Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.com
Busy stepping on more rakes as he tries to defend Trump against special counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling investigation, Rudy Giuliani now insists Mueller should be more like James Comey, the former FBI director who oversaw an investigation into Hillary’s Clinton’s use of a private email server.
By Giuliani’s thinking, Comey should serve as Mueller’s role model, Politico reports.
But the logic doesn’t add up.
“When Comey closed [the Clinton case] in July — although I think it was a complete whitewash — I’d like to have them do that for us,” the former New York mayor said.
Wait, what? Giuliani thinks Comey’s investigation into Clinton “was a complete whitewash,” but Giuliani wants Mueller to do the same thing with his Russia investigation?
Sounds like Trump’s attorney just accidentally told the truth: Trump doesn’t care about Mueller uncovering the facts, he just wants the whole thing shut down.
The miscue is just the latest Giuliani public relations debacle, as he reportedly tries to gin up right-wing outrage on the one-year anniversary of Mueller’s special counsel appointment.
Mueller was named on May 17, 2017, eight days after Trump fired Comey as the FBI chief.
“Come on! They’ve had a whole year,” the Trump lawyer whined during an interview. “We’re going to raise the pressure to try to get this thing over with. It’s gone on long enough,” he added.
Of course, Giuliani is getting help from Fox News in his latest public relations push. Last night, Sean Hannity once again berated the Russia investigation, claiming, “Mueller has no business ever questioning the president of the United States.”
To date, the Russia investigation has produced more than two dozen indictments, while two separate trials featuring Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, are expected to begin this year.
In terms of context for lengthy political investigations, Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton went on for six years. And Congressional investigations into the Benghazi terror attack under President Barack Obama stretched on for more than three years.
Republicans certainly didn’t complain about those extended inquiries.
Meanwhile, “The 21 major special counsel probes in the post-Watergate era lasted an average of three-and-a-half years from the appointment of an independent counsel to its conclusion,” Politico notes.
Giuliani remains powerless to protect Trump from Mueller, whether he gets his “whitewash” or not.
