CLOSE The former New York Mayor, who recently joined Trump's legal team, directly contradicted the president's claim that he had no knowledge of Michael Cohen's decision to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000. USA TODAY 
 
 President Trump and Rudy Giuliani in 2016 (Photo: Carolyn Kaster, AP) 
 
 WASHINGTON — President Trump's new lawyer is casting renewed doubt on whether Trump will sit down with Special Counsel Robert Mueller about the Russia investigation. 
 
 Attorney and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said in various interviews on Fox News that the president should not be under oath, in part because of concern that prosecutors may try to lay a perjury trap for the president. 
 
 "What they’re really trying to do is trap him into perjury, and we’re not suckers,” Giuliani said Thursday on the Fox & Friends morning program. 
 
 Giuliani also questioned the need for Trump's testimony, claiming a lack of evidence that Trump had anything to do with Russians who sought to influence the 2016 election with email hacks and fake news. 
 
 “This silly deposition is about a case in which he supposedly colluded with the Russians but there’s no evidence,” Giuliani said. 
 
 The Mueller investigation has yielded indictments of more than a dozen Russians as well as former Trump associates. 
 
 Appearing on Wednesday night with Fox host Sean Hannity, Giuliani said that right now "the odds are he wouldn't be interviewed" by Mueller, but "I don't close my mind to it." 
 
 More: Trump could face more legal trouble after confirming he repaid Michael Cohen, watchdogs say 
 
 More: Can Robert Mueller subpoena Donald Trump? Only the Supreme Court would know for sure 
 
 More: Ty Cobb's departure means Donald Trump's legal team has almost completely turned over 
 
 More: Donald Trump acknowledges Stormy Daniels payment, denies affair or use of campaign money 
 
 The Mueller and Trump teams have been negotiating for more than four months on possible Trump testimony. Mueller has raised the prospect of a presidential subpoena if Trump refuses to testify, but Giuliani says the special counsel lacks the authority to enforce such a subpoena. 
 
 While most of the coverage of Giuliani's recent television interviews concerned a $130,000 Trump payment to former adult actress Stormy Daniels, the president's attorney also had has new things to say about the Mueller investigation and fired FBI Director James Comey. 
 
 When Trump fired Comey last year, he and aides said it was because of the way the former FBI director handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation during the election. Trump later said it had something to do with the Russia investigation. 
 
 On Fox, Giuliani said Trump also fired Comey because he refused to say publicly that Trump was not a target in the Russia investigation. 
 
 The attorney also called for an interview to last only two to three hours, saying that was the limit President Bill Clinton had when he testified in the Ken Starr/Monica Lewinsky case. 
 
 "I would like to get, one, not under oath," Giuliani told Hannity. "I want a videotape, not videotaped, but audiotapes, I want to make sure they don't misrepresent his answers." 
 
 Giuliani's comments reflect a more aggressive attitude by Trump legal team in the wake of a personnel shakeups. 
 
 Private attorney John Dowd left the team in March, and White House attorney Ty Cobb announced this week he will be retiring soon. Both had urged a more conciliatory approach to the special counsel. 
 
 On Fox & Friends, Giuliani said the odds of an interview became longer after the FBI raided the home and office of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. He also blamed Mueller's office for the public revelation of a list of questions it wants to ask of Trump, though there is no evidence the Special Counsel's office leaked the document. 
 
 "Now, we are going to have some convincing to do," Giuliani said. "They’re going to have to convince us they’re going to be objective and they are not out to get us.” 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2rkSzHl ||||| Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team of a dozen-plus lawyers and investigators have proven stealthy in their wide-ranging Russia probe. They have surprised the White House with one indictment after another, and summoned President Trump's confidants for lengthy interviews. In the case of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort alone, court filings show, they have collected more than 400,000 documents and 36 electronic devices. 
 
 Mueller and his deputies are, in the fearful word of some Trump loyalists, "killers." 
 
 Trump's response, by contrast, is being directed by John M. Dowd, the president's personal lawyer retired from a large firm who works essentially as a one-man band, and Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer who works out of a small office in the West Wing basement, near the cafeteria where staffers get lunch. 
 
 Dowd and Cobb, along with attorney Jay Sekulow, serve not only as Trump's lawyers but also as his strategists, publicists, therapists and — based on Dowd's claim that he wrote a controversial presidential tweet — ghostwriters. 
 
