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Rudy Giuliani said on Sunday that there’s ‘nothing wrong’ with taking information from Russians, after the Mueller report laid out extensive ties between the Trump campaign and Russians during the 2016 election campaign.
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The president’s lawyer told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “any candidate in the world would take information,” even as Tapper noted the information came from a “hostile foreign source.”
The comments came as Giuliani slammed a statement made by Sen. Mitt Romney criticizing Trump after a redacted version of the 448-page Mueller report was released on Thursday. The report found that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election but it could not conclude that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. On obstruction it did not find the president guilty, but it also did not “exonerate” him.
Romney’s statement read in part: “I am also appalled that, among other things, fellow citizens working in a campaign for president welcomed help from Russia — including information that had been illegally obtained; that none of them acted to inform American law enforcement; and that the campaign chairman was actively promoting Russian interests in Ukraine.”
The statement referred to the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Trump campaign officials including Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort agreed to sit down with Russians offering dirt on their Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Giuliani called Romney a hypocrite. “Stop the bull. Stop this pious act that you weren’t trying to dig up dirt on people,” Giuliani said of Romney, who ran for president in 2012 against Barack Obama. Giuliani noted that he had run in the Republican primary against Romney.
He added, “Who says it’s even illegal” to get opposition research from foreigners, though he said he would have advised against it and “probably” would not have done it himself.
The Romney statement didn’t sit well with the president either. He pinned a tweet mocking the Utah senator to his own Twitter feed.
“If @MittRomney spent the same energy fighting Barack Obama as he does fighting Donald Trump, he could have won the race (maybe)!” it said.