2019s team raised the prospect in March that it could subpoena the president, though this would unquestionably prompt a court fight.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court has never definitively ruled on the question of whether a president can be forced to testify, though the justices did rule in 1974 that Richard Nixon had to produce recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed.<\/p>\n
In addition to questions about Comey and Sessions, Mueller has expressed interest in Trump\u2019s role in drafting a statement to The New York Times about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by his son, Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators\u2019 questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president\u2019s attorneys told The Associated Press on Thursday. Giuliani\u2019s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s efforts to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41456,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41454\/revisions\/41456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}