 When Mueller requests documents, they provide them. When Trump reacts to new twists in the Russia saga, they seek to calm him down. When he has questions about the law, such as the Logan Act or Magnitsky Act, they explain it. And when the president frets that Mueller may be getting too close to him, they assure him he has done nothing wrong, urge him to resist attacking the special counsel and insist that the investigation is wrapping up — first, they said, by Thanksgiving, then by Christmas and now by early next year. 
 
 As lawyers for the world's highest-profile client, Dowd and Cobb have come under scrutiny for their every move and utterance — and the criticism has been harsh. 
 
 Many in the Washington legal community chide them as being indiscreet, error-prone and outmatched. They say public blunders — such as Dowd and Cobb casually chatting about their legal strategy on the patio of a downtown Washington steakhouse in September within earshot of a reporter — suggest a lack of discipline. 
 
 Critics also question why, seven months into Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, they have not assembled a battalion of lawyers as President Bill Clinton had when he was being investigated by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. And some Trump loyalists, spoiling for a fight, say the president's lawyers should be combative rather than cooperative with Mueller. 
 
 "There certainly have been gaffes," said Alan Dershowitz, a criminal defense attorney and Harvard Law School professor who has won praise from Trump for his television appearances defending a president's constitutional prerogative to fire his FBI director. 
 
 "These are not the kinds of things that one would expect from the most powerful man in America, who has a choice of anybody to be his defense counsel," Dershowitz said. "Well — almost anybody," he added, saying that he is not interested in the job. 
 
 [Trump’s legal team faces tensions — and a client who often takes his own counsel] 
 
 
 
 Lawyer Ty Cobb, left, in 2004 and Jay Sekulow, in 2015. The two, along with John Dowd, are representing President Trump in the Russia probe, serving as his strategists, publicists and therapists. (AP photos/AP photos) 
 
 This portrait of Trump's legal team and defense strategy is based on interviews with more than two dozen White House officials, lawyers and other people connected to the Russia probe, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. 
 
 The chorus of criticism may be growing louder, but Trump is not singing along. By most accounts, the president is satisfied with his representation — and talks to Cobb several times a day — though advisers say he has occasionally discussed bringing on new lawyers. 
 
 Trump, 71, connects with Dowd, 76, and Cobb, in his mid-60s, as contemporaries. He appreciates their no-nonsense old-school style, and likes that neither appears on television, believing their absence from the airwaves deprives what he calls the Russia "witch hunt" of oxygen, according to Trump's advisers. 
 
 A former Marine Corps captain, Dowd has a gruff demeanor and has proven able at times to cool Trump's temper and convince him of the virtues of pragmatism over pugnacity, aides said. 
 
 Some Trump advisers dismiss Cobb's predictions that the Mueller probe is nearing its conclusions as misleading happy talk, but the president has internalized it as reality. One reason for Trump's faith is his belief that his lawyers are plugged in. Cobb tells him he is in frequent, and sometimes daily, contact with the special counsel's office, according to people familiar with the dynamic. 
 
 Over Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump boasted to friends that Cobb was "brilliant" and that he was certain Mueller would soon exonerate him. 
 
 Cobb declined to comment, and Dowd responded to an email inquiry with two words: "No, thanks." 
 
 White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "The president is happy with his legal team." 
 
 Cobb works as a White House lawyer whose salary is paid by the government, and his duty is to the office of the presidency, whereas Dowd and Sekulow are employed by Trump and represent him personally. Dowd and Sekulow enjoy attorney-client privilege, but Cobb does not — meaning that Mueller could seek access to Cobb's notes or ask to interview him about his interactions with the president. 
 
 [Trump lawyer John Dowd brought down Pete Rose. Almost 30 years later, they’re still fighting.] 
 
 Mark Corallo, a Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, served as spokesman for Trump's legal team earlier this year. Corallo is no longer involved, but he praised Dowd and Cobb as "titans." 
 
 "They've been at the top of their profession and were on the shortlist of the top 10 attorneys you would call if you got your knickers in a twist," Corallo said. He added, "One thing I like is Cobb and Dowd are of the same generation as the president. They are contemporaries. There is a comfort that comes with being able to talk with somebody who shares your experience in the world." 
 
 Still, there have been moments of tension. Last Tuesday, anxiety ran high early in the morning because of a report out of Germany that Mueller's office had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for records related to the transactions of Trump and people close to him. 
 
