White House scrambles after Giuliani reveal
Trump ‘was well aware’ lawyer was announcing hush payment details
He may have had a strategy, but Rudy Giuliani hatched it almost entirely in secret. The White House counsel had no idea. Neither did the White House chief of staff, nor the White House press secretary, nor the new White House lawyer overseeing its handling of the Russia investigation.
They watched, agog, as Giuliani, the president’s recently installed personal lawyer, freestyled on live TV Wednesday night about U.S. President Donald Trump’s legal troubles and unveiled an explosive new fact: the president reimbursed his longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, the $130,000 (U.S.) paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
Giuliani’s attempt to defuse a ticking time bomb exposed Trump’s failure to divulge the full story about the Daniels hush money by contradictory public statements from him and the White House spokesperson. One month ago, Trump told reporters he did not know about the $130,000 payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and did not know where Cohen got the money to make it.
Aides and advisers to the president — who were scrambling Thursday morning to manage the fallout of Giuliani’s interview with Sean Hannity, a Trump-friendly Fox News host — expressed a mixture of exasperation and horror. One White House official texted a reporter a string of emoji characters in response, including a tiny container of popcorn.
A second White House official, who like most others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, said of Trump, “His story is obviously not consistent anymore.”
The episode was just the latest convulsion for a White House that perpetually navigates turbulence, careening from one crisis to another, most of them of the president’s own making.
In this case, Giuliani said he was trying to solve one problem for Trump — by establishing that the payment to Daniels came from personal funds and was “funnelled” through a law firm, arguing it therefore did not violate campaign finance laws. Giuliani said in an interview with the Washington Post that he discussed the issue with Trump a few days ago and they agreed that he would reveal details about the reimbursement.
“He was well aware that at some point when I saw the opportunity, I was going to get this over with,” Giuliani said.
Asked whether he might be fired for what he told Hannity, Giuliani replied, “No, no, no! I’m not going to get fired.” Laughing, he added, “But if I do, I do. It wouldn’t be the first time it ever happened. But I don’t think so, no.”
In a trio of tweets Thursday morning, Trump attempted to do some damage control, writing in a notably restrained style that Cohen had received a monthly retainer that did not come from the campaign and insisted that no campaign finance laws had been violated.
Aides speculated that the tweets may have been drafted by members of the president’s legal team, noting that they did not seem to be written in Trump’s singular Twitter voice.
The Cohen payment disclosure was not the only problematic comment from Giuliani in his wide-ranging interview with Hannity. He offered a new reason for Trump firing FBI director James Comey — because he would not publicly state that Trump was not under FBI investigation — that was different than the one provided by the administration at the time of Comey’s firing last May.
In addition, Giuliani said scrutiny from special counsel Rob- ert Mueller on Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, was inappropriate because she was “a fine lady.” But Giuliani said it would be acceptable for Mueller to scrutinize her husband, Jared Kushner, because, as he jokingly put it, Kushner was “disposable.” Both Ivanka Trump and Kushner are senior White House advisers.
Privately, some in Trump’s orbit were skeptical about the hiring of Giuliani, wondering if the combative and colourful former prosecutor was the right choice to lead a white-collar defence team. Andrew Kirtzman, a Giuliani biographer, said he did not see any “strategic sense” to Giuliani’s comments. “While he has always been bombastic, there has always been a logic to that bombast,” Kirtzman said. “I don’t see the logic here.”
But if Trump was upset with his lawyer’s performance, he did not show it. Indeed, the president was party to hatching the strategy, according to three people involved in the discussions. In recent weeks — over phone calls, dinners and private Oval Office huddles — Giuliani and Trump have talked through the thicket of legal issues facing the president beyond the Russia investigation, these people said.
Giuliani at first was reluctant to join Trump’s legal team because he preferred to offer informal advice, but the president pushed him to sign on formally because of the complexity of personal matters he was confronting, the people said.
Giuliani, in particular, viewed potential federal scrutiny of election law as an issue that Trump had to address head on rather than dodge because he believed that it could fester in the coming months, according to one person who spoke with him last month. This person added that Trump was prone to trust Giuliani’s position because they had bonded privately over their shared frustrations with the Justice Department and both men wanted to run a more combative, freewheeling media campaign.
“Giuliani’s value to Trump is not just that he’s got gravitas in the room with Mueller,” Kirtzman said. “He’s a confidante. Trump needs a confidante more than ever. He hasn’t been able to find a confidante among the lawyers he hired. The question is whether Giuliani winds him up or calms him down.”
“While (Giuliani) has always been bombastic, there has always been a logic to that bombast. I don’t see the logic here.” ANDREW KIRTZMAN A GIULIANI BIOGRAPHER