President Donald Trump threw his full backing behind personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on Saturday night amid some speculation that the president was beginning to distance himself, if not totally dropping away from the former New York City mayor on the heels of the announcement of a federal investigation.
According to The Hill , during an interview with Fox News’ Judge Jeannine Pirro, Trump not only confirmed that Giuliani is still a part of his legal team, but also praised the former mayor, echoing an earlier tweet in which he called Giuliani the greatest mayor in New York City history.
Trump also stuck to a recently developed talking point that he’s unaware of the federal investigation into Giuliani which revolves around his dealings with Ukraine.
“There is some confusion as to whether or not you still consider him your attorney. Is he your attorney?” Pirro asked the president.
“Yes, and he’s a great gentleman, he was a great mayor, one of the greatest, maybe the greatest mayor in the history of New York,” Trump told Pirro. “He was a fantastic prosecutor, I know nothing about him being under investigation…I can’t imagine it.”
Pirro appeared to want full confirmation that the president still stands behind Giuliani in spite of the recent news and asked again if Giuliani had his full support, a question to which Trump doubled down on his insistence that he was completely unaware of the investigation targeting the former mayor.
“Well, I just don’t know if there is an investigation,” Trump responded, while questioning why his political enemies weren’t being subject to similar investigations.
In a bombshell report, The New York Times recently reported news of the investigation, which alleges Giuliani attempted to undermine the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in his efforts at attempting to pressure the Ukrainian president into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , Giuliani insisted in a CNN interview that he was also unaware that he was now under federal investigation for allegedly violating foreign lobbying disclosure laws by prosecutors out of Manhattan.
Giuliani claimed that the investigation sounded more like a political attack, claiming that if it was legitimate, it would have been kept secret and not leaked to the mainstream media.
The former mayor’s best defense is his insistence that he conducted business in Ukraine on behalf of the president which, if true, would afford him protection from breaking foreign lobbying laws.
Giuliani’s defensive stance comes on the heels of the arrest of two of his associates, who were recently taken into custody for allegedly violating campaign finance laws.