President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said late Monday that another member of the president’s legal team made a “mistake” when he originally denied that Trump dictated a letter about the 2016 meeting between his son, campaign aides and a Russian lawyer.
“It was a mistake,” Giuliani said on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” on Monday. “I swear to God, it was a mistake.”
Trump’s legal team wrote to special counsel Robert Mueller in January to argue that Trump cannot commit obstruction of justice in the Russia probe because of his constitutional authority.
{mosads} The letter also confirmed that Trump dictated a statement to The New York Times about the Trump Tower meeting between Trump’s eldest son, other campaign aides and a Russian lawyer who promised compromising information on Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders previously denied that the president had any involvement in writing the letter.
“I don’t think anybody’s lying,” Giuliani said Monday. “I think a mistake was made.”
The former mayor of New York told CNN that those kinds of mistakes happen “all the time” in the early stages of an investigation.
No one testified falsely under oath, Giuliani also noted.
Giuliani was brought onto the Trump legal team in late April to represent him throughout the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Giuliani said Monday that he only agreed with “70, 80 percent” of the January letter.
He said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the revelation of the contradicting statements serves as a reason why “you don’t let the president testify” with Mueller.
Giuliani said Sekulow was “uninformed” when he denied Trump had any involvement in the letter last year.
The admission has left Trump’s allies and legal experts scrambling to determine the legal ramifications of his involvement with the letter.