Giuliani's bizarre bragging about the Manafort-Trump alliance highlights new obstruction questions

Source: Washington Post

Giuliani’s bizarre bragging about the Manafort-Trump alliance highlights new obstruction questions

By Aaron Blake
November 28 at 12:29 PM

The first two paragraphs of this New York Times story are remarkable enough: Despite Paul Manafort having agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, his lawyer, Kevin Downing, continued to brief President Trump’s legal team. That’s a highly unusual setup, and one that is generally frowned upon in legal circles.

The next two paragraphs, though, might take the cake. In them, Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani practically brags about having pulled one over on Mueller by gleaning key information from the arrangement.

Via Times reporters Michael S. Schmidt, Sharon LaFraniere and Maggie Haberman:

Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the president’s personal lawyers, acknowledged the arrangement on Tuesday and defended it as a source of valuable insights into the special counsel’s inquiry and where it was headed. Such information could help shape a legal defense strategy, and it also appeared to give Mr. Trump and his legal advisers ammunition in their public relations campaign against the special counsel’s office.

For example, Mr. Giuliani said, Mr. Manafort’s lawyer Kevin M. Downing told him that prosecutors hammered away at whether the president knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Russians promised to deliver damaging information on Hillary Clinton to his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. The president has long denied knowing about the meeting in advance. “He wants Manafort to incriminate Trump,” Mr. Giuliani declared of Mr. Mueller.

In other words, the Trump team is saying this highly unusual arrangement was used to gain a strategic advantage. It isn’t even pretending these were harmless status updates. Giuliani is gloating about having gamed the legal system.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/28/giulianis-bizarre-bragging-about-manafort-trump-alliance-raises-new-obstruction-questions/