President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, continues to do the work of the people by seriously mangling just about everything he touches. At this point, Giuliani is going to beat special counsel Robert Mueller to the punch and announce on primetime television that the president colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election.
I expect Giuliani at any moment to go on Real Time with Bill Maher and say, “There are pee-pee tapes. I’ve seen them” and before Maher can even speak, Giuliani will add, “There are other tapes as well... Let’s just say animal stuff.”
While many of us aren’t familiar with this kind of lawyering, such is the life of the Titanic administration that continues to find new ways to sink the ship. While the news has been centered on the explosive BuzzFeed article alleging that Trump instructed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow, Giuliani hit the talk-news circuit to clear things up Giuliani style.
On Sunday, Giuliani spoke with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd about how long Trump was talking with Cohen about the project.
From CNN:
Giuliani: Well, it’s our understanding that it — that they went on throughout 2016. Weren’t a lot of them, but there were conversations. Can’t be sure of the exact date. But the president can remember having conversations with him about it.
Todd: Throughout 2016 —
Giuliani: “The president also remembers — yeah, probably up — could be up to as far as October, November. Our answers cover until the election. So anytime during that period they could’ve talked about it. But the president’s recollection of it is that the the thing had petered out quite a bit. They sent a letter of intent in. They didn’t even know where to send it they knew so little about it. They’d finally got it straightened out. And then they abandoned the project. And that’s about as much as he can remember of it. Because, remember, 2015, 2016, he’s running against 16 people for president of the United States. And I know that. I was with him, like, for —
Later on Sunday, Giuliani told the New York Times that Trump told him: “The Trump Tower Moscow discussions were ‘going on from the day I announced to the day I won.’”
Seems pretty clear that according to Giuliani, you know, Trump’s lawyer, that the talks went on for quite some time. Well, that all changed on Monday when Giuliani released this statement viewed by CNN:
“My recent statements about discussions during the 2016 campaign between Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump about a potential Trump Moscow ‘project’ were hypothetical and not based on conversations I had with the President. My comments did not represent the actual timing or circumstances of any such discussions. The point is that the proposal was in the earliest stage and did not advance beyond a free non-binding letter of intent.”
Because this whole thing isn’t confusing enough, Giuliani again switched gears on Monday telling the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner that he never said that the president told him how long the talks between himself and Cohen had gone on, even implying that the New York Times made up the quote.
Chotiner: The quote in the story from you is that the “’discussions were going on from the day I announced to the day I won,’ Mr. Giuliani quoted Mr. Trump as saying during an interview with The New York Times.”
Giuliani: I did not say that.
Chotiner: The Times just made that quote up?
Giuliani: I don’t know if they made it up. What I was talking about was, if he had those conversations, they would not be criminal.
Chotiner: If he had them, but he didn’t have them?
Giuliani: He didn’t have the conversations. Lawyers argue in the alternative. If we went to court, we would say we don’t have to prove whether it’s true or not true, because, even if it’s true, it’s not criminal. And that’s why Mueller will not charge him with it.
I’m still convinced that Giuliani is part of a broader plan to draw heat off the president by proving himself to truly be the dumbest man inside the White House. At this point, there are only two logical reasons that Giuliani continues to be put out front answering serious questions about the heavily investigated administration. The first is the most logical: the Trump administration is as dumb, if not dumber, than they appear.
The second is that Giuliani has been instructed to toss out red-herrings, mistruths, misdirections and fumblerooskis all over the goddamn place until the entire investigation stinks of Russian prostitute urine.
I’ll take Russian prostitute urine for the win.