Giuliani was ordered by his lawyer to call Trump to say he was joking when he said he had 'insurance' in case he gets thrown under the bus

AP

Donald Trump, and Rudy Giuliani at a Trump property in Bedminster, New Jersey, in 2016, not long before Trump took office.

• Attorney Robert Costello said he made his client, Rudy Giuliani, call President Donald Trump to clarify that he does not have "insurance" in case the president makes him a fall guy.
• Giuliani had raised the prospect of "insurance" in comments he claimed were hokes, but also seemed like veiled warnings.
• Numerous reports have suggested that Republicans - and even the president - could turn on Giuliani by framing him as a rogue actor in his Ukraine dealings in a bid to protect Trump.
• "He shouldn't joke, he is not a funny guy," Costello told Reuters of his client.
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Attorney Robert Costello ordered his client, Rudy Giuliani, to call President Donald Trump to say he was kidding when he claimed to have "insurance" should Trump throw him under the bus in the impeachment probe.

Costello told Reuters that Giuliani, "at my insistence," called Trump to emphasize that he had not been serious when he said he had an "insurance policy, if thrown under the bus."

Costello said: "He shouldn't joke, he is not a funny guy. I told him: 'Ten thousand comedians are out of work, and you make a joke. It doesn't work that way.'"

Costello was referring to comments made by Giuliani, who is Trump's personal attorney, in a Fox News interview on Saturday.

In that exchange, Giuliani said: "I mean, I've seen things written like he's going to throw me under the bus... When they say that, I say, 'He isn't, but I have insurance.'"

Giuliani in a tweet subsequently said the the insurance claim - which he had also made in an interview with The Guardian earlier this month - was "sarcastic, and that it relates to "the files in my safe about the Biden Family's 4 decade monetizing of his office."

Trump shrugged off the remarks when asked about them by a reporter Monday, calling Giuliani a "great guy".

But in an interview with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday, Trump distanced himself from his attorney, claiming that Giuliani had been acting alone in Ukraine in searching for compromising information useful to Trump in his bid for reelection.

Giuliani was one of the pivotal figures in the push for Ukraine to open a criminal investigation into Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, on the basis of unfounded corruption allegations.

The campaign is now the subject of the first congressional impeachment inquiry in two decades, with Trump accused of having abused his office in pressuring Ukraine to launch the probe, using $400 million in US military aid as leverage.

Multiple impeachment witnesses have testified that Giuliani was Trump's key emissary in the push for a Biden probe.

In the July 25 phone call with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, which sparked the impeachment probe, Trump directed him to talk to Giuliani.