Rudy Giuliani has become a lightning rod for criticism since taking on a top role on the president’s legal team. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo Trump attorney Giuliani resigns from private law firm

Rudy Giuliani resigned from his private law firm on Wednesday as he steps up his work as one of President Donald Trump’s personal attorneys in the Russia investigation.

The former New York mayor initially took an unpaid leave of absence last month from the New York office of Greenberg Traurig, but in a joint statement issued Thursday the firm and Giuliani confirmed the separation was permanent.


“In light of the pressing demands of the Mueller investigation, I believe it is in everyone’s best interest that I make it a permanent resignation,” Giuliani said, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. “This way, my sole concentration can be on this critically important matter for our country.”

Giuliani joined Greenberg Traurig in January 2016 to lead its cybersecurity and crisis management practice. But his foray into presidential politics as a vocal Trump campaign supporter sidelined him from the firm that October through the election.

Richard Rosenbaum, Greenberg Traurig’s executive chairman, said in Thursday’s statement that Giuliani initially had planned to step away “to play a limited role, for a short period of time, to address specific matters for President Trump.”

But Rosenbaum said Giuliani changed plans “after recognizing that this work is all consuming and is lasting longer than initially anticipated.”

The Miami-based law firm is also involved in the Russia probe. Its client roster includes Deutsche Bank, a major lender to Trump, the Trump Organization and the real estate firm owned by the family of Jared Kushner, the White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law.

Bloomberg reported last December that Mueller had subpoenaed the bank for records about lending to Trump, though it later corrected the article to say the subpoena came from the special counsel but didn’t target the president specifically.

Giuliani has become a lightning rod for criticism since taking on a top position last month on the president’s legal team, namely over his answers during television interviews about Trump’s role in the Stormy Daniels hush money saga, as well as his reason for firing FBI Director James Comey.

The president has privately griped to associates that Giuliani’s media appearances were not helping to tamp down the Daniels story, POLITICO reported earlier this week.

But Trump and his staff have also publicly stood by the lawyer. “He thinks he's done a fine job,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Wednesday during her daily briefing.

Giuliani, a former two-term mayor who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, hasn’t entirely let go of some of his other gigs. He attended a rally last weekend in Washington for the Iran Freedom Convention for Human Rights and Democracy. This week, he traveled to Dallas on Tuesday for a speech at the grand opening of a $1 billion housing development and then was spotted Wednesday night sitting two rows behind home plate at Yankee Stadium during a nationally televised baseball game against the Boston Red Sox.

In an interview earlier this week, Giuliani said he’s maintaining a busy schedule learning the nuances of the Russia case but also still doing work that extends beyond Trump. He noted he had a business trip to Paris next month. “Governments throughout the world trust me to do their cybersecurity and pay me millions of dollars to do it,” he said.

On the Trump legal team, Giuliani has taken a lead role in negotiating the terms of an interview between Mueller and Trump, though it’s still unclear if such a meeting will happen.

While the president has signaled publicly he wants to meet with the special counsel, Giuliani told POLITICO that Trump and his lawyers planned to make a decision by May 17 — the one-year anniversary of the special counsel’s appointment — on whether they’d consent to a sit-down interview or perhaps open up a larger legal battle if Mueller issued a subpoena. That fight could reach the Supreme Court.

Giuliani’s arrival on Trump’s personal legal team added a big-name expert on criminal law who had previously worked in senior roles for President Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department. Other attorneys working for the president include Emmet Flood, who started this week in the White House handling of the official response to the Russia probe, and Ty Cobb, who is set to retire at the end of May.

On the outside are conservative lawyer and radio talk show host Jay Sekulow and the Miami-based lawyer team of Jane and Martin Raskin.

