"You got 1.4 million documents, you have 28 witnesses," President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said of what has been provided to special counsel Robert Mueller. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images Giuliani: Trump’s team ‘leaning toward’ recommending he not talk with Mueller

The president’s legal team is “leaning toward not” recommending he participate in an interview with the group investigating Russian interference in the 2016 elections, Rudy Giuliani, a member of the team, said Sunday.

While the decision whether to testify before Robert Mueller’s team is ultimately up to President Donald Trump, Giuliani said the legal team will likely recommend that he not speak with investigators. Trump has said he wants to appear; his legal team has argued he can’t be compelled to testify.


“We’re leaning toward not. But look, if they can convince us that it will be brief, it would be to the point, there were five or six points they have to clarify, and with that, we can get this long nightmare for the American public over,” Giuliani said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

If Trump is subpoenaed to testify, Giuliani said he would urge the president to appear but that he would claim that Trump's testimony is unnecessary.

“We’ll say, hey, you got everything you need, you got 1.4 million documents, you have 28 witnesses. The president’s given every explanation and corrected some that were mis-impressions. You’ve got everything you need, what — what do you need us for?” Giuliani said.

Giuliani said that with recent pardons, the president is not sending a signal to those involved in the Russia investigation that he will support them, and he said that while the president could legally pardon himself, the “political ramifications of that would be tough.”

"He has no intention of pardoning himself but … [that’s] not to say he can’t,” he said.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Giuliani confirmed that he had been interviewed by the Justice Department's inspector general for an upcoming report on the FBI's handling of the probe into HIllary Clinton's use of a personal email server.

"I was questioned once, and they were very satisfied by the answer," he said.

Two days before the FBI announced in October 2016 that it was reopening the investigation into Clinton, Giuliani promised some "pretty big surprises" during a TV appearance, which led some to believe he had received leaked information from the FBI that the case would be reopened. On Sunday, he defended those remarks, saying the surprise he was talking about was new campaign ads set to be released.

"I didn’t get any leaked information from the FBI," Giuliani said. "I speculated based on the fact that I knew there was a lot of turmoil within the FBI."