Lewandowski: Trump Team Will Fight Back if Mueller Subpoenas POTUS
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Sunday that although President Donald Trump respects the “rule of law,” there will be an all-out legal war if special counsel Robert Mueller subpoenas the president.
For the past year, Mueller has been investigating allegations that there was improper “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election campaign. To date, none of the allegations have been proven.
Lewandowski, who managed Trump’s campaign from its 2015 start until the summer of 2016, when he was replaced by Paul Manafort, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” to discuss the case.
Also Sunday, Trump issued angry tweets over the Mueller probe, particularly the criminal charges against Manafort related to activities that took place years before Manafort joined the Trump campaign.
As only one of two people left who could become President, why wouldn’t the FBI or Department of “Justice” have told me that they were secretly investigating Paul Manafort (on charges that were 10 years old and had been previously dropped) during my campaign? Should have told me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2018
….Paul Manafort came into the campaign very late and was with us for a short period of time (he represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole & many others over the years), but we should have been told that Comey and the boys were doing a number on him, and he wouldn’t have been hired!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2018
Mark Penn “Why are there people from the Clinton Foundation on the Mueller Staff? Why is there an Independent Counsel? To go after people and their families for unrelated offenses…Constitution was set up to prevent this…Stormtrooper tactics almost.” A disgrace!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2018
Lewandowski said during his Sunday interview that the Trump White House has been working to come to an acceptable accommodation with Mueller’s team.
” … [T]hey are trying to sit down and figure out if the president is going to sit down for an interview and that interview is going to be based on a narrow scope of questions that the team is trying to negotiate right now,” he said, according to a Fox News transcript of the show.
“The president clearly respects the rule of law in this country,” he said.
But if Mueller tries to subpoena the president, it would mean pushback, Lewandowski said.
“They will take it to court, and I believe the court’s going to be on the president’s side on this,” Lewandowski said.
He explained that the current scope of negotiations, led on the White House side by Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is to ascertain what questions Mueller will ask in any interview with the president.
” … [T]he Giuliani legal team is trying to negotiate with the Mueller team to decide if it’s the right thing to sit down and have this interview and if so, they want to understand what the scope of the questions are. So, there’s the potential to avoid the subpoena entirely if the teams can work together and determine that the questions that will be asked will be relevant to an investigation to prove once and for all there was no collusion,” Lewandowski said.
“And it sounds like what Giuliani and his team are saying is, ‘You don’t need to (go the) subpoena route, but if you do, we will fight it in court.’ The president has been very clear. He has offered to sit down with the Mueller investigators but he has said, and the Giuliani team has said this, they want to understand what the scope of questions are going to be before they sit down and do that.”
Lewandowski said that, despite reports that the FBI used informants to gather information on the Trump campaign and potential ties to Russia, the agency never took the direct route and asked the man running the campaign.
“I can tell you, I never spoke to anyone from the FBI as the campaign manager for 18 months of that campaign. Never did they notify me of their concerns about potential Russian meddling,” Lewandowski said. “Never did they notify me or anybody else while I was there of a potential spy entering the campaign.”
During the show, host Chris Wallace asked whether some recent Trump comments disparaging Democrats were over the line. Lewandowski, whose campaign style was often summarized as “let Trump be Trump,” demurred.
“Chris, it’s a clear reminder to the American people of what happens if the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives and Nancy Pelosi becomes the next speaker,” he said.
“Not one Democratic member of the House or the Senate voted for the historic tax cuts. This president tried to negotiate to get money for the (border) wall and take care of the people that came to this country through no fault of their own and the Democrats didn’t want to do it because they want to politicize it.
“So, this president has to remind the American people of what is at stake in the 2018 election and that is moving our country in the same direction — which is the lowest unemployment for African-Americans and Hispanics ever recorded — or going back to the ways of more money in taxes and increasing your taxes under what would be Speaker Pelosi.
“It’s a clear dichotomy,” he said. “And I think the president is on the right track.”
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