Mueller won't try to charge Trump, says Giuliani

Former New York City mayor and U.S. attorney Rudy Giuliani is joining President Trump's legal team (Photo: Wikipedia)

President Trump brought Rudy Giuliani onto his legal team in what many viewed has a strategy to pressure FBI special counsel Robert Mueller to wrap up the "Russia collusion" investigation.

It might be working.

CNN reported Wednesday Giuliani is confirming Mueller's team has told the president's legal team they cannot indict a sitting president.

"All they get to do is write a report," Giuliani said in the CNN report. "They can't indict. At least they acknowledged that to us after some battling, they acknowledged that to us."

CNN pointedly said that decision would not be based on evidence, but instead the precedent that has been established in the DOJ.

Falling back on the so-far failed strategies for impeachment, the network also suggested there would be referrals to the House of Representatives, where such an event would develop.

"The inability to indict a sitting president has been the position of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department since the Nixon administration and reaffirmed in the Clinton administration, but it has never been tested in court," the report said.

It continued, "Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein publicly discussed the issue earlier this month at an event held by the Freedom Forum Institute. He was asked if a sitting president can be indicted."

"I'm not going to answer this in the context of any current matters, so you shouldn't draw any inference about it," Rosenstein said. "But the Department of Justice has in the past, when the issue arose, has opined that a sitting president cannot be indicted. There's been a lot of speculation in the media about this, I just don't have anything more to say about it."

Giuliani was more definite.

CNN reported he said, "The Justice Department memos going back to before Nixon say that you cannot indict a sitting president, you have to impeach him. Now there was a little time in which there was some dispute about that, but they acknowledged to us orally that they understand that they can't violate the Justice Department rules."

Giuliani has been using the one-year anniversary of Mueller's investigation to push for closure.

While Mueller was supposed to be investigating claims that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton, the now twice-failed Democrat hopeful, there's been no evidence of such collusion made available.

What has been uncovered is that the investigation mostly was triggered by a political hit piece assembled by a UK operative for a firm funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The evidence documents that he had Russian connections.

Also, there was a report just days ago on the Russian connections of Mueller, who several years ago reportedly was inside the communications network for a mission to hunt in Iran for a missing CIA operative. At that time the FBI reportedly tried to have Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska fund and help with the mission.

Mueller has used subpoenas, a grand jury and a year – at a cost of untold millions – to so far bring only process charges against some minor players.

He's also said he doesn't want to explore leaks that have been coming out of the grand jury he's used.

Mueller was appointed after fired FBI chief James Comey handed over government information to a friend with a request to give it to reporters in his hope it would trigger a special counsel investigation, which it did.