Giuliani backpedals on hush money

Experts say he may have put attorney-client privilege with president in jeopardy

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani sought Friday to clean up a series of comments he had made about a settlement with an adult-film actress who had an alleged relationship with Trump, backtracking on his previous assertions about what the president knew and why the payment was made.

The cautious wording of the written statement released by Giuliani stood in sharp contrast to his previous two days of wide-ranging television and print interviews in which, according to legal experts, he exposed his client to greater legal risks and might have compromised his own attorney-client privilege with the president.

The former New York mayor startled White House officials and other members of Trump’s legal team by announcing Wednesday that the president had reimbursed his personal lawyer Michael Cohen for a secret $130,000 payment he made in 2016 to actress Stormy Daniels.

In several interviews, Giuliani also talked at length about how much Trump paid Cohen and when the reimbursements were made.

Some Trump advisers said they fear that Giuliani may have waived his right to assert that his conversations with the president are private — and that government or private lawyers pursuing lawsuits could now seek to interview him.

The drama instigated by the freewheeling former U.S. attorney — who signed on as Trump’s lawyer just last month — is the latest crisis to hit the president’s legal team, which has weathered numerous departures in recent months as it contends with the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference and a newly revealed separate criminal probe into Cohen.

The most recent shake-up came this week, with the news that Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer dealing with the special counsel, will be replaced by veteran white-collar defense attorney Emmet Flood.

Despite the fallout from his comments, Giuliani still appeared to be in good graces with the president, according to people familiar with his standing. The two men continued to confer privately about how to handle the Daniels matter, without consulting with the White House communications shop or the White House counsel’s office.

In an interview Friday with The Washington Post, Giuliani said Trump was not mad at him. “He says he loves me,” Giuliani said.

For his part, Trump told reporters Friday that Giuliani, who joined the legal team April 19, “just started a day ago” and is “learning the subject matter.”

“He knows it’s a witch hunt,” the president added. “He’ll get his facts straight.”

But Giuliani’s attempt at damage control will probably do little to mitigate the legal problems he has caused, legal experts said.

“The first rule is to shut up, which he is unable to do,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University. “False exculpatory statements often come back to bite.”

“Giuliani’s barrage harmed his client,” he added. “He waived the privilege for communications with Trump on the subject of his public statements.”

One close Trump adviser agreed, saying Giuliani had “waived the privilege, big time” with his public descriptions of his conversations with the president.

Trump initially did not appear concerned about Giuliani’s revelations, telling him Wednesday night that he was “very pleased” with his comments, as Giuliani told The Post that night.

But Friday morning, the two men had a long conversation, during which they decided that a clarification was needed, Giuliani said in an interview Friday evening.

“We wanted to get everyone on the same page,” he said.

In the statement he released, Giuliani insisted that the settlement with Daniels to keep her from disclosing an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 was solely made “to protect the President’s family.”

“It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not,” he added in his statement.

That contrasted with comments he made earlier in the week, when he referred to the Daniels settlement in the context of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Appearing Thursday on Fox News Channel, for instance, Giuliani asked viewers to imagine if Daniels had aired her allegations “in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.”

He added that Cohen “made it go away. He did his job.”

Campaign finance law experts said such remarks by Giuliani may have offered new potential evidence for federal prosecutors in Manhattan who are investigating Cohen.

In his statement, Giuliani also sought to make clear that he spoke in recent interviews about his understanding of events in which Trump had been involved — not about what the president knew at the time.

“My references to timing were not describing my understanding of the President’s knowledge, but instead, my understanding of these matters,” he said.

The distinction is important because if Giuliani had 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, legal experts said.

In interviews earlier in the week, Giuliani indicated that he had conferred with the president before he divulged that Trump had reimbursed Cohen.

“He was well aware that at some point, when I saw the opportunity, I was going to get this over with,” Giuliani told The Post on Wednesday night, adding that he had discussed the matter with Trump “probably four or five days ago.”

In a subsequent interview with NBC, Giuliani said he told Trump what Cohen had done on his behalf.

“I don’t think the president realized he paid him back for that specific thing until we made him aware of the paperwork,” he said.

Giuliani said the president responded, “Oh my goodness, I guess that’s what it was for.”

Giuliani’s statements were based on a relatively short conversation he had with Trump about the Daniels matter, according to two people familiar with their discussions. Giuliani did not independently delve into the details of the case before he went on the air Wednesday night, they said.

“Rudy followed the client’s wishes without knowing all the facts,” one person said.

Giuliani disputed that, telling The Post on Friday evening that his understanding of the case came from “co-counsel, from reading documents, from conversations I had.”

“It wasn’t all from talking to the president,” he said.