After saying that President Donald Trump “is not going to issue pardons in this investigation,” and that he would advise against the President offering pardons related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani left the door open for Trump to do just that.
In an interview with Giuliani Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked about a quote Giuliani gave the New York Daily News Friday: “When the whole thing is over, things might get cleaned up with some presidential pardons,” the Trump lawyer said.
“My advice to him, as long as I’m his lawyer, is not to do it,” Giuliani said Sunday, “because you’ll just cloud what is becoming now a very clear picture of an extremely unfair investigation with no criminality involved of any kind.”
In fact, Mueller’s probe has so far produced a long list of plea deals and indictments.
Tapper asked whether Giuliani’s talk about pardons was meant to send a signal to defendants in the Mueller probe: “Some people think that this is the President and you suggesting, signaling really, ‘Don’t cooperate with prosecutors because a pardon is there if you just hold on.'”
“I don’t think that’s the interpretation,” Giuliani responded. “It’s certainly not intended that way.”
“What I mean is, you’re not going to get a pardon just because you’re involved in this investigation,” he said. “You probably have a higher burden if you’re involved in this investigation as compared to the others who get pardons, but you’re certainly not excluded from it, if in fact the President and his advisers — not me — come to the conclusion that you’ve been treated unfairly.”
“Doesn’t mean that anybody should rely on it,” Giuliani added later in his answer, noting other presidents who he said had issued pardons “in these political investigations.”
“Please, listen to what I’m saying, and the President: The big signal is, nobody’s been pardoned yet. If you’re going to do it, probably this is the time to do it, to cut it off. There’s nothing to cut off. But there is a lot of unfairness out there.”
