Rudy Giuliani: My Trump Tower Moscow comments were 'hypothetical'

Source: Washington Examiner | January 21, 2019 | Kelly Cohen

Rudy Giuliani sought to clarify comments he made this weekend about discussions about a planned Trump Tower in Russia between President Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen — now calling them “hypothetical.”

“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,” said Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who now represents Trump, in a Monday afternoon statement.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Giuliani said conversations between Trump and Cohen went on “throughout 2016,” and he later added they could have been “up to as far as October, November” 2016.

“The conversations lasted throughout parts of 2016. The president is not sure exactly when they ended. I would say Michael Cohen would have a much better recollection of it than the president,” he said on the NBC show.

On Monday, Giuliani backpedaled: “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.”

Giuliani did another interview which further obfuscated the story about Trump Tower Moscow when he told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump might have talked to Cohen about his testimony to Congress.

“As far as I know, President Trump did not have discussions with [Cohen], certainly had no discussions with him in which he told him or counseled him to lie,” Giuliani said on CNN early Sunday. “If — if he had any discussions with him, they’d be about the version of the events that Michael Cohen gave them, which they all believed was true. I believed it was true. I still believe it may be true, because, unlike these people who want to just believe him, I believe Michael Cohen is a serial liar.”

When asked by Tapper if he had just acknowledged Trump had talked with Cohen about the testimony, Giuliani replied: “Which would be perfectly normal, which the president believed was true.”

The Trump Tower Moscow discussions were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won,” Giuliani quoted Trump as saying during an interview with the New York Times published later Sunday.

Cohen testified to Congress that talks had ended by January 2016 — before the Republican primary began. In November, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project, which never came to fruition.

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