President Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani on Wednesday suggested suing Democratic members of Congress over launching an impeachment inquiry into his client.
“We are carefully considering our legal options to seek redress against Congress and individual members, for engaging in an organized effort to exceed their limited powers, under the Constitution, and to trample on the constitutional rights of citizens in an illicit plan carried out by illegal means, to remove the President of the US, on deliberately falsified charges,” Mr. Giuliani said in a since-deleted series of tweets.
House Democrats moved last week to launch an impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump following revelations about a whistleblower complained by a member of the intelligence community over a July phone call involving the U.S. and Ukrainian presidents.
Committee chairs in the House have since issued subpoenas seeking material from Mr. Giuliani as part of the probe.
“He is obviously a key figure in this, by his own admission,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, said about Mr. Giuliani later Wednesday.
It was not clear why Mr. Giuliani’s posts on Twitter disappeared, but he restated the warning in a similarly worded series of tweets later Wednesday afternoon.
Mr. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, had made similar comments about potentially suing Democrats including Mr. Schiff during a television appearance the previous evening.
“I had a couple of talks with civil rights lawyers and a constitutional lawyer today, and here is what they are recommending: that we should bring a lawsuit on behalf of the president and several people in the administration, maybe even myself as a lawyer, against the member of Congress individually for violating constitutional rights, violating civil rights,” Mr. Giuliani told Fox News host Laura Ingraham late Tuesday.
Mr. Trump said during the phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Mr. Giuliani would be reaching out to discuss investigating the son of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden, according to a rough transcript released by the White House last month.
Mr. Giuliani has admitted contacting various Ukrainian officials and has recently asserted that he was “on a mission” from the State Department.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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