Trump lawyer attacks Mueller report as ‘calumny, lies and distortions’
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump's top lawyer attacked "calumny, lies and distortions" in the Mueller investigation report while slamming a prominent Republican who said it showed pervasive dishonesty among the President and his top aides.
Mr Rudy Giuliani mounted a combative defence of the President in Sunday talk show appearances that took aim at Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators, the evidence they amassed and the witnesses they cited.
The former New York mayor heaped special scorn on Senator Mitt Romney, a former Republican presidential candidate who said on Friday he was "sickened" by the report's findings and "appalled" that Mr Trump's election campaign "welcomed help from Russia".
"What a hypocrite. What a hypocrite. Any candidate in the whole world in America would take information," Mr Giuliani said of Mr Romney on CNN's State Of The Union.
He was referring to Democratic e-mails that were hacked by Russian operatives and disseminated by WikiLeaks in 2016 to hurt Mr Trump's presidential rival, Mrs Hillary Clinton.
"Who says it's even illegal?" Mr Giuliani added.
"Does the information turn out to be false, by the way? The information that was gleaned and disseminated, every newspaper printed it."
Mr Trump publicly encouraged Russia and WikiLeaks while top campaign officials, including his son and son-in-law, met in Trump Tower with a Russian promising dirt on Mrs Clinton.
"There is nothing wrong with taking information from the Russians. It depends on where it came from," Mr Giuliani said, adding that as a lawyer he would have advised against it.
"This didn't become an international scandal because of immorality. It became an international scandal because the President was accused of violating the law falsely."- AFP
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