Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had one job: Go on the Sunday morning TV news networks and attack the BuzzFeed story. Instead, he ended up acknowledging that maybe Trump did talk to Michael Cohen ahead of Cohen’s testimony to Congress about a Trump Tower Moscow deal. But hey, that’s normal!
Nice one, Rudy.
Giuliani got the job done on NBC’s Meet the Press, telling host Chuck Todd he is “100 percent certain” Trump never told Cohen, his former consigliere, to lie to Congress about the proposed multimillion-dollar deal in Russia. (Among other things, Cohen told a Senate intelligence committee that negotiations over a Trump Tower Moscow deal were dead in the water by January 2016, when in fact they had continued well into the presidential campaign that year.)
He added, “to answer your question, categorically, I can tell you his counsel to Michael Cohen throughout that entire period was, ‘Tell the truth.’ We thought he was telling the truth. I still believe he may have been telling the truth when he testified before Congress,” Politico noted.
But on CNN’s State of the Union, Giuliani told host Jake Tapper (emphasis mine), “As far as I know, President Trump did not have discussions with [Cohen], certainly had no discussions with him in which he told him or counseled him to lie.”
Giuliani continued: “If he had any discussions with him, they’d be about the version of the events that Michael Cohen gave them, which they all believe was true. I believed it was true. I still believe it may be true…”
Wait, come again?
Giuliani tried to pivot to the BuzzFeed story, but Tapper was onto him: “But you just acknowledged that it’s possible that President Trump talked to Michael Cohen about his testimony!”
“Which would be perfectly normal,” Giuliani yelled back.
“So, it’s possible that that happened? That President Trump talked to Michael Cohen about his testimony?” Tapper asked.
“I don’t know if it happened or it didn’t happen,” Giuliani said. “And it might be attorney-client privilege if it happened, where I can’t acknowledge it.”
Oh. Rudy. How are you sooo bad at this?!