Giuliani tries to clarify comments on reimbursement
Attorney says payment to porn star would have been made in any event
President Donald Trump’s new lawyer Rudy Giuliani sought Friday to clean up a series of comments made during a whirlwind media tour meant to bolster the president’s standing regarding a payment to a porn star but that instead created new problems for his client.
In a statement issued hours after Trump told reporters Giuliani was still getting up to speed on the facts, the former New York mayor said that a $130,000 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels by longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen would have happened regardless of whether Trump was on the presidential ballot the following month.
“The payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the President’s family,” Giuliani said in the statement. “It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not.”
On Wednesday, Giuliani revealed that the president had reimbursed Cohen for the settlement Cohen paid in October 2016 to keep Daniels from disclosing details of a sexual encounter she alleged she had with Trump a decade earlier.
Giuliani has said that the details of the reimbursement showed that Trump paid back Cohen because it was a personal, not a campaign expense. But campaign finance law experts said Giuliani’s remarks did not rule out violations of campaign finance laws, and some of his statements may have actually provided new evidence for investigators.
Appearing Thursday on the Fox News Channel, for instance, Giuliani asked viewers to imagine if Daniels had aired her allegations “on Oct. 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.”
“Cohen didn’t even ask,” Giuliani told viewers. “Cohen made it go away. He did his job.”
In his statement, Giuliani also sought to make clear that he speaking in television interviews about his understanding of events in which Trump had been involved and not about what the president knew at the time. The distinction is important because if Giuliani publicly described a private conversation with the president, he might have inadvertently waived attorney-client privilege on that conversation, potentially opening the door for prosecutors to probe further into what was said.
Cohen is under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York for possible bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations, according to people familiar with the matter. FBI agents searched Cohen’s house, office, and hotel room.
In early April, after Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he was unaware of the settlement that Cohen had paid to Daniels.
Since Giuliani began discussing these matters publicly two days ago, the White House has been besieged with questions about their past denials of the president’s knowledge, and on Friday morning, Trump suggested Giuliani had misspoken.
“Rudy is a great guy, but he just started a day ago, but he really has his heart into it, he’s working hard, he’s learning the subject matter,” Trump told reporters.
“He knows it’s a witch hunt,” Trump continued. “He’ll get his facts straight.”