Contrary to what BuzzFeed reported last week, President Trump’s lawyer said Sunday his boss advised his former fixer Michael Cohen to be honest when he appeared before lawmakers.
“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,” Rudy Giuliani said during an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “But in any event, his lawyers thought that, our lawyers thought that, and the president thought that at the time.”
Giuliani said he was “100 percent certain” that his client never asked Cohen to be untruthful with congressional investigators when he sat down with the House and Senate Intelligence committees in 2017.
WATCH: President Trump’s personal lawyer @RudyGiuliani tells @chucktodd he is “100% certain” that the president never directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. #MTP #IfItsSunday pic.twitter.com/dl1v6f8k36
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 20, 2019
Giuliani was responding to questions about BuzzFeed News reporting late Thursday that Cohen not only told special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump ordered him to lie to Congress about negotiations for a Trump Tower project in Russia, but also Mueller had documentation to back it up.
In a rare public rebuke, Mueller’s spokesman pushed back on the story on Friday, saying, “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”
In a separate interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Giuliani said Trump could have spoken to Cohen “about the version of events that Michael Cohen gave them” — despite the fact that the sources identified in BuzzFeed’s story was not Cohen, but unnamed law enforcement personnel.
.@RudyGiuliani: “As far as I know, President Trump did not have discussions … in which he told (Michael Cohen) or counseled him to lie. If he had any discussions with him, they’d be about the version of events that Michael Cohen gave them, which they all believed was true.” pic.twitter.com/1c1NBnrZ7c
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) January 20, 2019
“And so what if he talked to him,” Giuliani told CNN. “The guy driving this testimony was Michael Cohen.”
Cohen pleaded guilty in November, as part of Mueller’s federal Russia investigation to “knowingly and willfully” making “a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement and representation” to Congress concerning the Trump Organization real estate deal. He was sentenced to two months in prison for the charge, which will be served concurrently with the three years he received for campaign finance violations and tax and bank fraud.
