Friday, April 20, 2018

Rudy Giuliani just joined Trump’s legal team

He’s joining the team handling Trump’s response to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.


By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com  Apr 19, 2018, 5:41pm EDT

President Trump has a new lawyer, and his name is Rudy Giuliani.

The former New York City mayor, US attorney, and Republican presidential candidate told the Washington Post’s Robert Costa and Josh Dawsey that he’s agreed to join Trump’s legal team responding to the Mueller investigation — saying that he wanted to “negotiate an end” to the probe. Martin and Jane Raskin, a husband-and-wife lawyer team specializing in complex white-collar criminal defense, will also join the team.

The news comes nearly a month after John Dowd, Trump’s previous top personal lawyer on Mueller matters, quit. In the interim, the president has struggled to recruit top-tier legal talent to join his team. Though Ty Cobb continues to lead the White House’s response to the investigation, only conservative activist lawyer Jay Sekulow, who has no criminal law background, has been representing Trump personally. Other hires were floated, and fell through.

Enter Giuliani. The former mayor, and current head of the consulting firm Giuliani Partners, has known Trump for decades and was an enthusiastic surrogate for him on the campaign trail in 2016. He was floated (both by himself and by others) as a potential secretary of state pick after Trump won. In the end, Trump passed him over for State, and Giuliani didn’t take an administration job. Now he’s stepping in in a very consequential post indeed — though it’s not clear, exactly, just how big his role will be.

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