Trump will sit down with Mueller ‘over my dead body’, says Giuliani, as president calls Cohen ‘a rat’

Comments come as report says special counsel still keen to interview president

Donald Trump will sit and talk to special counsel Robert Mueller “over my dead body”, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani has said, in the latest pushback against the investigation into possible collusion between the president’s election campaign and Moscow.

As Mr Trump called his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen “a rat” for cooperating with the FBI, Mr Giuliani made clear Mr Mueller would not be offered an interview with the president.

Mr Trump recently provided Mr Mueller’s team written answers to a series of questions, but on Friday CNN said the special prosecutor was still interested in an in-person interview. “Nothing has changed in that sense from the first day,” said a source.

Mr Giuliani, the former New York mayor who now serves as the president’s personal lawyer, on Sunday again firmly pushed back at such a notion.

Asked on Fox News whether Mr Trump would take part in an interview, Mr Giuliani said: “Yeah, good luck, good luck – after what they did to [Michael] Flynn, the way they trapped him into perjury, and no sentence for him.”

He added: “Over my dead body. But you know, I could be dead.”

Mr Giuliani also attacked Mr Mueller’s investigation, saying the probe was a “joke”.

“I am disgusted with the tactics they have used in this case,” he said. “What they did to Gen Flynn should result in discipline. They’re the ones who violated the law. They’re looking at a non-crime, collusion.”

Mr Giuliani spoke after a court last week sentenced Cohen to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty to paying hush money on the eve of the 2016 election to two women who had allegedly had sexual relationships with Mr Trump.

Cohen claimed the payments to adult actress Stormy Daniels and then-model Karen McDougal had been made at the behest of the president.

“He directed me to make the payments, he directed me to become involved in these matters,” he told ABC, while on bail before going to jail.

Mr Trump denied the claims. “I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law,” he tweeted on Thursday, a day after Cohen was sentenced.

The president attacked Cohen on Sunday. “Remember, Michael Cohen only became a 'Rat' after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started,” he wrote in a series of tweets in which he dismissed Mr Mueller’s investigation.

“They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?

Asked about Cohen’s claim that Mr Trump directed him to make the payments, which federal prosecutors deemed were a violation of campaign finance laws, Mr Giuliani said he was a “complete, pathological liar”, who had who breached legal ethics by secretly tape-recording his own client.

“Yes, this man is lying – is that a surprise to you, that Michael Cohen is lying,” he said. “The man got up in front of a judge and said, ‘I was fiercely loyal to Donald Trump’. Nonsense. He was’t fiercely loyal to him, he taped him.”

Earlier this month, Mr Mueller’s team recommended Flynn, a 60-year-old former general, who last year pleaded guilty to one charge of lying to the FBI over his contacts with Russian officials, among them Russia’s former US ambassador Sergey Kislyak, had been so cooperative he should not go to jail. He is due to be sentenced of December 18.

Mr Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is due to be sentenced in March after the the collapse of his plea agreement on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

In September, the 69-year-old pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

That plea followed his August conviction in federal court in Virginia for bank and tax charges related to the work in Ukraine. He faces sentencing in February on those eight counts.