Holy Shit Did Rudy Giuliani Fuck Up This Interview
Rudy Giuliani…boy, where to start?
In an interview with Sean Hannity—which, for conservatives, is like playing one-on-one against someone who keeps passing you the ball—Giuliani admitted James Comey was fired over the Russia probe, and then followed that bombshell up by just casually revealing that Donald Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen for the Stormy Daniels hush money.
“He fired at Comey because Comey would not—among other things—say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation,” Giuliani told Hannity. “He’s entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that and he couldn’t get that. So, he fired him and he said I’m free of this guy.
“You can’t blame the president for feeling, ‘I am not being treated the same way they were,’” Giuliani said. “I would like to get one [an interview] not under oath. I’d like to get it videotaped or audiotaped so they don’t misrepresent his answers. But this is an outrageous miscarriage of justice.
“I know James Comey. I know the President. Sorry Jim, you’re a liar—a disgraceful liar,” Giuliani said, minutes after confirming that Trump lied about why he fired Comey. “Comey should be prosecuted for leaking confidential FBI information when he leaked his report intended to develop a special prosecutor for the President of the United States.”
Giuliani then responded to a softball question about FusionGPS and Christopher Steele by blowing up Trump’s entire legal strategy in the Stormy Daniels case.
“Are you concerned that a foreign national, Christopher Steele, was paid through Fusion GPS, his Russian sources that weren’t only not verified but debunked, are you concerned that was paid for to manipulate the American people in the lead up to the election?” Hannity asked.
“Isn’t that closer to the mandate than Michael Cohen having something to do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman $130,000?” Giuliani said. “Which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violation.”
“So they funneled it through a law firm?” Hannity asked. “Funneled it through a law firm, and then the president repaid,” Giuliani responded.
“Oh,” Hannity responded, hilariously. “I didn’t know. He did?”
“Trump didn’t know about the specifics of [the hush money agreement], as far as I know,” Giuliani said later. “But he did know about the general arrangement that Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this for my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along.”
Giuliani’s revelation directly contradicts what Michael Cohen has said for months, that Trump had no knowledge of the payment. “In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford,” Michael Cohen said in February. “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”
“I am stunned and speechless,” Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti told CNN. (Me too, buddy.) “If this is accurate, the American people have been lied to and deceived for months. And justice must be served.”
Update, 11:58 PM ET, 05/02/2018: Everything is fine!!!
Update, 11:47 AM ET, 05/03/2018: Giuliani made another appearance on Fox News Thursday morning, where he made the situation for Trump even worse. Read more about that here.