 Trump was unnerved, but his lawyers tried to soothe his irritation and scrambled to determine whether the report was accurate, aware that if Mueller were digging into Trump's finances, he would be crossing a red line the president had publicly set, according to three people familiar with the discussions. After the lawyers consulted with the special counsel's office, Sekulow issued a statement that afternoon saying that Trump's team had confirmed there was no subpoena for Trump's records. 
 
 The Trump administration's key people in the Russia investigation — including the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law, Jared Kushner — are represented by different attorneys. But some of the various lawyers, along with Dowd and Cobb, cooperate by sharing information on regular conference calls about questions their clients have been asked and documents they have turned over. 
 
 Witnesses in Mueller's probe and their lawyers have reported back to Cobb and Dowd that the special counsel's team has asked detailed questions about Trump's May firing of James B. Comey as FBI director, leading them to believe that Mueller may be gathering evidence of obstruction of justice, according to one witness. 
 
 But Cobb and Dowd have told Trump he has no vulnerability, officials said. Dowd went so far as to posit last week to Axios that a president cannot obstruct justice because of his constitutional powers as the chief law enforcement officer — an interpretation that was mocked by some legal scholars. 
 
 [A bold new legal defense for Trump: Presidents cannot obstruct justice] 
 
 On Dec. 2, Trump tweeted that he fired Michael Flynn as national security adviser in part because he had lied to the FBI — an admission that could become evidence in an obstruction investigation. Dowd claimed he drafted the tweet, and fellow lawyers privately said they could not believe a statement so careless was written not by the impulsive president but by his lawyer. 
 
 One of Trump's advisers told the president that weekend: "The first job of a lawyer is to shut up. The second job of a lawyer is to keep their client's mouth shut. I don't know why they're tweeting and talking and trying to explain the tweet," according to someone with knowledge of the conversation. 
 
 People close to the Trump legal team argue that additional lawyers could result in a more proactive and careful approach. "It's amazing the stress and magnitude of representing the president of the United States," said one person familiar with the inner workings. "You'd have to be super human to do it alone. You've got 16 of the best lawyers in the country going up against you." 
 
 For Trump, being under the glare of a legal investigation is familiar territory. A real estate developer and reality-television star before becoming a politician, he has spent much of his professional life enmeshed in litigation. 
 
 When Mueller's Russia investigation began in May, Trump hired as his lead attorney Marc Kasowitz, a litigator from New York with a brawler reputation who had represented Trump and his companies off and on for years in divorce, bankruptcy and other proceedings. 
 
 In the early weeks of the Mueller probe, the hard-charging Kasowitz would scurry in and out of the Oval Office and the adjoining dining room in what aides described as a running — and at times frenzied — commentary with Trump about all things Russia. 
 
 But Kasowitz had scant experience in Washington and with investigations like Mueller's. After he caused a kerfuffle by sending an expletive-laced and disparaging email to a stranger who had criticized him, Kasowitz departed the Russia legal team. He continues to represent Trump in some other matters. 
 
 [When Trump goes looking for a media brawl, this feared lawyer steps in] 
 
 Trump tried to hire or has considered hiring more than a half dozen top litigators to help manage the Russia probe, including William A. Burck, Mark Filip, Emmet Flood, Robert J. Giuffra, Ted B. Olson and Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., according to several people with knowledge of the president's deliberations. For various reasons, none took the job. 
 
 "If you're the president of the United States, typically the top lawyers are lining up to pitch you," said one person close to the White House and familiar with the legal team's dynamics. "Here, you have the opposite." 
 
 Bob Bauer, who was President Barack Obama's White House counsel, said in assessing the Trump legal team: "Some people may want to blame the lawyers, but my principal question is, 'How do you represent a client like Trump?' And at what point do these lawyers decide they're so hemmed in, so compromised by his behavior, his impulses, his tweets, that they just can't represent him effectively?" 
 
 The face of the legal team has been Sekulow, who has deep ties to the Christian right, though he has adopted a lower profile since the spring and summer when he was a frequent television presence. 
 
 Cobb, who had been a partner at Hogan Lovells, enjoys a reputation as a seasoned white-collar advocate whose last high-stakes legal case involving Washington politics was in the 1990s. Dowd has been a higher-profile criminal defender and represented Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during a 1990 ethics investigation into whether McCain had improperly intervened in a savings and loan probe. He is perhaps best known for representing the commissioner of baseball in the late 1980s and producing the "Dowd Report," a document that resulted in Pete Rose's lifetime suspension from the sport. 
 
