President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday that unlike Trump, he did not think special counsel Robert Mueller had acted honorably during his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
"I would have to disagree with my client on that," Giuliani said on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."
Giuliani suggested the reason for the difference in their assessments of Mueller could be that the former New York mayor was "in the trenches more" than Trump. Giuliani said he had a "mixed view" of Mueller's approach.
"I think that it's almost a Jekyll and Hyde situation," Giuliani said, praising the special counsel for disputing reports about Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen and slamming him for the treatment of Trump's former campaign chief Paul Manafort.
Giuliani's comments broke with Trump's position from a day prior. Asked on Monday if Mueller had acted honorably, Trump said, "Yes, he did," offering rare praise for the special counsel he had railed against constantly for months.
Later in Tuesday's interview, Giuliani said he knew Mueller and that aside from his criticism at the start of the conversation, he had "a good view of him, and everybody makes mistakes."
Giuliani went on to differ with Jay Sekulow, another of Trump's attorneys, on the question of potentially releasing the President's written testimony to Mueller.
Sekulow told CNN on Monday that he would not want to release the written answers, while Giuliani said Tuesday that the answers were truthful and he could be open to the testimony going public.
"There's nothing in there that I'd have any problem with," Giuliani said when asked about releasing the testimony.
He continued to dismiss questions about contact between Trump's associates and 2016 campaign with Russia, repeatedly emphasizing Attorney General William Barr's summary of the Mueller report, which said the investigation had not found that the campaign or associates conspired with Russia.
Asked if there was an innocent explanation why so many Trump associates were known to have had contacts with Russia during the campaign, Giuliani said, "It wasn't that many."
After Blitzer noted that some 16 associates had had Russian contacts, Giuliani replied, "There were probably 50 that were meeting with people from Great Britain or people from France."
