President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani said in a new interview on Sunday that even if Trump had shot former FBI Director James Comey, he still couldn’t have been indicted.
“In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted,” Giuliani told HuffPost. “I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is.”
The former New York City mayor went on to say that impeachment would be the course of action if Trump committed a crime, even in the extreme hypothetical circumstance that he shot Comey.
{mosads}“If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day,” Giuliani told HuffPost. “Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”
The comments come one day after The New York Times obtained a letter from Trump’s legal team arguing that the Constitution gives the president the authority to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”
Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer under President Obama, told HuffPost that Giuliani’s claims were “absurd.”
“A president could not be prosecuted for murder? Really?” he told the publication. “It is one of many absurd positions that follow from their argument. It is self-evidently wrong.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller is currently investigating alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
Mueller has told Trump’s lawyers that investigators need to speak with the president to determine whether he sought to obstruct the probe.
However, Trump’s legal team has been reluctant to allow such an interview out of concern that prosecutors could use the president’s words against him.
Giuliani said earlier on Sunday that Trump most likely has the power to pardon himself.
“He’s not [going to], but he probably does,” he told ABC News.
“He has no intention of pardoning himself,” he continued. “That’s another really interesting constitutional question: Can the president pardon himself?”
“It would be an open question. I think it would probably get answered by, ‘gosh, that’s what the Constitution says.’ And if you want to change it, change it. But, yeah,” Giuliani added.