When Rudy Giuliani joined Donald Trump’s legal defense team in April, the former New York City mayor expressed great optimism about helping bring Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to a swift end.
In fact, Giuliani had a timeframe in mind, telling a CNN reporter he hoped to bring the probe to conclusion in “a couple of weeks.”
As it turns out, that leads us to today. And unless this afternoon proves to be far more interesting than expected, Mueller’s investigation will not wrap up by day’s end.
What’s especially interesting about this to me isn’t just Giuliani being wrong — when the Republican made the comments two weeks ago, most reasonable people laughed at his imagined timeline — but how often we’ve seen members of Trump’s team make similar predictions, none of which panned out.
Several months ago, for example, one of the president’s lawyers told Trump the whole unpleasantness “would conclude by Thanksgiving.”
The president was then led to believe the investigation would end “by the end of the year.”
The Wall Street Journal soon after reported, “Attorneys for the president … have said the date could stretch to the end of January.”
About a month later, a Trump lawyer pointed to the end of March as an expected endpoint.
Then Giuliani stepped in and pointed at today. As we discussed in December, I’m curious about the behind-the-scenes dynamic. It’s possible, for example, that Trump is optimistic about the looming end of the investigation because his lawyers keep feeding him dubious good news that he chooses to believe. In other words, it’s possible they keep saying, “This will all be over very soon, Mr. President,” to which a delighted Trump responds, “Sounds great.” But isn’t there a point at which Trump gets annoyed by the blown deadlines?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
