White House Watch: Rudy Says Trump Reimbursed Cohen for Stormy Payments

“So, they funneled it through the law firm?” Hannity asked.

“Funneled it through the law firm,” Giuliani confirmed, before adding this bombshell: “And the president repaid it.”

Giuliani continued: “He didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this for my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.”

If Giuliani’s admission is true, it would show President Trump lied about not knowing about the payment—it’s no defense to say that Trump was telling the truth because he was unaware of the “specifics” of paying Daniels but that he had Cohen “take care of things like this.”

And what are “things like this” exactly? Was Trump knowingly paying Cohen to squash stories that would have hurt Trump’s presidential campaign? Despite Giuliani’s insistence that it was not “campaign money,” but Trump’s own money that Cohen was giving Daniels to purchase her silence, the fact that such a payment was never reported to the Federal Election Commission suggests Trump could have violated campaign finance laws. Cohen’s payment gave the president plausible deniability on this front—it was his lawyer who paid her, and he didn’t work for the campaign—but the admission from Giuliani makes that a harder sell now.

Watch the beginning of Hannity’s interview here. Giuliani touches on some other important topics, including laying out in more detail under what circumstances the president might sit for an interview with the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

But notice what Giuliani says about why Trump fired FBI director James Comey. “He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation,” Giuliani said. That contradicts what the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, wrote in his memo recommending Comey’s firing, though it comports with Trump’s claim to NBC’s Lester Holt in an interview last year that he was planning on firing Comey “regardless of recommendation.”

“And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won,’” Trump said then.

One More Thing—Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, appeared a couple hours later on Fox News and was asked about what Giuliani told Hannity about the payment. “We have nothing to say about it,” Gidley said. “The president has outside counsel and that’s who I am going to have to refer you to,”

Following the successful nomination of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the White House is hoping to secure a relatively painless confirmation next week for his replacement as head of the CIA. Gina Haspel, a career intelligence officer, enjoys the support of a bipartisan group of intelligence allies in the Senate, but faces resistance from Democrats and some Republicans who object to reports that she oversaw enhanced interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists at a CIA site in Thailand in 2002.

In a call with reporters Wednesday, the White House praised Haspel’s service record and pointed to her endorsements from former Obama intelligence officials, including former CIA director John Brennan and deputy director Mike Morales. The officials argued that the Senate ought to confirm her quickly “in a time when there’s so many national security concerns.”

Haspel’s confirmation hearing will take place in front of the Senate Intelligence committee next week.

Gitmo Watch—According to a Pentagon spokeswoman, Secretary of Defense James Mattis delivered his policy recommendations about terrorist detention and the future of the facility at Guantánamo to the White House on Wednesday. “The secretary of Defense has provided the White House with an updated policy governing the criteria for transfer of individuals to the detention facility at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay,” said Sarah Higgins in a statement. “This policy provides our warfighters guidance on nominating detainees for transfer to Guantánamo detention should that person present a continuing, significant threat to the security of the United States.”

The delivery of that recommendation came two days after a deadline for Mattis to consult with other cabinet officials and agency heads on a new policy governing detainees, part of an executive order President Trump signed in January of this year.

Column of the Day—From Ross Douthat in the New York Times: “The Redistribution of Sex”

A South Korean activist set the internet abuzz Thursday with a startling claim: North Korea has released the three Americans detained there from a labor camp and intends to allow them to return to the United States. If true, this would be a remarkable concession from North Korea ahead of President Trump’s planned meeting with Kim Jong-un later this month.

But while Trump allies celebrated the news as the president’s latest diplomatic achievement, the White House was responding more cautiously, telling Reuters they were “looking into” the activist’s claim. A White House official told my colleague Andrew Egger that “the three Americans unlawfully held by North Korea remain very much on the mind of the Trump administration” and that “their release would be seen as a sign of goodwill,” but declined to confirm the story.

The three Americans, Kim Sang-duk, Kim Dong Chul, and Kim Hak-song, have each been detained in Korea for more than a year under the pretext that they were working secretly to undermine the Kim regime. Another previously detained American, Otto Warmbier, was returned to the United States last year in a comatose state. Warmbeir died shortly thereafter.

Trump Tweet of the Day

Song of the Day—“What’s Going On?” by Marvin Gaye