Giuliani accuses Mueller of leading ‘rigged’ probe

Bloomberg

Donald Trump’s lawyer again questioned the legitimacy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, even as a possible interview between Mueller and the president looms.
“We’re more convinced as we see it that this is a rigged investigation,” Rudy Giuliani said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Nation.” Asked if he sees the probe as legitimate, Giuliani, who joined Trump’s legal team in mid-April, replied: “Not any more. I don’t. I did when I came in.” The former New York mayor is seeking a readout of the classified information Justice Department officials shared with lawmakers on Thursday about the origins of the FBI investigation into Russian meddling. Trump has made an unsubstantiated claim that an informant who contacted advisers to his 2016 campaign was a political “spy” planted inside the campaign.
“It should be very easy to brief us,” Giuliani said. “The White House has every right to know, the president has every right to know as commander-in-chief.”
Giuliani has taken those claims further, arguing in an interview with the Associated Press on Friday that what’s Trump dubbed “SPYGATE” might make Mueller’s investigation illegitimate. He also said former FBI Director James Comey was guilty of an illegal leak when he directed a friend to share the contents of memos about his interactions with Trump to the media in May 2017, which led to bipartisan calls for a special counsel in the Russia probe.

Big Mistake
“The whole thing was a mistake and should never have happened,” Giuliani told the Associated Press, adding that the Justice Department should acknowledge the error.
Giuliani said that he doesn’t believe the alleged informant was being protected, calling the FBI and Justice “a little hypocritical.” Whether Trump will agree to be interviewed as part of the probe remains uncertain. Giuliani said the president’s legal team would wait until seeing a report on the substance of information with lawmakers, shared in two separate meetings. Previously he said a decision wouldn’t be made until after the summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, scheduled for June 12 in Singapore. Trump cancelled that meeting on Thursday, but it may still take place.
The briefings of lawmakers came in response to Trump’s demand to fully investigate the use of the confidential informant, which he called in a tweet “one of the biggest political scandals in history.”