Trump disputes Giuliani’s story
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump further confused his legal strategy on Friday and undermined his credibility, disputing an account from his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani that Trump paid $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, just a day after he’d confirmed the remarks.
The president’s public rebuke – “He’ll get his facts straight” – forced Giuliani within hours to issue a “clarification” that cleared up little.
Trump, his legal worries seemingly mounting, also stepped up his attack against the special counsel investigating him and his associates, and hinted strongly that he would not submit to an interview with prosecutors – a decision that could provoke a constitutional contest that goes to the Supreme Court.
Giuliani had told multiple reporters this week that he had Trump’s backing when he disclosed, starting Wednesday night on Fox News, that Trump reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen for money given to Daniels just before the 2016 election, to silence her about an alleged tryst. Trump last month had U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while departing from the White House on Friday in Washington D.C.
told reporters he was unaware of the payoff.
Legal experts had questioned Giuliani’s move to reveal the new information, which Trump himself affirmed in tweets on Thursday morning. Their disclosures created additional political problems for Trump, suggesting he’d lied previously and possibly violated federal law on reporting campaign and personal finances.
“He started yesterday,” Trump said Friday of Giuliani, who joined the president’s legal team two weeks ago. “He’ll get his facts straight. He’s a great guy.”
The president, speaking three separate times to reporters as he left for
Dallas to address a National Rifle Association convention, said Giuliani agrees with him that the federal investigation of Trump and his associates is a “witch hunt.” Yet even as Trump went on to contest Giuliani’s other statements, he declined to specify which facts were wrong or to clarify any inaccuracies.
“Well, you’re going to find out, because, you know, we’re going to give a full list,” Trump said to reporters, adding that “there has been a lot of misinformation, really.”
The president bristled when a reporter asked why he’d changed his story on Daniels.
“I’m not changing any stories,” he snapped. “All I’m telling you is that this country is right now running so smooth. And to be bringing up that kind of crap, and to be bringing up witch hunts all the time – that’s all you want to talk about.”
Giuliani later issued a statement “intended to clarify the views (he) expressed over the past few days.”
Giuliani’s accounts were surprising in their detail. He said on Wednesday that Trump had reimbursed Cohen, his longtime personal attorney, for the $130,000 payment to silence Daniels, in a series of monthly $35,000 installments that also covered other, unspecified legal services, for a total payment of as much as $460,000. Giuliani didn’t say how Cohen spent the bulk of the money.
Giuliani’s comments, if true, opened Trump and Cohen up to possible legal liabilities over violating federal laws on reporting campaign-related finances and, in Trump’s case, personal finances, including outstanding obligations to Cohen.