DAMN THE FACTS
Dizzy Don denies Stormy story Says Rudy is still ‘learning’ what to say
PRESIDENT TRUMP insisted Friday he’s “not changing any stories” about a hush payment made to a porn star — as his top lawyer reversed course on the controversy. Trump said Rudy Giuliani — who disclosed the President knew about his personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s payment to Stormy Daniels — is still “learning the subject matter.”
“He started yesterday,” Trump said in defending Giuliani, the former mayor who joined his legal team two weeks ago. “He will get his facts straight. He is a great guy.”
A frustrated Trump denied that his camp has presented a different version of events in recent days.
“We’re not changing any stories,” he said. “I’m telling you, this country is growing so fast and to be bringing up that kind of crap and witch hunt all the time. That’s all you want to talk about.”
Giuliani later issued a statement in which he tried to back away from his suggestion that the $130,000 payment to Daniels was made because Trump was in the stretch run of the 2016 campaign.
“The payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the President’s family,” Giuliani said. “It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not.”
That was a marked change from his earlier comments about the deal being done to keep Daniels quiet so as not to cost Trump votes.
“Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton. Cohen (right) didn’t even ask. Cohen made it go away. He didn’t even ask,” Giuliani told Fox News.
The latest version of events also clashes with Trump’s own comments a month ago.
On Air Force One in April, Trump was asked if he was aware that Cohen paid Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in the months before the 2016 presidential election.
“No. You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney,
and you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” he responded.
Last week, Trump told Fox News that Cohen represented him in the “crazy Stormy Daniels deal.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that Trump “eventually learned” about the payment, but did not offer details.
For all the controversy Giuliani stirred up, some Trump supporters said it was wise to acknowledge the payment out in the open. “You know, there’s an old saying in the law, ‘Hang a lantern on your problems,’ ” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told The Associated Press. “So the fact is that Rudy has to go out there now and clean it up. That’s what lawyers get hired to do.” The payment was secretly made by Cohen during the campaign as part of a nondisclosure agreement to prevent Daniels from going public with her allegations of a decade-old affair with Trump. The President, following Giuliani’s media blitz lead, said he paid Cohen back via a monthly retainer, but was unaware of what the funds were for.
Trump did not report the payments on his campaign-finance reports — which could be a violation of campaign-finance laws and open him up to legal liability.
Cohen’s office, home and hotel room were raided by the FBI last month as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
Giuliani played cleanup with his “clarification” on Friday.
“My references to timing were not describing my understanding of the President’s knowledge, but instead, my understanding of these matters,” he said.
Legal experts warned the former prosecutor’s “lay it all out there” tactic may backfire.
“Giuliani is solving some legal problems but creating others in the process,” Jens David Ohlin, a dean at Cornell University Law School, told the Daily News. “Even if we accept that they were repayments, the expenditures should have been disclosed and reported” to the election commission.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, called for a probe into whether Trump broke federal ethics laws.
Cummings noted that under federal law “it is a crime to knowingly and willfully make a false and fraudulent representation to a federal office or entity.”