President Donald Trump's TV lawyer Rudy Giuliani complained Friday afternoon that Special Counsel Robert Mueller chose to take legal action just as Trump is flying out of the country, suggesting that the timing was deliberate.
"Mueller filed an indictment just as the President left for G20," wrote Giuliani. "In July he indicted the Russians who will never come here just before he left for Helsinki. Either could have been done earlier or later. Out of control! Supervision please?"
Further, Giuliani suggested that the indictments of Russian nationals filed in July are beyond Mueller's purview.
They are not.
Mueller is authorized to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated" with Trump's presidential campaign as well as "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation."
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein also empowered Mueller to probe "any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a)," which includes instances of perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses.
Giuliani was either lying or confused. Neither is good.
Giuliani did not get the response he was expecting on Twitter because hardly anybody takes the former New York City mayor seriously.
Mueller did not file any indictments before or after Trump departed for the G20 summit in Argentina on Thursday. Giuliani is confusing correlation with causation (except neither of these applies because there were no new indictments).
Rather, Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and investigators about a deal to erect Trump's dream skyscraper in Moscow, throwing Trump world into panic mode.
This was going on in secret during the 2016 presidential election.
There does not appear to be a cogent legal strategy inside the Trump legal camp.
Ouch.
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