Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani shrugged off complaints that the White House was meddling in the Russia probe. “I’d assume they’ll be very careful we don’t get information we shouldn’t get.” | Drew Angerer/Getty Images Giuliani: Trump to decide on Mueller interview 'in the next couple weeks' The president's personal lawyer says that cancellation of the North Korea summit will give the president time to engage with the Russia investigation.

President Donald Trump’s cancellation of next month’s North Korea summit means he’ll have more time to strategize about a different meeting of potentially historic proportions – his much-discussed interview with special counsel Robert Mueller.

Rudy Giuliani, now Trump’s personal attorney, last week said the president’s preparations for the June 12 meeting in Singapore with Kim Jong Un would delay progress toward arranging a sit-down with prosecutors investigating Russian contacts with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. Now, with the international diplomatic effort on hold, Giuliani expects the president to push ahead faster.


“It certainly gives us more time to spend with him and make a decision, maybe a final one, in the next couple of weeks, whether the interview is a go or a no go,” Giuliani told POLITICO on Thursday.

Trump and Giuliani met alone for 30 minutes on Wednesday in New York at the Palace Hotel on the sidelines of a GOP campaign event. The men touched on a DOJ-lawmaker meeting scheduled for Thursday in Washington surrounding the FBI informant who approached Trump campaign officials in 2016 about their interactions with Russia officials but was also done to “get him up to date on what’s going on” on the Mueller investigation, Giuliani said.

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“His mood was excellent. He feels we’re on offense now,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani said the president’s lawyers have not been satisfied with negotiations around some of their conditions for the meeting.

Trump’s lawyers are still trying to get Mueller to agree to share questions for the president in advance, Giuliani said. They also are pressing for Mueller to set a self-imposed deadline for the completion of the investigation with respect to whether Trump committed obstruction of justice in the firing last year of FBI director James Comey.

Giuliani said Trump’s lawyers were also trying to view a series of top-secret Justice Department documents about the scope of Mueller’s Russia investigation, including whether the FBI used an informant in 2016 to approach lower-level staffers working with the Republican’s presidential campaign.

Democrats have raised concerns about Trump using his presidential powers to glean details about the Mueller probe that can be relevant to him or associates under investigation, and they’ve singled out the Republican leaders of the House Intelligence and Oversight committees who pressed for a meeting Thursday with FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

Giuliani shrugged off the complaints that the White House was meddling in the Russia probe on the president’s behalf.

“I’d assume they’ll be very careful we don’t get information we shouldn’t get,” Giuliani said. “I don’t want the guy’s identity. I don’t want classified information.”

Even amid the Korea negotiations, Giuliani and Trump had been in close contact about the myriad legal issues facing the president and close associates like longtime lawyer Michael Cohen.

The former New York mayor rode in a golf cart while Trump and his son, Andrew Giuliani, a White House aide and former college golfer, played a round on a Sunday morning earlier this month at the president’s Northern Virginia golf course.

Giuliani also met this month with Trump at the White House – and he said he speaks with the president by telephone on average about twice a day, including a call Thursday morning about the U.S. plan to pull out of the North Korea summit.

Trump sometimes will call his lawyer upwards of four to five times a day, as early as 6:30 a.m. and as late as midnight. But Giuliani said the frenetic schedule is something he was used to going back to the 2016 campaign.

“I live by myself so it’s not a big deal,” Giuliani said. Noting his separation from his third wife, Judith, the former New York mayor joked of the president’s frequent calls, “Maybe that’s why she’s divorcing me.”

