Giuliani adds star power to Trump’s legal team
WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA
» For weeks, President Donald Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with the cable news chatter that he couldn’t hire a big-name attorney for his legal team.
But the president boasted to a confidant this week that he had struck a deal that he believed would silence those critics: He was hiring “America’s F—-ing Mayor.”
With the addition of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump gains a former U.S. attorney, a past presidential candidate and a TV-savvy defender at a time when the White House is looking for ways to bring the president’s involvement with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation to a close. Trump has been weighing whether to sit for questioning by Mueller’s team, and his lawyers have repeatedly met with investigators to define the scope of the questions he would face.
Giuliani will enter those negotiations, filling the void left by attorney John Dowd, who resigned last month.
The deal was finalized over dinner in the last week at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s coastal Florida retreat. On Monday, Giuliani was spotted at a West Palm Beach hotel, gleefully puffing on a cigar but declining to talk to the press.
Giuliani’s addition to the legal team fulfills his longdelayed hope for a White House job. After drawing wide praise for his leadership in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Giuliani ran for president seven years later, only to see his bid quickly falter.
He has known Trump for decades — his bombthrowing rhetorical style can at times mirror that of the president — and he became an aggressive surrogate for the celebrity businessman from the early days of his insurgent presidential campaign. Giuliani had been widely expected to join Trump’s administration, but was passed over for the position of secretary of state, the position he badly wanted, and eventually left without a Cabinet post.
But the president kept in touch with Giuliani, sometimes calling to ask for advice, both on policy and personnel, and frequently asking for the ex-mayor’s take on how the stories surrounding the administration were playing in the media.
Trump frequently sought Giuliani’s opinion of developments in the special counsel’s ongoing probe into possible Russian collusion, according to three people familiar with the conversations but not authorized to publicly discuss private talks. At one point last summer, the president informally floated hiring Giuliani, but did not follow through, according to one person familiar with his thinking,
Trump then moved to formalize the arrangement in recent days, touting Giuliani’s tenacity — and raving about his star power with the vulgar variation of Giuliani’s “America’s Mayor” nickname while talking with one person, who not authorized to discuss a private conversation.
In a statement announcing Giuliani’s hire, the president expressed his wish that the investigation wrap up soon.
A number of Trump allies have believed that Trump has been ill-served by his current legal team and applauded the addition of the hard-charging Giuliani.
“I for one will sleep much easier knowing that Mayor Giuliani and these other people have joined the team to give the president’s team extra power,” said Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign who also served as deputy communications director when Giuliani ran for president in 2008.