Rudy Giuliani told ABC News that he can’t rule out the possibility of President Trump taking the Fifth Amendment if he testifies in the Russia investigation.
Said Giuliani: “They don’t have a case on collusion, they don’t have obstruction. I’m going to walk him into a prosecution for perjury like Martha Stewart?”
Michael Avenatti, attorney for Stormy Daniels, slammed Rudy Giuliani on MSNBC:
Rudy Giuliani said in a statement that the October 2016 settlement with adult actress Stormy Daniels was made to protect President Trump’s family and “would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not,” the Washington Post reports.
Giuliani’s latest comments came after he mused what would have happened if Daniels’s allegation of a decade-old affair had surfaced right before the election – remarks that legal experts said gave investigators new fodder.
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President Trump “undercut his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and said the former New York mayor will eventually get the facts right regarding a payment to a pornographic actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump,” the New York Times reports.
Trump said that everything “has been said incorrectly,” blaming the media coverage and Mr. Giuliani’s short time on the job.
He added that Giuliani, who joined Trump’s legal team last month, “started a day ago” but will “get his facts straight.”
Rudy Giuliani told The Hill that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should intervene in the Michael Cohen case and put the people behind the probe “under investigation.”
Said Giuliani: “I am waiting for the Attorney General to step in, in his role as defender of justice, and put these people under investigation.”
“Rudy Giuliani’s cable rollout as a member of President Trump’s legal team, and the torrent of statements he made Wednesday night, caught many in the White House offguard and flat-footed, highlighting the continued chaotic nature of the President’s communications strategy,” CNN reports.
Said Giuliani: “They were, there was no way they wouldn’t be. The President is my client, I don’t talk to them.”
Rick Hasen: “If what Giuliani says is true, and if the payments were made to help the campaign and not (just) to help Trump personally, the campaign may be implicated in illegal activity. If Trump knew that Cohen was advancing him a $130,000 loan for campaign purposes, that would have to be reported by the campaign, as would the payments Giuliani said Trump made in installments to Cohen. These would be campaign expenditures that the committee has to keep track of. As Philip Bump notes, if the Trump Organization facilities were used to help make these payments, then there may be additional campaign violations related to the use of corporate resources for campaigns.”
“Although many campaign finance violations are handled just as fines, as Giuliani seemed to suggest in his Hannity interview Wednesday night, that’s not true for willful violations of campaign finance law, especially those implicating the public interest. Those can lead to criminal liability.”
New York Times: “Mr. Giuliani said that he had spoken with the president before and after his interview on Fox News, and that Mr. Trump and other lawyers on the team were aware of what he would say.”
Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that President Trump repaid his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, the $130,000 he used to secure an agreement with adult film star Stormy Daniels to stay silent about their extramarital affair.
Giuliani said the payment was “perfectly legal” and was “not campaign money,” meaning the arrangement didn’t violate campaign finance law.
He added: “He didn’t know about the specifics of it but he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this.”
Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s new personal lawyer dealing with the ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, met with special counsel Robert Mueller to reopen negotiations for a presidential interview, the Washington Post reports.
Giuliani “conveyed the ongoing resistance of Trump and his advisers to an interview with federal investigators, but did not rule out the possibility.”
“Trump remains ‘extremely opposed’ to granting Mueller an interview, according to one close adviser — setting up a potential high-stakes legal battle between the White House and the special counsel, who could ultimately seek to try to subpoena the president.”
New York Times: “Some close to the president believe he could try to replace Mr. Sessions with Mr. Giuliani in the coming months, although Mr. Giuliani would face an extremely difficult confirmation hearing in the Senate.”
“When Mr. Giuliani sought the secretary of state job, Trump advisers, including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, raised concerns about his business dealings and paid speeches to a shadowy Iranian opposition group that until 2012 was on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.”
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a combative former prosecutor and longtime ally of President Trump, told the Washington Post that he has joined the president’s legal team dealing with the ongoing special counsel probe.
Said Giuliani: “I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller.”
President Trump is so unhappy with Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he has raised the possibility of bringing back Rudolph Giuliani to replace him, Mike Allen reports.
“Giuliani would have a tough time getting 50 Republicans senators to vote to confirm him. He was such an early and ardent Trump backer that he wouldn’t be seen as an independent guardian of the department in these tumultuous times.”
“In fact, the nomination could be seen as Trump throwing gasoline on a fire. And Giuliani’s stop-and-frisk police policy as New York mayor, and clients since then, also would be controversial with many senators.”
Rudy Giuliani told The Atlantic that “he is not up for consideration to replace FBI Director James Comey, whose firing by President Trump set off a political maelstrom on Tuesday.”
Said Giuliani: “I’m not a candidate for FBI director. The president’s not gonna ask me and I’m not gonna be FBI director.”
Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that Donald Trump came to him for guidance on implementing a so-called “Muslim ban” and from that, he helped construct the controversial order crippling international travel from predominantly Muslim countries, the New York Daily News reports.
“The ex-NYC mayor said he pitched the ban, not as a religious prohibition, but one focused on danger.
Said Giuliani: “I’ll tell you the whole history of it. When he first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up, he said ‘put a commission together, show me the right way to do it, legally.'”
Rudy Giuliani said President-elect Donald Trump “didn’t forget about him when forming his administration,” The Hill reports.
Said Giuliani: “He offered me some cabinet positions, which I’m very very thankful for. It just didn’t work out.”
He added: “And at 72 years old, there was only one challenge I thought that really was left for me. The others wouldn’t have been a challenge.”
Rudy Giuliani, a longtime Donald Trump ally, will not be serving in the president-elect’s administration, The Hill reports.
“Giuliani has removed himself from consideration for any position in the new administration, the Trump transition team announced Friday. He was rumored to be in the mix to be secretary of State.”
Politico: “Giuliani had previously publicly campaigned for the post and it was not immediately clear why he had withdrawn. The transition team said that he withdrew on November 29.”
First Read: “Every day, it seems that Donald Trump’s secretary of state list keeps expanding — yesterday was Jon Huntsman’s turn in the spotlight. But here is something to chew on: Is this expanding list all about helping Rudy Giuliani, the original frontrunner for the job? Every time that someone new is examined (whether Huntsman or Mitt Romney or David Petraeus or that Exxon-Mobil CEO), does that help Giuliani’s case?”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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