President Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday floated the idea of suing members of Congress over their actions relating to an impeachment inquiry into Trump, saying their actions are “worse than McCarthy.”
“I had a couple of talks with civil rights lawyers and a constitutional lawyer today and here’s what they’re recommending: that we should bring a lawsuit on behalf of the president and several of the people in the administration, maybe even myself as a lawyer, against the members of Congress individually for violating constitutional rights, violating civil rights,” Giuliani said in an appearance on Fox News.
{mosads}He accused Democrats of violating Article II of the Constitution, which gives the president the “power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.”
“They are doing extraordinary things. For example, they are violating — they’re interfering with the president in exercising his rights under Article II: The president of the United States conducts the foreign policy of the United States,” Giuliani said. “They’re calling foreign leaders. They are going to foreign capitals.”
“This is worse than McCarthy,” he added later, referring to former Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) search for communist supporters in the U.S. government in the 1950s.
Giuliani’s comments come as House Democrats are looking into Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump is accused of pushing Zelensky to look into presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son for his own gain. The president has denied wrongdoing and the White House has released a partial transcript of the call.
“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me,” Trump said on the call, according to the memo.