TPM "Giuliani Walks Back Earlier Comments, Denies Un-Reported Meeting On 'Dirt'

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/giuliani-walks-back-earlier-comments-denies-un-reported-meeting-on-dirt

What a mess.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani called into Fox News Monday afternoon to clean up interviews he did earlier in the day.

On Monday morning, Giuliani said that collusion isn’t a crime — implying that was something it would be useful to clarify, despite months of presidential denials of collusion with Russia. He also said he couldn’t be sure that Trump didn’t know ahead of time about the now-infamous meeting in which, a British publicist had told Donald Trump Jr., Russians promised to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton.

On Fox News, Giuliani began by walking back those claims, before taking any questions.

Describing it as a “very, very familiar lawyers’ argument,” Giuliani said of collusion: “My client didn’t do it, and even if he did it, it’s not a crime.”

Next, Giuliani referred to the President’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, who now appears ready to cooperate with prosecutors.

“I said, ‘Why would we attack Cohen? He can do terrible things.’ He cannot do terrible things,” Giuliani asserted. “We are fully confident that he has no information that would implicate the President of the United States.”

Giuliani also attempted to “pre-but” reporting on yet another 2016 campaign meeting, information about which he said had already been given to two news outlets who hadn’t published it yet.

“The jury for this case is the American public,” he said at one point, adding that “maybe one of the reasons we reemphasize the point about the legitimacy of the investigation is we want to show that maybe [Trump] shouldn’t be testifying at an investigation that has no legitimacy.”

Before hanging up, he drove the point home: “I also understand the confusion. Believe me, it’s going to get more confusing when these other tapes start coming out. But eventually, when you put them all together, it’s going to mean the President did nothing wrong.”

Giuliani discussed three meetings on Fox News on Monday — though he contends that two of them never actually happened. Here’s what he said about each meeting.

snip - read on for the three meetings in question and of course the mess ol Rude finds himself in!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Trump has a real talent for hiring terrible lawyers.

[jcgoldie]

2. Who the hell knows what anything he says means

I'll say one thing, if the PR strategy is just to completely muddy the water and make it entirely impossible to discern the administration's official stance on anything... then they have the right spokesman in Giuliani.