 Dowd was widely perceived by other lawyers to be in the twilight of his career, having formally retired in 2015 from Akin Gump, where he had worked since 1990. 
 
 Dowd lost one of his most recent big cases when his client, hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, was convicted in 2011 on insider trading charges in New York. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney prosecuting Rajaratnam, reflected on facing Dowd in that trial in an episode last week of his podcast, "Stay Tuned with Preet." 
 
 "John Dowd said a lot of — how shall I put it? — ludicrous, silly things," said Bharara, who was fired as U.S. attorney two months into the Trump administration. 
 
 At one point, Dowd was filmed swearing at and flashing his middle finger at reporters covering the trial. It garnered him unflattering press coverage — but it was the kind of dramatic move that a client like Trump could see as an attribute. 
 
 Sari Horwitz and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report. ||||| John Dowd (pictured) had been spearheading negotiations with Special Counsel Robert Mueller for a potential interview with the president, while Jay Sekulow handled public communications. | Richard Dew/AP Photo Trump’s Russia probe lawyer John Dowd resigns The departure comes amid a larger shakeup of the legal team handling the Mueller investigation. 
 
 John Dowd resigned Thursday as President Donald Trump’s lead lawyer for the Russia investigation amid a wider shakeup of Trump’s legal team that raised new questions about Trump’s strategy for dealing with special counsel Robert Mueller. 
 
 Dowd stepped down just days after he issued a statement calling for Mueller’s probe to be shuttered, which he first attributed with his title as the president’s lawyer and then backtracked to say he was speaking only for himself. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 “I love the president and wish him well,” Dowd said in an email to POLITICO. 
 
 Dowd, a prominent Washington white collar defense attorney with a prickly demeanor, signed on as a personal attorney to the president last June and recently had been spearheading negotiations with Mueller for a potential interview with the president. 
 
 But the 77-year old attorney had grown increasingly frustrated by his work for Trump, according to a source familiar with the Trump legal team strategy. Dowd was particularly upset to learn on Monday that Trump had decided to hire Joseph diGenova, another bulldog lawyer and scandal veteran to help with his Russia response. 
 
 Trump had also been gauging interest from other prominent attorneys, including former George W. Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson, who recently turned down an offer from Trump by citing conflicts with his law firm. 
 
 Trump’s legal team has long been riven by a debate about how Trump should handle Mueller’s investigation in both political and legal terms. Dowd had preached a confrontational approach, warning Trump of the risks of speaking to Mueller—at the risk of perjuring himself—and calling in a Saturday morning statement on the Justice Department to “bring an end” to its “manufactured” Russia probe. 
 
 Asked Thursday at a China trade event at the White House whether he was still willing to speak to Mueller, the president responded, “Yes, I would like to.” 
 
 Given the recent addition of the combative diGenova to Trump’s team, it is not clear that Dowd’s departure will substantially impact its overall strategy. 
 
 
 
 Playbook PM Sign up for our must-read newsletter on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. 
 
 
 
 Dowd had previously been known best for representing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the Keating Five Scandal, and for leading a Major League Baseball investigation of gambling allegations surrounding baseball great Pete Rose. 
 
 Jay Sekulow, who has been handling public communications and research on constitutional issues for the Trump legal team, declined on Thursday to answer questions about how the president’s attorneys would be organized going forward. 
 
 “John Dowd has been a valuable member of our legal team and we will continue our ongoing cooperation with the office of special counsel regarding this inquiry,” Sekulow said in a statement to POLITICO. 
 
 Trump’s legal team has seen remarkable flux, particularly given the stakes for a president who could potentially face impeachment or even indictment over allegations that his campaign colluded with the Kremlin and that he has sought to obstruct justice. Trump insists that such charges have been manufactured by political partisans. 
 
 The president originally tapped his longtime personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz to represent him in the Justice Department’s Russia probe, which Mueller has led since shortly after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last May. 
 
 But the New York-based Kasowitz stepped down last summer amid concerns he wasn’t best positioned to tangle with a Washington scandal. 
 
 While the president continues to speak with Kasowitz, he has mainly relied on Dowd and Sekulow to manage the Russia probe for him as an individual. Washington lawyer Ty Cobb runs the White House’s official response to the investigation with a team of about five aides who draw taxpayer salaries. 
 
 The changes to the Trump legal team are seen as a bad omen for Cobb, who has been urging cooperation with Mueller. In an interview on Wednesday, former Cobb law partner Robert Bennett called for Cobb to resign in order to preserve his professional reputation. 
 
