Dear Commons Community,
In a one-hour interview on Sean Hannity’s show last night, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said President Donald Trump had repaid his lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election.
“It’s going to turn out to be perfectly legal; that money was not campaign money,” Giuliani, Trump’s new lead attorney regarding issues related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
“Sorry, I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know,” Giuliani continued, before saying that the payment was “funneled through a law firm, and then the president repaid it.”
Giuliani’s comments directly contradict Trump’s statements last month that he had no knowledge that Cohen had paid Daniels. Reporters aboard Air Force One had asked whether Trump knew about the payment, to which the president replied: “No.”
“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” Trump said when pressed on the issue. “Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael.”
The White House declined to comment.
Hogan Gidley, the deputy White House press secretary, told Fox later on Wednesday that he had “no idea of the topics of the show” before Giuliani’s interview, but then directed all questions to Trump’s outside lawyers.
Cohen is currently under criminal investigation by the Justice Department and FBI agents raided his office, home and hotel room last month, seizing business records and documents, including those related to the payout to Daniels. Trump has moved to distance himself from the attorney, saying last week Cohen only handled a “tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work.
During Wednesday’s interview, Giuliani said Trump paid Cohen a retainer of $35,000 “when he was doing no work for the president” and claimed the fund was used for reimbursements. Giuliani later clarified to The New York Times that the payments to the retainer were made monthly from Trump’s personal family account and that Cohen was paid between $460,000 and $470,000 in total, including money for “incidental expenses.”
When Hannity asked if Trump knew about the details of the payments, Giuliani backtracked slightly, saying that the president “didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know.”
“But he did know about the general arrangement that Michael would take care of things like this. I take care of things like this for my clients,” Giuliani said. “I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.”
Late Wednesday, Fox News’ John Roberts said Giuliani backtracked even further and claimed that the president didn’t know what the money was for, but was simply told by Cohen to pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnamed “expenses.”
Giuliani’s revelation appeared to take Hannity aback.
Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said “every American, regardless of their politics, should be outraged” by this news.
“Mr. Trump stood on AF1 and blatantly lied,” he wrote on Twitter. “This followed the lies told by others close to him, including Mr. Cohen. This should never be acceptable in our America.”
Thank you Mr. Giuliani for all the good legal work you are doing for Mr. Trump. Keep it up!
Tony
