President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani is "completely wrong" with his comments that the president wouldn't have to comply with the terms of a subpoena, Rep. Jim Himes said Monday.
"As a matter of law, this has never been tested, but also not in question," the Connecticut Democrat told CNN's "New Day."
"[Richard] Nixon was asked to produce tapes and Bill Clinton was compelled to participate in a civil case. The idea that the president could be subpoenaed is not open to question."
On Sunday, Giuliani told ABC's "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos that Trump would not have to answer a subpoena, under the conditions of executive privilege.
"We don't have to," Giuliani said. "He's the president of the United States. We can assert same privilege as other presidents have."
Trump could, however, invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, said Himes, something Giuliani has also suggested could happen, but the lawmaker questioned that tactic as well.
"The way Trump talked about pleading the Fifth, when the Clinton staffers pleaded the Fifth, he said 'only the mob pleads the Fifth,'" said Himes. "He mocked people for taking the Fifth."
Himes also rejected opinions from Giuliani and other legal experts that special counsel Robert Mueller wants to question Trump in order to lure him into a "perjury trap."
"They are not trying to trap the president," said Himes. "They are conducting an investigation. just as Bill Clinton was investigated and Richard Nixon was investigated."
It's important to "the president's people" to make it sound like Mueller is biased, Himes added, and he has "all the sympathy in the world for Rudy Giuliani and the president's lawyers because the president is incapable of telling the truth on these matters."
Himes also hit back on one of Trump's early morning tweets:
"I'm on that committee," said Himes. "I will tell you that the Republican report produced without any Democratic support which was cut short well before we interviewed witnesses that were essential, well before we pushed back on huge claims on executive privilege, that report was a sham. You need to read it to know how shotty that work was."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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