Rudy Giuliani sought to clarify comments he made this weekend about discussions about a planned Trump Tower in Russia between President Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen — now calling them “hypothetical.”
“My recent statements about discussions during the 2016 campaign between Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump about a potential Trump Moscow ‘project’ were hypothetical and not based on conversations I had with the President,” said Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who now represents Trump, in a Monday afternoon statement.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Giuliani said conversations between Trump and Cohen went on “throughout 2016,” and he later added they could have been “up to as far as October, November” 2016.
“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,” he said on the NBC show.
On Monday, Giuliani backpedaled: “My comments did not represent the actual timing or circumstances of any such discussions. The point is that the proposal was in the earliest stage and did not advance beyond a free non-binding letter of intent.”
Giuliani did another interview which further obfuscated the story about Trump Tower Moscow when he told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump might have talked to Cohen about his testimony to Congress.
“As far as I know, President Trump did not have discussions with [Cohen], certainly had no discussions with him in which he told him or counseled him to lie,” Giuliani said on CNN early Sunday. “If — if he had any discussions with him, they’d be about the version of the events that Michael Cohen gave them, which they all believed was true. I believed it was true. I still believe it may be true, because, unlike these people who want to just believe him, I believe Michael Cohen is a serial liar.”
When asked by Tapper if he had just acknowledged Trump had talked with Cohen about the testimony, Giuliani replied: “Which would be perfectly normal, which the president believed was true.”
The Trump Tower Moscow discussions were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won,” Giuliani quoted Trump as saying during an interview with the New York Times published later Sunday.
The comments made now about the Trump Tower in Moscow appear to line up with what he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in December.
“According to the answer that he gave, it would have covered all the way up to — covered up to November 2016,” Giuliani told Stephanopoulos when asked if Trump knew that Cohen was pursuing the project into summer 2016.
Cohen testified to Congress that talks had ended by January 2016 — before the Republican primary began. In November, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project, which never came to fruition. Cohen worked on the talks as late as June, he admitted.
That charge was brought against Cohen by special counsel Robert Mueller, and in December he was sentenced to three years in prison for that plea, as well as eight other felony counts. He is set to report to prison in early March.
Before then, Cohen is scheduled to testify publicly before House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday that the panel will subpoena Cohen “if necessary” after giving him a date to appear.
Giuliani’s statement Monday comes amid fallout from an explosive report Thursday by BuzzFeed News that said Mueller’s team had evidence showing Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress.
No other news organization has yet to corroborate the story, and by the end of the day Friday, Mueller’s office issued a statement disputing it.
“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,” said Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller.
BuzzFeed News has stood by the report, which quotes two unnamed law enforcement officials who said Trump told Cohen to claim negotiations to build the tower ended months earlier than they actually had. Cohen, according to the report, told Mueller’s team that the president had given the demand to lie to Congress.
Trump has claimed Cohen lied to reduce his sentence, and he called the efforts to build Trump Tower in Moscow “very legal and very cool” in a late-November tweet.
“I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, which case I would have gone back into the business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities?” Trump told reporters in November after Cohens’ guilty plea.
Before taking office in January 2017, Trump insisted he had no business relationships with Russia, tweeting: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
