President Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani says “the scoundrel” Michael Cohen alleges there was a meeting among top Trump campaign officials days ahead of an infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 with Russians teasing dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Giuliani said Monday the previously unreported meeting never happened, and that then-candidate Trump didn’t attend it. Giuliani said during an unscheduled call to Fox News that he wanted to discuss the allegation first to control the public narrative.
“Why did I mention it? Because first of all, I thought it was going to come out. Second, my experience is that when you have something like this floating around, it comes out. I don’t want to come out and be unreported when it originally comes out,” Giuliani said.
The former New York City mayor disclosed the alleged meeting while clarifying his earlier remark that Trump did not attend the meeting, creating confusion about what meeting he was referencing.
Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, alleges that top campaign officials met three days before the famous Trump Tower meeting attended by Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Donald Trump Jr., according to Giuliani. The well-known meeting emerged as a key indicator the Trump campaign was open to receiving damaging information on Clinton from Russians.
Giuliani said during his call to Fox News that he and fellow Trump attorney Jay Sekulow have communicated with two reporters who inquired about the alleged meeting.
“Two publications are not going to publish it. I think they found independent contradiction. He says it was a meeting with Donald Jr., with Jared Kushner, with Paul Manafort, possibly others, in which they, out of the presence of the president, discussed the meeting with the Russian. We checked with their lawyers, the ones we could check with. That meeting never took place,” Giuliani said.
“It’s a figment of his imagination or he’s lying,” Giuliani added. “The only meeting that they find for that day that included any of these people is a meeting about the Hispanic judge that the president had criticized back around that time.”
Giuliani also denied a recently leaked allegation that Donald Trump Jr. walked into his father’s office on the day of the famous meeting, and that Cohen witnessed it. Giuliani said the alleged interaction is “categorically untrue” and that “two witnesses demonstrate that.”
Cohen and his attorney, Lanny Davis, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Giuliani said he’s continuing to discuss a potential interview with Trump and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. “We are negotiating,” he said, arguing there should be no questions about obstruction and that he’s concerned about a planned “perjury trap.”
