[Washington Examiner] Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's personal lawyer, has accused special counsel Robert Mueller's team of being so driven by "their zeal to get the president" that they are plotting to push witnesses in the Russia investigation to lie.Former New York City Mayor Giuliani told the Washington Examiner that allegations that former Trump campaign manager met Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his refuge inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London was "all part of a plan to pressure Manafort to lie."
He linked the Manafort claims, outlined in a report in The Guardian, to comments by controversial right-wing author Jerome Corsi that he recently testified to a Mueller grand jury that Roger Stone ‐ his friend and a longtime Trump ally ‐ asked him to contact Assange about releasing emails stolen from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
"Is it conceivable that [Manafort] and Jerome Corsi, who is saying Mueller’s people are pressuring him to lie, are telling the truth and the special counsel in their zeal to get the president may be going too far," Giuliani said.
Giuliani said he spoke with Manafort’s lawyers Tuesday and intimated that he discussed the allegations about meetings with Assange. "What do you think?" Giuliani said when asked what they talked about.
Manafort’s troubles have deepened this week with prosecutors for Mueller’s team accusing him of breaching a plea agreement by lying to federal investigators. Then, The Guardian claimed that secretly met several times with Assange in 2013, 2015, and in March 2016, when he was appointed to the Trump campaign.
After the original article’s publication, the Guardian softened its direct language and WikiLeaks announced it was suing the news organization for making a false accusation. But it was then reported that Mueller’s team is investigating a meeting Manafort had with Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno in Quito in 2017 and has specifically asked if WikiLeaks or Assange, were discussed in the meeting.
In a text message to the Washington Examiner, Stone said that if Manafort did meet with Assange "it would be news to me" and accused the former Trump campaign manager of turning against him. "I have no further comment on the news that his cooperation agreement with the special counsel appears to have broken down other than to say that last week’s Vanity Fair headline that said ’Manafort is dishing on Stone’ appears to be correct," he added.
The article he was referring to was published last month. It stated that Manafort visited the special counsel at least nine times since reaching the plea deal in mid-September. Stone did not respond when asked if had been contacted by Mueller's team.
Corsi said Monday he was refusing to sign a plea deal offered by Mueller. "I am not going to lie to avoid going to prison," he said.
The alleged breaking of Manafort's plea agreement puts the terms of his deal in jeopardy, and making it more likely he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Prosecutors said Manafort "committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel’s Office on a variety of subject matters" after agreeing to the plea deal.
In August, Manafort was convicted of eight counts of bank and tax fraud based on his political consulting work in Ukraine, leading to a maximum of 80 years behind bars. Manafort has been in prison since June, when he was jailed after prosecutors accused him of tampering with potential witnesses.