2LT International News

WASHINGTON, U.S. – The U.S. President Donald Trump and his legal team, headed by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani unveiled yet another attack on the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s federal investigation.

Mueller is investigating the alleged collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia, to sway the 2016 U.S. Presidential election in Trump’s favor.

Mueller is also investigating a potentially dangerous line of investigation into possible obstruction of justice by the U.S. President – a claim that if proved, could lead to Trump’s impeachment. 

While all of Trump’s previous attorneys and legal teams have employed a more cooperating tone in Mueller’s probe – the President’s current top lawyer turned that strategy on its head, the day he was brought on board to lead Trump’s case.

Giuliani said in an interview that his strategy for dealing with Mueller’s federal investigation against the U.S. President was to maintain an aggressive and confrontational tone. 

Then, days later Giuliani publicly revealed that the White House was focussed on trying to discredit Mueller’s investigation.

Giuliani even admitted that the White House is waging a fierce information campaign against Mueller and his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

He pointed out that the strategy was aimed at delegitimizing the probe in the eyes of voters and lawmakers in Congress.

That effort from Giuliani, his team and his client have only grown in size and form since then but now, there seems to be a twist.

While the U.S. President has tirelessly repeated his “no collusion” denial ever since being elected, Giuliani decided on Monday that it was time to move from deflecting allegations, to disproving the whole idea that the probe is based on.

In an interview with ‘Fox & Friends,’ Giuliani dismissed Mueller’s investigation by pointing out that collusion is “not a crime.”

The Trump attorney explained, “I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. Collusion is not a crime.”

In a separate interview with CNN later in the day, Giuliani doubled down on his assertion that collusion is not a “crime,” and said, “I don’t even know if that’s a crime, colluding about Russians.”

He added, “You start analyzing the crime — the hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay them for hacking.”

At the end of his latest attack on Mueller’s investigation, Giuliani said that Trump was “absolutely innocent.”

Meanwhile, reports pointed out that this was not the first time such an idea had bee floated.

In December 2017, Trump told The New York Times, “There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime.”

A few days later, Jay Sekulow, another member of Trump’s legal team was quoted as saying “there is no crime of collusion.”

At the time, Sekulow argued, “For something to be a crime, there has to be a statute that you claim is being violated. There is not a statute that refers to criminal collusion.”

Experts pointed out that by arguing that collusion is not a crime, Giuliani has effectively broadened his team’s attempt to discredit Mueller’s investigation. 

Meanwhile, since being appointed as the Special Counsel to head FBI’s investigation into alleged collusion, Mueller has indicted a number of Russian nationals and organizations on charges of conspiring to hack into U.S. systems and waging social media campaigns intended to boost Trump’s presidential campaign and sowing discord. 

Following Giuliani’s claims, experts concurred that collusion itself is not a federal crime. 

However, a report in The Washington Post noted that any Trump cooperation with the Russian government could be tied to multiple criminal violations of election law, computer hacking, false statement and wire raise.

Further, the report noted that even if Trump himself wasn’t personally involved in Russian hacking efforts, directing such attacks or aiding them in any way could constitute a crime.