https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/18/mueller-giuliani-suspend-probe-652939

Call to suspend Mueller probe was just posturing, Giuliani says
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 06/18/2018 07:46 PM EDT

President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said on Monday that he was actually just bluffing last week when he called for Justice Department leaders to suspend special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation within 24 hours.

“I didn’t think it would,” Giuliani told POLITICO with a laugh when asked about the Mueller inquiry’s still being very much an active investigation. “But I still think it should be.”

Giuliani’s demand for the Mueller investigation to be terminated came on Thursday night in response to a report the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General that criticized former FBI Director James Comey’s decisions overseeing the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Appearing on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Giuliani said Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should “redeem themselves” the next day by shutting down the Mueller inquiry.

“That’s what I’m supposed to do,” Giuliani explained on Monday. “What am I supposed to say? That they should investigate him forever? Sorry, I’m not a sucker.”

The former New York mayor’s aggressive public comments challenging the legitimacy of the Russia investigation and defending the president on both politics and policy have been the source of frequent controversy. Trump last month said Giuliani, his newest personal lawyer, would need to “get his facts straight” after he’d revealed on live cable television that the president did know about a hush-money payment that Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. More recently, Giuliani has struggled to explain his criticism of former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Trump rival for the White House in 2020, whom he has called a “mentally deficient idiot.”