President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani claimed there are no tapes showing Trump directed his former fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.
“There are no tapes, there are no texts, there is no corroboration that the president told him to lie,” Giuliani said in an interview with the New Yorker published Monday evening. “That’s why the special counsel said that the story was inaccurate.”
The story Giuliani was referencing is a BuzzFeed report from Friday that claimed Cohen had told special counsel Robert Mueller the president instructed him to lie and that Mueller’s office had learned about Trump’s orders through a witness from the Trump Organization as well as messages and documents.
The story was later disputed by special counsel Robert Muller, who is investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.
Giuliani said he knew the BuzzFeed report was false the moment he read it.
“Because I have been through all the tapes, I have been through all the texts, I have been through all the e-mails, and I knew none existed,” Giuliani said. “I shouldn’t have said tapes. They alleged there were texts and e-mails that corroborated that Cohen was saying the President told him to lie. There were no texts, there were no e-mails, and the president never told him to lie.”
On Sunday, Giuliani told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that then-candidate Trump was involved in discussions to build a Trump Tower in Moscow as late in the campaign as “October, November” 2016,” longer than previously known.
“The conversations lasted throughout parts of 2016. The president is not sure exactly when they ended. I would say Michael Cohen would have a much better recollection of it than the president,” Giuliani said.
He later walked back those comments, calling them “hypothetical.”
Later in the New Yorker interview, Giuliani, a former high-profile mayor of New York City, speculated what his legal defense of Trump might mean for his legacy.
“I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. “Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.” Somehow, I don’t think that will be it,” he told the magazine. “But, if it is, so what do I care? I’ll be dead. I figure I can explain it to St. Peter.”
