Rudy Giuliani said Thursday he’s skeptical of an NBC report that said federal investigators wiretapped Michael Cohen’s phones and blamed the leak on the Justice Department.
Giuliani’s suspicions proved to be correct, as NBC News corrected its report hours later. The outlet instead said Cohen’s phones were being monitored using a device called a pen register, which records numbers called from a certain phone line and the duration of calls. It does not listen into the calls.
“Us lawyers have talked about it, we don’t believe it’s true,” Giuliani, a recent addition to President Trump’s legal team, told the Daily Beast. “We think it’s going to turn out to be untrue because it would be totally illegal. You can’t wiretap a lawyer, you certainly can’t wiretap his client who’s not involved in the investigation. No one has suggested that Trump was involved in that investigation. So they’re going to wiretap the lawyer, his client, and his client the president of the United States? I don’t think so, not if they want to stay out of jail. Disclosing a wiretap is a federal felony. I never took ‘em home when I was a U.S. attorney.”
NBC News reported Thursday, the wiretap was in place before FBI agents raided Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room early last month. Federal authorities reportedly intercepted at least one phone call between one of Cohen’s wiretapped phone lines and the White House.
Giuliani told The Daily Beast earlier Thursday that Cohen was unaware of any wiretap and attributed the leak to NBC News to the Justice Department.
“Nobody else would know about it,” he said. “Cohen didn’t know about it, so it has to be the FBI, the independent counsel, or the Justice Department.”
“Anybody who says that I’m exaggerating when I say that this is an out-of-control investigation and they’re acting like storm troopers — give me a break, baby! They prove it every day,” Giuliani added.
Giuliani used the term “storm troopers” during an interview with Fox News to describe FBI agents who conducted the Cohen raid. The comment earned him criticism from former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Eric Holder.
During the raid, agents reportedly took documents tied to a number of issues, including a $130,000 payment Cohen made to former adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who was given the money in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump. Giuliani admitted Trump reimbursed Cohen for the money.
Giuliani recently joined Trump’s legal team and said last month he was aiming to negotiate an end to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The former New York City mayor has also reportedly re-opened negotiations with Mueller over an interview with Trump.
But Giuliani said the leak to NBC News about the alleged wiretapping of Cohen’s phones jeopardizes a possible presidential interview.
“Right now, the odds are against it. Look at all of the bad faith we’re seeing here,” he said. “And whether this wiretap story is true or not true, it’s bad faith to leak it. We should find out about this with a notification from the Justice Department, they’re wiretapping the president of the United States, they’re wiretapping a man talking to his lawyer and then they want us to cooperate? We’re not suckers.”
