During a 2018 interview with investigators from the Justice Department inspector general’s office, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer had a stunning explanation for his client’s behavior as a campaign surrogate for Donald Trump: “There’s no obligation to tell the truth.”
“Oh, you could throw a fake,” the former New York City mayor added.
The comments shed light on Giuliani’s shameless dishonesty in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, when he filed a series of lawsuits claiming, falsely, that the election was stolen from Trump. Those lawsuits – loaded with conspiracy theories – were so ethically dubious that Giuliani’s license to practice law has been suspended in New York and D.C.
But at the time of the aforementioned interview, investigators were trying to determine if Giuliani had a source in the FBI who was feeding him dirt on Hilary Clinton in the run-up to the 2016 election. During a Fox News appearance in October 2016, Giuliani claimed that Trump had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”
Two days later, then FBI Director James Comey announced that he was reopening an investigation into the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, a development that helped tank Clinton’s White House bid.
So the DOJ inspector general wanted to know – did Giuliani’s message on Fox News indicate that the FBI was illegally leaking sensitive information to him?
In a transcript obtained by The Project on Government Oversight and given to The Washington Post, Giuliani claims the ‘surprise’ he was referring to was a large ad buy from the Trump campaign. He insisted that his bombastic tone on Fox News was just hyperbole, and that he was shocked when Comey reopened the investigation.
“In the heat of a political campaign, on television, I’m not saying Rudy necessarily, but everybody embellishes everything,” said Marc Mukasey, Giuliani’s business partner and lawyer, to investigators.
“You could throw a fake,” Giuliani insisted.
An agent replied, “Fake news, right?”
“Right,” Mukasey said.
Giuliani added that he hadn’t spoken to an FBI agent since 2014, when he received an award from an agent’s group.
“The last time I could remember talking to an FBI agent before that was when I got the [award] . . . which my wife liked because it came with handcuffs. She wanted me to get more handcuffs.”
Giuliani clarified: “Only to put on the wall.”
