Giuliani: the hack...

In meeting Mueller, Giuliani quickly gets to core of representing Trump

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN

Rudy Giuliani isn’t wasting time as Donald Trump’s newest lawyer.

Hired late last week as the president’s top personal attorney, Giuliani held his first meeting on Tuesday with special counsel Robert Mueller in a bid to jump-start talks on whether Trump will even be called in for an interview as part of the Russia investigation.

Giuliani’s sit-down with Mueller, first reported by The Washington Post and confirmed to POLITICO by a senior administration official, came after a series of other meetings the former New York mayor has held as he tries to quickly get up to speed on the nearly yearlong investigation, which has overwhelmed the White House.

Since his hiring, Giuliani had dinner in Washington with Jay Sekulow, another member of Trump’s outside legal team, who had been filling in as the lead attorney in the wake of John Dowd’s resignation last month.

Giuliani also met in South Florida with Marty and Jane Raskin, Miami-based former federal prosecutors whose hiring was announced last Thursday in tandem with his own.

Sekulow declined to comment on Giuliani’s interactions with the special counsel but told POLITICO that Trump’s new lawyer was “fully engaged with the representation of the president.”

“He’s hitting the ground running,” Sekulow said.

Giuliani, who has a second home in South Florida near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, signaled his plan to drive the Russia investigation to a swift conclusion soon after his hiring, telling CNN he wanted to try to bring the Mueller inquiry to an end within “maybe a couple of weeks.”

But that timeline may clash with reality.

Mueller is preparing for a possible July trial against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that include bank and tax fraud. And several potential witnesses in the investigation, including Vice President Mike Pence, longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya have yet to be interviewed, according to multiple sources tracking the investigation.

Longtime Giuliani associates who have spoken to the former mayor in the days both before and after he accepted the job representing Trump have told POLITICO that in private he has tried to soften expectations.

“What he said to me was: ‘There’s no magic dust. I might have a fresh perspective. I don’t have a magic wand,’” said Tony Carbonetti, a longtime Giuliani adviser.

“Rudy Giuliani does not believe he’s a miracle worker,” added Jon Sale, a Giuliani law school classmate.

Sale, a former federal prosecutor who served on the Watergate team, said he expected that Giuliani would be careful in his interactions with Mueller’s team of investigators and not push them where they weren’t prepared to go.

“Rudy knows that he doesn’t determine the outcome of cases,” Sale said. “He knows that as well as he knows how to breathe. He knows you have credibility, which you can lose in an instant.”

Giuliani, according to the Washington Post report, told Mueller’s team during their Tuesday meeting that the president and some of his top aides were resisting an interview but that they also wouldn’t rule out Trump’s agreeing to answer their questions in person. He also asked the special counsel for any details about the expected duration of the investigation.

In its report, the Post said Mueller told the Trump lawyers that he wanted a chance to interview the president about several key moments during the 2016-17 transition, as well as some early decisions made at the start of the new administration. The special counsel is trying to understand the president’s intent as his team works on the obstruction of justice portion of its investigation, which stems in large part from the firing of James Comey as FBI director.

Trump’s decision to hire Giuliani and the Raskins, a husband-wife duo with expertise in fraud and money laundering cases, has been widely praised given their backgrounds handling white collar criminal defense.

“These aren’t political hacks. These are pros,” Bruce Udolf, a former federal prosecutor based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said of the Raskins.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment for this article. Marty Raskin also declined comment, and Giuliani did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

With Dowd’s departure, Trump was seen as sorely lacking in the legal department — and he had struggled to persuade other elite Washington-based defense attorneys to work for him. Many cited conflicts inside their law firms, though another reason given was Trump’s temperamental nature and his history of ignoring the legal advice he had been getting to avoid discussing the Russia case publicly and with top aides.

Matched up against Mueller, legal experts say, the Trump team remains short-handed.

“Even if you bring in two, three or four lawyers, whoever it is, [Mueller has] a whole law firm with a stable of investigators,” said Annemarie McAvoy, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor who represented Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates before his decision to plead guilty and cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.

Julian Epstein, a former chief counsel for House Democrats during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, said Trump had improved his defense team by adding Giuliani and the Raskins. But he said there was still “lots of potential for incoherence and disorganization.”

“They’ve got a ton of catching up to do,” he said, “and I don’t see how they do it in a short period of time.”