By Chris Sommerfeldt
New York Daily News
NEW YORK —Rudy Giuliani dared special counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday to have Omarosa Manigault Newman testify in the Russia investigation, claiming it would become an “even bigger joke” if she does.
The former New York mayor’s sardonic response came in the wake of Manigault Newman revealing she has been contacted by Mueller’s investigators and saying she will cooperate if they reach out again.
“Let them take their investigation, which is a joke, and make it an even bigger joke with Omarosa,” Giuliani told The New York Daily News.
Giuliani vehemently denied Manigault Newman’s claim earlier Tuesday that President Donald Trump “absolutely” had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ mass releases of Hillary Clinton’s hacked campaign emails.
“She has no idea what she’s talking about,” Giuliani, 74, said. “There’s no way he knew about that.”
Mueller is looking into whether there was any coordination between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, which provided the stolen Clinton emails to WikiLeaks, according to the U.S. intelligence community.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.
Manigault Newman, a one-time devotee of Trump who was fired from the White House last December, dropped a book Tuesday that paints the president as an ignorant narcissist who has been caught on tape using the N-word. The reality TV star-turned-White House official is on a media blitz to promote the book, titled “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.”
The tell-all tome has caused a political headache for Trump, and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders added fuel to the fire at a briefing Tuesday afternoon, saying she “can’t guarantee” there’s no recording of the president using racial slurs.
Giuliani, who represents Trump in the Mueller investigation and serves as his spokesman-at-large, was more confident on the matter.
“There is no tape. I know it’s a big lie,” Giuliani said. “Why would she work for him all those years if he said something like that?”
But Manigault Newman shared a recording with CBS News earlier in the day in which Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson appears to confirm the existence of a so-called “N-word tape.” The recording matches a passage of Manigault Newman’s book.
Giuliani insisted Trump isn’t worried by Manigault Newman’s book and promises of additional tapes.
But he questioned why Trump hired her in the first place.
“Everybody around him wondered what she was doing there,” Giuliani said. “I don’t even really know what her function was in the White House.”
