On July 8, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos asked President Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani whether he was concerned that Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, might flip on the president.
“I have no concerns that Michael Cohen is going to do anything but tell the truth, and if he does, as I said, there’s no suggestion that anything happened,” Giuliani said at the time.
Now with Cohen reportedly prepared to flip on Trump less than two weeks later, Giuliani is singing a much different tune about a man he once called an “honest, honorable lawyer.”
“This guy is a proven liar,” Giuliani told CNN on Thursday. “A year ago, when I wasn’t his lawyer, people in your profession told me this guy will flip because he is an inherent, pathological liar.”
.. the investigations into Cohen and Russian election interference could come down, in part, to Cohen’s credibility. Or at least Trump’s legal team seems to think so.
Why Trump Will Survive the Cohen Tape
Trump’s relationship with Cohen, a lawyer so disreputable that no one else would want his representation, is off the charts.
Q: What kind of lawyer tapes his client (as Trump has asked in recent days)? A: Cohen, whose lack of standards is what made him so useful in the first place.
.. Trump’s supporters (most of them) acknowledge his serious shortcomings but think it’s more important to focus on his agenda and accomplishments. It’s difficult to find a further personal peccadillo that can budge anyone from these trench lines, since there’s no real contest over his character to begin with.
.. The irony is that Trump’s detractors hate him so much that they have created, perhaps, an impossibly high standard for his misconduct.
- It’s not damning enough for them that the Russians interfered in our election and Trump is dismissive of it;
- Trump has to be a quasi-Russian agent who actively colluded with the Kremlin, perhaps going back decades.
- It’s not damning enough that Trump had affairs with a porn star and Playmate; he has to have committed some serious criminal offense in the course of covering his tracks.
.. When Giuliani says that the Cohen tape is exculpatory, he doesn’t mean that it proves there was nothing to the McDougal story and where does his client go to get his reputation back? He means that Trump was upfront and transparent about buying her story — he wanted to do it by check... With Trump having delivered on important priorities for the Right and enjoying a hysterical opposition that pushes Republicans toward him, the Fifth Avenue principle applies now more than ever. To update it for current circumstances, Trump could pay off Karen McDougal with a black satchel full of cash in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters
.. Perhaps there will be some inescapable legal dilemma for Trump that emerges out of the Cohen imbroglio. But the president has a very wide margin for error. The lesson of these controversies so far is that there’s nothing low expectations won’t do.
Trump Reeks of Fear
I can smell Donald Trump’s fear from here. His panic. His anxiety.
.. The only people who know what has been discovered in the Russian election meddling probe are Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team, and they aren’t talking.
But President Trump no doubt knows far more about it than the rest of us, and what he knows — or what he fears — appears to be a consuming preoccupation. He tweets about the investigation constantly.
.. “They have come to believe that, if the Democrats win control of the House in November, the chamber will vote on whether to begin the impeachment process no matter the outcome of Mr. Mueller’s investigation. So they want to sway Americans — and by extension, lawmakers.”
.. The Times quoted Rudy Giuliani, one of the president’s lawyers, as saying, “Nobody is going to consider impeachment if public opinion has concluded this is an unfair investigation, and that’s why public opinion is so important.”
.. Politico reported on this strategy in May, writing: “President Donald Trump and his lawyers have made a strategic calculation that their fight against Special Counsel Robert Mueller is more political than it is legal. They’re banking that the lead Russia investigator will follow longstanding Justice Department practice that a sitting president can’t be indicted, and that the only real threat to Trump’s survival is impeachment.”
.. “So long as that theory holds, Trump’s plan is to forcefully challenge Mueller in the arena he knows best — not the courtroom but the media, with a public campaign aimed at the special counsel’s credibility, especially among Republican voters and G.O.P. members of Congress.”
.. In May, CNN’s Dana Bash interviewed Giuliani, and she posited that the “Spygate” saga was “an intentional strategy to undermine the investigation, knowing that they, the investigators, the special counsel, it’s their policy not to talk. But you are very free to and are very aggressive about doing so.”
Giuliani responded in part:
“Of course, we have to do it in defending the president. We are defending — to a large extent, remember, Dana, we are defending here, it is for public opinion, because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach, not impeach. Members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, are going to be informed a lot by their constituents. So, our jury is the American — as it should be — is the American people.”
.. One has to ask: Why exactly is impeachment front of mind for these people? If they were as innocent as they publicly proclaim, they would know that impeachment would be out of the question as a matter of fact and law. But that is apparently not the case.
.. I believe that Trump is conducting himself as only a guilty man would, one who has a very real and well-founded fear that he is in imminent jeopardy.
.. In May, Trump added Emmet T. Flood, a lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment, to his legal team.
.. Impeachment is always on Trump’s mind, and so he relentlessly pursues his strategy of creating a climate of incredulity to ward it off.
.. Republicans, who now give Mueller a 17 percent approval rating, down from 29 percent in March.
.. Trump contends that there’s no there there. If not, why is he acting like there is?
Giuliani Demands ‘Factual Basis’ for Mueller Probe Before Any Trump Interview
Comments represent hardening of White House stance on sit-down in Russia probe
WASHINGTON— Rudy Giuliani said Sunday that President Donald Trump would only submit to an interview with Robert Mueller if the special counsel could show a “factual basis” for the Russia investigation, which he characterized as corrupt.The new statement from Mr. Trump’s lawyer, repeated on three Sunday news shows and in an interview with the New York Times, suggests prospects are receding for a sit-down between the president and Mr. Mueller... “We would not recommend an interview for the president unless they can satisfy us that there is some basis for this investigation,” Mr. Giuliani said on NBC, a hardening of the White House’s stance after months of negotiations on the terms under which the president would agree to testify.The special counsel investigation was established by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to handle the FBI’s Russia investigation, which began in 2016, after Mr. Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.
The enabling documents for the probe authorize Mr. Mueller to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
.. Lawyers for Mr. Trump had been eyeing early July as a possible time for an interview with the special counsel, likely at Camp David or the White House and lasting for about 2½ hours.
.. Earlier this year, Mr. Trump said he would be willing to testify under oath. But Mr. Giuliani later struck a more combative stance, saying he should only agree to such a meeting if federal prosecutors made clear the role played by a suspected informant said to have approached Trump campaign aides.
.. Mr. Giuliani said the investigation wouldn’t find any “evidence of wrongdoing” by the president.
“I have a pretty good idea because I have seen all the documents that they have,” Mr. Giuliani said on CNN, adding the investigation had produced 1.4 million documents.
.. Mr. Giuliani cited an inspector general report that found a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent on Mr. Mueller’s team, Peter Strzok, had sent text messages critical of Mr. Trump. Mr. Strzok was reassigned from his post last summer after Mr. Mueller learned about the messages. “It cast a taint over the entire investigation,” Mr. Giuliani said on ABC. He added: “This is the most corrupt investigation I have ever seen.”
.. Mr. Trump would be “like a lamb going to the slaughter” if he were to testify, Mr. Giuliani added.
.. Mr. Giuliani also said he had “zero” concerns about Mr. Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen speaking with federal prosecutors as part of a separate probe into Mr. Cohen’s business dealings. Mr. Cohen has denied any wrongdoing. “As long as he tells the truth,” said Mr. Giuliani, “We’re home free.”