Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s attorney, has a way of moving the goal posts almost everytime he opens his mouth. Today, in two different tv interviews he seemed to confirm a couple rather significant details. One was on Meet the Press where Giuliani said the Trump Tower deal talks continued right up until around the time of the Presidential election. This would be much later than anyone on Trump’s team has acknowledged before and there is a reason why timing matters so much here.
🚨Giuliani is doubling down on his claim that the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations lasted until Nov 2016.
If true, Trump was secretly trying to strike a multimillion $ deal with Moscow even after FBI warned him of the counterintel threat posed by Russia.https://t.co/H6m7T1zQSl— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) January 20, 2019
The second Giuliani interview yielded more news, this time with CNN’s Jake Tapper (watch above). It involves the Buzzfeed report that alleged “the president personally instructed him (Cohen) to lie” to Congress. While Buzzfeed is standing by its story, Mueller’s office said, “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements… are not accurate.” Giuliani, himself though, isn’t emphasizing the potentially inaccurate part of the story as much as he is trying to downplay any talk. Here’s part of the exchange:
JT: You just acknowledged that it’s possible that President Trump talked to Michael Cohen about his testimony
RG: Which would be perfectly normal. which the president believed was true.
JT: So it’s possible that happened, that President Trump talked to…
RG: I don’t know if it happened or didn’t happen. It may be attorney/client privilege if it happened. But I have no knowledge that he spoke to him. But I wasn’t there. It’s not significant because the version he gave to the…
JT: But he’s convicted of — one thing he pled guilty to, I believe, is lying to Congress about the Trump Tower deal.
RG: Which time? Which time, Jake? You can pick your time.
JT: Right, but about the Trump Tower deal.
RG: But he’s pleading guilty to get a reduced sentence which means he’s saying what the prosecutor wants him to say.
JT: You just acknowledged that President Trump may have talked to him about his testimony.
RG: And so what if he talked to him.
Whether these are gaffes or intentional ways of Giuliani to get information out remains to be seen.
Giuliani does this for a reason – he’s not bumbling in this regard, he’s taking the sting out of the next bad news to drop on his client, the President. @Mimirocah1 & I wrote about this a long time ago (last Friday). https://t.co/4x8Wq5nODE https://t.co/k8J46pGPzq
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 20, 2019