 “I hope my friend Ty Cobb will leave the team. He’s not helping himself or his reputation,” Bennett said. 
 
 Cobb did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 Trump has recently been frustrated with his lawyers, who had been giving him a steadily changing series of target completion dates for a Mueller probe that has only appeared to widen in recent weeks to include allegations, seemingly unrelated to Russia, that a consultant for the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates worked with a top GOP fundraiser. 
 
 On Saturday, Trump tweeted that “the Mueller probe should never have been started,” insisting that “there was no collusion and there was no crime” and branding the investigation a “WITCH HUNT.” It was the first time Trump had specifically mentioned Mueller by name on Twitter — something his lawyers have counseled him to avoid doing. 
 
 This week he hired diGenova, a fierce critic of the Russia investigation who earlier this year told Fox News that Trump had been framed by the Justice Department and FBI “with a falsely created crime.” 
 
 Trump’s free-wheeling style has worn on his lawyers. He’s ignored their advice to restrain himself on Twitter and disregarded their counsel that he not discuss details of the probe beyond his legal team. 
 
 poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201803/1853/1155968404_5756709788001_5756676647001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true 
 
 Legal experts say those are reasons why Trump has struggled to attract the caliber of lawyer that has historically leapt to represent a sitting president. Olson, Robert Giuffra Jr. and Reid Weingarten were among the elite attorneys who declined job offers from Trump last spring, while former George W. Bush attorneys Bill Burck and Emmet Flood rejected overtures for the position ultimately accepted by Cobb. 
 
 “The notion of saying no to represent the president of the United States is kind of amazing,” said Bennett, a former personal attorney to President Bill Clinton. 
 
 Trump may not be done looking for lawyers. Flood met with the president earlier this month at the White House, though it’s unclear if that has led to a job offer. 
 
 The diGenova hiring came days after Dowd issued a Saturday morning statement calling for Mueller’s work to end. 
 
 “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd told the Daily Beast, responding to Sessions’ decision the night before to fire Andrew McCabe, the former deputy FBI director. 
 
 Dowd initially said he was speaking in his official capacity as Trump’s lawyer. But he later retracted that statement, telling POLITICO he was commenting in his personal capacity. 
 
 It was one of several instances where Dowd raised eyebrows—and in some cases, drew ridicule—for his public commentary about the Russia probe. 
 
 Last December, Dowd took blame for a tweet posted on Trump’s account that appeared to admit Trump was aware that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to the FBI before Trump urged Comey to drop the Russia investigation. The tweet puzzled legal experts who said the admission could fuel an obstruction of justice case against Trump. 
 
 Dowd later argued that Trump could not be found guilty of obstruction of justice because of his role as chief executive under the Constitution, an argument that many legal experts disputed. 
 
 Both Dowd and Cobb also were embarrassed last summer after a New York Times reporter overheard them speaking about the Russia investigation at a Washington restaurant. 
 
 Dowd is well-known for his gruff manner, which was on vivid display outside a federal courthouse in 2011 when he told a CNBC camera crew to “get the fuck out of here” before giving the cameraman the middle finger. 
 
 Asked recently by POLITICO to comment on talks between the president’s lawyers and Mueller’s investigators, Dowd was only somewhat friendlier: “None of your business,” he said.
– President Trump has claimed he would "love to" be interviewed under oath by special counsel Robert Mueller and that he's "looking forward" to it. His lawyers, however, are worried that Trump will make false statements, potentially leading to a charge of lying to investigators, and have urged him to turn down any interview request, the New York Times reports, citing "four people briefed on the matter." Rebuffing the interview might lead to a subpoena and a legal battle that could go all the way to the Supreme Court, but lawyers including John Dowd, who's representing Trump in the investigation, believe Mueller won't be willing to subpoena Trump and force him into a showdown, the insiders say. White House lawyer Ty Cobb supports full cooperation with Mueller's investigation, but he's outnumbered by opponents, the Times' sources say. Newt Gingrich is among those close to Trump who have publicly said that he should reject any request to be questioned. "The idea of putting Trump in a room with five or six hardened, very clever lawyers, all of whom are trying to trick him and trap him, would be a very, very bad idea," Gingrich said on Fox and Friends recently. CNN reports that Trump's team is arguing that Mueller hasn't reached the "high threshold" of evidence he would need to have Trump interviewed. (Trump has to decide whether to release a Democrat-authored memo on the Russia investigation.)