Rudy Giuliani is calling for the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to be suspended in the wake of the Justice Department’s inspector general report on the FBI’s actions during the 2016 election.
The report, among other findings, said anti-Donald Trump text messages exchanged between FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page “cast a cloud” over the bureau’s actions, although it found no evidence that their views “directly affected” investigative decisions. Strzok worked briefly for Mueller, but was removed from that office after other politically charged texts came to light.
Giuliani, however, said in a Fox News interview that it’s time to “investigate the investigators.”
“Let’s take a halt to the Mueller investigation. Let’s stop that and get rid of all the agents doing the Mueller investigation,” Giuliani, one of Trump’s attorneys in the Russia investigation, said on Fox News Friday morning.
Giuliani, who, aside from Trump himself, has been the most public face of the President’s efforts to challenge the validity of the Mueller probe, made similar remarks to Fox News’ Sean Hannity the night before.
“I believe that (Deputy Attorney General) Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions have a chance to redeem themselves and that chance comes about tomorrow. It doesn’t go beyond tomorrow,” Giuliani said then. It was not clear what he meant by the “tomorrow” reference and he did not elaborate.
“Tomorrow, Mueller should be suspended and honest people should be brought in, impartial people to investigate these people like (Peter) Strzok.”
Giuliani told Hannity that Strzok should be fired and “in jail by the end of next week.”
“Even for the present director of the FBI to have him there tomorrow would be disgraceful,” Giuliani argued. “Every FBI agent should demand that that man be fired.”
Giuliani told Hannity that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has recused himself from the Russia investigation due to his involvement as a campaign surrogate for Trump, “should now step up big time to save his department.”
He said Sessions should suspend the Russia investigation, which he called the “phony Trump investigation” and bring in “honest” FBI agents who he can trust to investigate Strzok, Page and former FBI Director James Comey.
The sweeping, 500-page report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz released Thursday detailed a series of failures by the top federal officials in charge of the Hillary Clinton email investigation ahead of the election.
CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Laura Jarrett, Jeremy Herb and Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.
