Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) this week quietly walked back past claims that he helped President Trump create his travel ban, issuing a new court filing that says he had nothing to do with Trump’s executive orders on immigration.
Giuliani, a Trump campaign adviser, said in a January interview that Trump asked him to help carry out a “Muslim ban.”
“I’ll tell you the whole history of it: When he first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally,’ ” Giuliani said on Fox News at the time. “What we did was we focused on ― instead of religion ― danger. The areas of the world that create danger for us, which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible, and that’s what the ban is based on.”
Giuliani’s comments have been cited by courts as proof that the travel ban — which temporarily blocked immigrants from six predominantly Muslim nations from entering the U.S. and put a ban on allowing refugees for 120 days — purposefully targets people of a certain religion and has led to multiple judges blocking the ban nationwide.
In a carefully worded court filing Monday, Giuliani walked back his earlier claims about involvement in creating the travel ban.
“Neither I nor my firm has represented the Trump Administration. In particular I have not served on any Trump administration commission ‘relating to the so-called Muslim Ban Executive Orders.’ For clarity, I have not participated in writing any of the Executive Orders on that subject issued by the Trump administration,” Giuliani wrote in the affidavit, which he filed in a Manhattan-based federal court.
The filing is part of an unrelated case that centers on Giuliani’s representation of a Turkish businessman who is being charged with violating sanctions against Iran.
A federal judge inMichigan ordered the Trump administration earlier this month to hand over a memo that Giuliani is believed to have drafted as an outline for the travel ban. The Justice Department declined to cooperate, saying the court order was too broad and premature.