Rudy Giuliani would prefer it if his client Donald Trump’s political team would stop mouthing off about the Russia investigation.
“I wish they’d sit back and keep quiet for a while,” Giuliani, who leads the president’s legal team, told The Daily Beast in a brief interview on Tuesday evening.
The former New York mayor was reacting to comments by Brad Parscale, the president’s reelection campaign manager, who earlier on Tuesday called for the removal of attorney general Jeff Sessions.
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“Time to fire Sessions,” Parscale tweeted. “End the Mueller investigation. You can’t obstruct something that was phony against you. The IG report gives @realDonaldTrump the truth to end it all.”
Giuliani said he has not spoken with Parscale or anyone else on the campaign, but said he wouldn’t put much stock in their legal opinions.
“I don’t give them advice, and I sure as hell wouldn’t take any advice from them,” Giuliani said. “They’re not lawyers.”
As for the advice Parscale is offering, Giuliani said he would not advise the president to remove Sessions, a move that would allow the president to replace him with an AG who would not have to recuse himself from matters pertaining to the 2016 campaign, and could therefore assert more control over—or end—special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election-meddling.
Firing Sessions would be an “unnecessary distraction,” Giuliani said, as has “no role in the investigation.”
In any case, “Mueller’s team is falling apart,” he said, pointing to the removal of FBI agent Peter Strzok from the FBI premises on Tuesday after a Justice Department inspector general report faulted him with improper conduct during the investigations into both the Trump and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns.
