President Donald Trump's legal team would like to wrap up the special counsel's investigation by early September, Rudy Giuliani said Monday, and he believes Robert Mueller does, too.
"He said something in our last meeting with him, where he thought that September was the [time] to get the report in," Giuliani told CNN's "New Day" host Alisyn Camerota, during an extensive interview.
"It makes sense. It's well before the – not well before but enough before – the November election, so you can't say it interfered with it one way or the other."
He said the September timeline was not just an impression, but comments he got from Mueller himself.
"We talked about part of the negotiation is also timing," Giuliani said. "If we get an interview, we want to know a report will come out within a fairly short period of time.
"They have said at that point, they thought that early September would be a good guideline," Giuliani said. "I may have read into that that's also a good time, so you don't get accused of doing a [James] Comey and getting involved in the election."
He added he is concerned if the case is not wrapped up by September, it could impact the midterm elections in November.
"One of his [Trump's] biggest rallying cries is 'don't impeach. Vote Republican because they'll impeach.'"
But if the report comes out later, Giuliani said, "I think it sure as hell confuses the midterm . . . I don't think you want the American people voting on impeachment. You want them voting on taxes and Russia and China and North Korea."
He also said he believes Trump would talk to Mueller, should the investigator's team agree to a set of conditions already set up, but if the events surrounding Michael Cohen have not affected those conditions.
However, Giuliani said he does not think that should happen.
"What I think and what I know may be two different things," he said. "I think he shouldn't [sit down with Mueller]. I know how convinced he is that he didn't do anything wrong, and he wants to explain it."
Giuliani also said he does not believe Trump will end up going to trial, but instead, Mueller will compile a report.
"I'll be here with my version, and they'll have their version of the report, and the American people, in that sense, will decide it," Giuliani said. "If you got – if you think you got – a pretty good case, maybe you don't want Cohen's baggage."
Meanwhile, Giuliani continued his barrage of complaints about Cohen, telling Fox News' "Fox & Friends" there is no doubt the tape recording of President Donald Trump and Cohen discussing payments to a ex-Playboy model was cut off early.
"Take the one that was played numerous times last week," Giuliani told Fox News. "It goes something this: There has got to be financing. The president is very surprised, which indicates he didn't know about this transaction.
"Cohen says we have got to pay," Giuliani continued. "[Cohen] said 'not by cash . . . then Trump says 'check.' Immediately, it's cut off.'
At any rate, Giuliani insisted everything that has been released so far in the ongoing investigation by special counsel Mueller finds Trump "absolutely innocent."
"He didn't do anything wrong," Giuliani said. "Everything that's been released so far finds the president absolutely innocent. He didn't do anything wrong . . . I have been sitting here trying to find collusion as a crime. Collusion is not a crime."
Giuliani said experts are going through Cohen's tape and trying to figure out if it was tampered, or if it was a recording of a recording.
"Did he cut it off at the time or go back into his laboratory or whatever the hell he had and cut it off?" Giuliani asked.
Meanwhile, 183 tapes were seized when federal officials raided Cohen's office and home this year, but only one includes Trump, Giuliani said.
This "will give you an idea about what a scoundrel he was," Giuliani said. "I never knew this about him. Up until a month ago, two months ago, I would have said pretty nice things about him. My opinion of him has turned on a dime when we found out he was a lawyer recording his client. Fundamentally that's a disbarrable offense."
However, Giuliani he has waived matters where the tapes are concerned, because there is "other stuff on the tape as equally as useful to the president and we were hoping we could suck him to getting out the other tapes, because they are really, really good."
Giuliani also dismissed suggestions Cohen is willing to say Trump knew about his eldest son's meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer, and questioned statements coming from Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis.
"I think Lanny Davis may claim he knows about the Kennedy assassination and Trump is somehow involved in," Giuliani said. "[Trump] did not participate in any meeting about the Russia transaction."
Further, even if collusion was a crime, there is no evidence Trump had anything to do with Russians, Giuliani said.
"He made no deals with the Russians," Giuliani said. "He didn't get elected because of the Russians."
He also denied Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice, particularly where the firing of former FBI Director James Comey is concerned.
Cohen, though, is acting out as he is "afraid of going to jail," said Giuliani, who added he does not know what the attorney is afraid of going to jail about.
"Some of the things did he with us but he didn't commit any crime with President Trump, nor did he commit a crime around President Trump, that I can discern," Giuliani said. "There are a lot of materials more than concern us in boxes, and everything else that concern his taxing medallions, his bank loans. I have no reason to believe they are illegal. I also have no reason to believe to believe the government didn't have probable cause to raid him."