Rudy Giuliani: 'Warped' Mueller Flips 'Burden of Proof' Read Newsmax: Rudy Giuliani: Mueller Flipped 'Burden of Proof' On to Trump | Newsmax.com
Eric Mack
Ripping special counsel Robert Mueller's first and final statement as "warped," President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani laments that somehow the Democrats' pursuit of the president has managed to flip "the burden of proof."
"When you can't exonerate somebody, they are innocent – you can't prove a negative," Giuliani told "The Cats Roundtable" on 970 AM-N.Y. "I don't know where Mueller got this: 'But I cannot exonerate him – or I can't conclude that he didn't commit a crime' – which is the way he said it the other day.
"This is a very, very warped idea."
U.S. due process prescribes innocence until proven guilty, but while special counsel Mueller could not prove guilt, he managed to turn the burden of proof on the U.S. president, Giuliani said.
"They even changed the burden of proof for [Trump]," Giuliani told host John Catsimatidis. "Now he's got to prove himself innocent. Everybody else, we've got to prove them guilty. In the case of Trump, we've got to prove he's innocent.
". . . I can't stand this double standard. It offends me as a person who become a lawyer a thousand years ago, who has prosecuted Democrats and Republicans and put them both in jail. Neither party has a monopoly on virtue or vice."
Giuliani speculated the flipping of the burden of proof came from a "conflicted" staff of investigators who hate President Trump.
"These are really strange people to have around you when you're investigating Donald Trump," he added. "It would be as if [Attorney General William] Barr hired me to investigate all these Democrats who went after Trump. People would go crazy if he hired me.
". . . These are not people who just were Democrats. These are people who displayed hatred for Trump."
Giuliani believes Mueller made his final statement and took no questions because he is "afraid to testify" before Republicans in Congress.
"I think he knows how ridiculous his theory of obstruction of justice is," Giuliani said. "It would only fit in some kind of a McCarthy-like era, let's stretch a statue and go after somebody."