Time For Another Episode Of Punk'd, With Your Host RUDY GIULIANI

HE'S NEVER SITTING FOR AN INTERVIEW. JUST STOP.

Can we just cut the shit here? Trump was never going to sit for a voluntary interview with Robert Mueller. No lawyer in his right mind was ever going to let that demented orange liar near a prosecutor. And Rudy Giuliani wouldn't either.

For months, the president's Number One Flimflam Man has been pretending to negotiate the terms of a presidential interview. Meanwhile Trump's real lawyers, Emmet Flood and husband-and-wife team Jane and Martin Raskin, run out the clock, relying on Mueller's silence and Giuliani's willingness to shout lunatic bullshit into a microphone. If we had to guess, their bet is that Mueller won't subpoena Trump in the sixty days before the election -- a period which starts today.

Trump's strategy, both legal and political, is highly dependent on the results of the November midterms. If the GOP holds both houses of Congress, he might be able to get away with firing Mueller. If Democrats take the House and/or the Senate, he's fucked. Time to send out Rudy the Rodeo Clown!

"I don't want ten months of a long, protracted impeachment investigation when you don't need one if you're just car… https: //t.co/KiEsDToKJ3

— Christopher C. Cuomo (@Christopher C. Cuomo) 1536197437.0 

BLAH. BLAH. BLAH.

On Tuesday, Maggie'n'Mike reported that Mueller had blinked first. The Special Counsel's Office would allow Wharton's finest to do the final as a take-home exam.

Mr. Mueller will accept written answers from Mr. Trump on questions about whether his campaign conspired with Russia's election interference, Mr. Mueller's office told the president's lawyers in a letter, two people briefed on it said on Tuesday.

"Huh," we said in the Wonkette Seekrit Chatcave, "would those people be Rudy and Kellyanne?" Because if those two told us it was Friday, we'd seek a second opinion.

Then yesterday Rudy was dispatched to flap his yap at the AP.

President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators' questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president's attorneys told The Associated Press on Thursday. [...]

"That's a no-go. That is not going to happen," Giuliani said. "There will be no questions at all on obstruction."

Oooooh, stickin' it to The Man! Is Trump daring Mueller to issue a subpoena? Is shit about to go down? Have the real lawyers come to the entirely rational conclusion that even in writing, truthful answers would be so incriminating that his only option is to shut the hell up? (Spoiler Alert: Yeah, like a year ago.)

HAHA, SUCKERS!!!

Hours later, Giuliani was singing a different tune to Politico .

Asked about the AP report, Giuliani said: "It's a little complicated. I think the AP got it a little wrong, but it could be my fault and I didn't describe it right."

Could be! Or it could be that your job is to spew nonsense and hope that you've delayed so long that you're in the clear for the sixty-day election window. So which is it, Rudy? Your guy gonna talk about asking Comey to go easy on Flynn, firing Comey, threatening to fire Mueller, firing McCabe, trying to get McGahn to talk Sessions out of recusing, drafting the Lie Memo about Don Jr.'s Trump Tower meeting, and the one million other things that are NOT obstruction of justice? Or nah?

But Giuliani told POLITICO there has been no final decision on that issue.

"We're very opposed to that [but] we're not closing it off 100 percent," Giuliani said. "We don't want to mislead [prosecutors] and have them think it's easy, but we have also not closed our mind to it."

Taking that as NAH.

Then late last night, Buzzfeed's Chris Geidner got the old goat on the horn. What if they have TWO SETS OF NEGOTIATIONS!

Calling the proposal "a neat compromise," Rudy Giuliani said the president's lawyers were now seeking to negotiate, first, a set of questions that would cover only pre-election activity — what he refers to as Mueller's core mandate of investigating "Russian collusion."

Saying that the special counsel's office is "empowered to deal with" that topic directly and noting that "[t]hey do have a bunch of Russians indicted," Giuliani said the special counsel's office has "a better argument for that [interview], legally and factually."

Shit, bifurcating might just let them dick around all winter!

"For now no commitment on obstruction [questions], which are post-presidential matters, but [we] will agree to talk after the collusion/pre-presidential questions are over," Giuliani wrote of the latest offer to Mueller.

Of his "neat compromise," Giuliani said, "The best legal analysis is: They'll get what we're offering."

 Nopenopenope. We're not chasing that ball into the weeds again! He's was NEVER going to do it. If they lose in November, their plan is to fight a subpoena up to the Supreme Court, where Kavanaugh will probably kill it. The rest is noise.

THE END.

[ NYT / AP / Politico / Buzzfeed ]

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