Thread: Giuliani falls back in line

Giuliani falls back in line

The former New York City mayor went from advertising his newfound closeness with the president to apologizing for causing a furor, all in less than 48 hours.

By ANNIE KARNI
05/04/2018 07:18 PM EDT

After Rudy Giuliani called Jared Kushner “disposable” in his off-the-rails interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity earlier this week, the president’s son-in-law watched the clip himself to see what all the fuss was about.

Kushner – newly determined to stay in his lane and not meddle in the president’s legal strategy – decided to downplay a comment that raised eyebrows among other White House officials, instead mitigating potential tension with Giuliani by laughing it off.

As long as his wife didn’t call him “disposable,” he joked to people, everything was going just fine.

Less than 48 hours later, it was Giuliani whose “disposable” status was more of a question mark. His position as Trump’s shiny, new penny – confident enough to take an odd shot at a family member on primetime television – appeared to be in jeopardy on Friday, when the president distanced himself from the newest addition to his legal team in back-to-back gaggles with reporters.

Trump said Giuliani needed more time to “get his facts straight,” on hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, noting that the former New York City Mayor “just started a day ago.”

Giuliani in fact joined the president’s legal team two weeks ago, and had just told NBC News in an interview that “you’re not going to see daylight between the president and me.”

Until Friday, that may have been true. Giuliani had been enjoying a private channel of communication with the president, cutting out staffers and family members as he strategized with Trump directly on how to deal with an ongoing special counsel probe they both believe is a “witch hunt.”

It’s a prime position in the spotlight that the stalwart Trump supporter is enjoying after feeling like he had been passed over during the transition for his promised post of Secretary of State – a fate he still blames, in part, on Kushner.

In private, according to a Republican close to the White House, Giuliani has also blamed the negative view of him in the media, including the whispers about his mental health, on Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

But his mention of the president’s son-in-law, who has been keeping a low profile in recent months, working on prison reform issues, was one of the comments he made on television that had White House aides watching his appearance on Hannity with mouths agape.

“People were really confused by why is he venturing into that territory,” said a senior White House official. “He's not supposed to be here to run the White House, he's supposed to be focused on the outside legal team. Staffers were confused as to why Rudy would opine on Jared.”

Some point to Giuliani’s main ally in the White House as an explanation: Giuliani, according to people in the building, has aligned himself with Don McGahn, the White House counsel who has clashed repeatedly with Kushner.

“He’s spent time with him getting indoctrinated,” said a White House official. “Giuliani and McGahn are largely aligned. Rudy’s heard from McGahn that everything would be better without Jared, and he just assumes that’s commonly understood without better understanding the nuance.”

Another nuance of Trumpworld he also failed to grasp was the impossibility of speaking on the president’s behalf.

By Friday afternoon, just before Trump took the stage in Dallas to speak before the National Rifle Association, Giuliani released a statement clarifying his own remarks concerning the $130,000 payment Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen made to Daniels shortly before the 2016 election — trying to walk back his bombshell claim Trump had personally repaid his lawyer.

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

And by Friday afternoon, Giuliani was also off television, and back to putting the family first in pre-approved statements. “The payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president’s family,” he said. “It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not.”

Nancy Cook and Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...apology-570631

Giuliani Tells Post: Despite Stormy Daniels Misfires Trump Still ‘Loves Me’

Now says that while president reimbursed Michael Cohen for hush money, he didn’t know what it was for.

05/05/2018 01:54 am ET

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was still pedaling as fast as he could to bring his version of the Stormy Daniels payment saga in line with Donald Trump’s — but he also insisted that the president was not angry with him. “He said he loves me,” Giuliani told The Washington Post.

Giuliani told the Post in an interview Friday evening that he and the president had a long conversation about Giuliani’s surprise Stormy Daniels reveal on Fox News, adding: “We wanted to get everyone on the same page.”

Giuliani told Sean Hannity Wednesday that Trump reimbursed the $130,000 in hush money that Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen paid to the adult film star, who has said she had an affair with Trump. Trump has insisted in the past he knew nothing about the payment.

The president initially appeared to support Giuliani’s version of events in tweets Thursday, but then on Friday said Giuliani needed to get his facts straight.

Giuliani repeated to the Post an earlier statement he made Friday, emphasizing again that he was discussing on Fox News “my understanding of these matters,” and not what the president knew at the time. To acknowledge that he had discussed the issue with the president, and revealed details of that conversation on national TV could jeopardize attorney client privilege with the president, the Post pointed out.

He insisted to the Post he gleaned his information about the hush-money payment from “co-counsel, from reading documents, from conversations I had; it wasn’t all from talking to the president.”

Giuliani also appeared to be saying that while Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment to Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — he may have been unaware that he did so.

“I don’t think the president realized he paid him back for that specific thing until we made him aware of the paperwork” recently, he told NBC Friday. Giuliani said the president responded, “Oh my goodness, I guess that’s what it was for.”

He told the Post that the president re*imbursed Cohen by paying him $35,000 a month in 2017 for legal work for the previous year. Giuliani called it a “straight-out bill,” explaining that if Trump didn’t pay it “every month, he paid it many months.”

“The monthly bill was paying down the expenditures. . . . It was not a loan,” Giuliani added. “Some of it was for taxes, some of it was for incidental expenses. It covered things that might come up.”

Giuliani has emphasized that the Clifford payment was not a campaign expenditure to make certain she didn’t talk — even though she was paid shortly before the presidential election and the alleged affair occurred in 2006. Giuliani said the money was paid to protect Trump’s family.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b0c4f19322bd59

Rudy, best to leave the Cohen/Stormy deal to Cohen and the California and New York attorneys working on that civil litigation matter. You don't know that case so best not to comment on it. Just do what you do best and go after the Russia Hoax and end the Witch Hunt.

Trump knew about Stormy Daniels payment months before denial: report

By Max Greenwood
05/04/18 09:55 PM EDT

President Trump was aware of a six-figure hush money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels months before he denied knowing about the transaction, The New York Times reported Friday, citing people familiar with the arrangement.

When exactly Trump learned of the payment is unclear. But, according to the Times, Trump knew when he denied knowledge of the payment to reporters in April that his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had succeeded in silencing Daniels's allegations that she had an affair with the president in 2006.

Questions surfaced once again this week about when Trump became aware of the payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, after Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that the president had reimbursed Cohen for the payment.

That directly contradicted Trump's own claims about the transaction, which he previously denied knowing anything about while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on April 5.

Giuliani also said that Trump reimbursed Cohen $460,000 or $470,000 — much more than the $130,000 Cohen has acknowledged he paid to Daniels. One person familiar with the agreement told the Times that the payment amounted to $420,000 over 12 months.

The payment was part of a 2016 nondisclosure agreement intended to keep Daniels from going public with allegations that she had an affair with Trump in 2006, just months after his wife Melania Trump gave birth to their son.

Daniels is currently suing to void that nondisclosure agreement.

Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels. He acknowledged in a tweet on Thursday that he reimbursed Cohen, but insisted that the arrangement was only made to protect his family and that none of the money was tied to his presidential campaign.

Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg knew since last year that Cohen was being reimbursed for the payment in the form of a $35,000 monthly retainer, the Times reported.

The money came from the trust that holds Trump's personal fortune, according to the Times.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...-denial-report

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Personal money for personal business to protect his family and possibly enjoy a windfall if the other party breaches the agreement. Cohen's last count was $20 million in breach damages and it's been breached many times since then at $1 million a pop. Sounds like a reasonable deal to me.