NEW YORK _ President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani gave a series of enraged and self-aggrandizing statements Thursday, just like President Trump.
"It is impossible that the whistleblower is a hero and I'm not. And I will be the hero! These morons _ when this is over, I will be the hero," Giuliani told The Atlantic, referencing the government worker whose complaint revealed Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
"I'm not acting as a lawyer. I'm acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government," the ex-New York City mayor added, so furious that he was gasping for breath. "Anything I did should be praised."
In another interview, Giuliani dismissed as "crap" the explosive allegations of abuse of power in the whistleblower's report.
He denied going rogue and effectively bypassing official diplomatic and security channels to push for dirt on Joe Biden and his son.
I have "no knowledge of any of that crap," Giuliani told CNN.
He bristled at allegations in the report that two State Department officials tried to "contain the damage" he was doing to national security interests.
"At no time did either one of them say they wanted to contain damage," Giuliani told the network from his redoubt in the Trump International Hotel. "At no time did the State Department in communication with me ever relay any of that information you're talking about."
Meanwhile Thursday, a furious Trump essentially accused the whistleblower and his government sources as spies and traitors.
Giuliani's mission as Trump's personal envoy was one of the key issues that spurred the whistleblower to speak out.
Multiple U.S. officials said they were "deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani's circumvention of national security decision-making processes to engage Ukrainian officials and relay messages," the whistleblower said in the complaint revealed Thursday.
The government worker was spurred to action by Trump's July call to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urging him to take guidance from Giuliani.
