A resurfaced Fox News clip shows former New York City Mayor and Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani blowing apart the former president’s supposed new evidence in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
Mr Giuliani complicated Donald Trump’s defence in May 2018 when he appeared on Fox News admitting that Mr Trump was aware of the payments to women who claimed that they had had affairs with him.
He said at the time that Mr Trump “did know the general arrangement” and that his attorney and fixer Michael Cohen was reimbursed for paying off Stormy Daniels with funds being “funnelled” through a law firm.
Mr Cohen is now one of his former boss’s staunchest critics.
Mr Trump rejected this notion at the time, saying that Mr Giuliani “started yesterday. He’ll get his facts straight”.
Lawyer Ron Filipkowski shared the clip of Mr Giuliani from 2018 on Thursday.
“I’d like to call, as a surprise witness for the prosecution, 2018 Rudy Giuliani, who BURIES Trump’s defense,” Mr Filipkowski tweeted.
“They funnelled it through a law firm, then the president repaid it,” Mr Giuliani said at the time. “When I heard Cohen’s retainer while he was doing no work, I said, ‘that’s how (Trump’s) repaying it.’”
Mr Trump is now arguing that a 2018 letter from Mr Cohen’s lawyer, which didn’t stop Cohen from being charged for making illegal campaign contributions to the 2016 Trump campaign, shows that he’s not guilty in connection to the Manhattan DA’s investigation into those same payments.
Mr Trump took to Truth Social to share the letter from February 2018, which Mr Cohen’s lawyer at the time sent to the Federal Election Commission, saying that Mr Cohen using a $130,000 Home Equity Line of Credit to pay Ms Daniels, a porn actor, to remain silent regarding a 2006 affair she claims to have had with Mr Trump was a “private transaction” using Mr Cohen’s “own money”.
Ms Daniels’s real name is Stephanie Clifford.
“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed Mr Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly,” lawyer Stephen Ryan wrote at the time.
Mr Trump said the letter was “totally exculpatory” and that the DA probe “must end”. Mr Trump may have falsified business records when he reportedly reimbursed Mr Cohen and logged the expense as a legal fee.
But the Department of Justice did indict Mr Cohen, meaning the letter wasn’t “exculpatory” in the end, as Mr Trump claims.
Mr Cohen was indicted for making an illegal campaign contribution and conspiring to violate campaign finance laws. He said in court that he made the payment on Mr Trump’s behalf and on his instruction.
The former fixer has shared evidence showing that Mr Trump and his firm paid him back, meaning that it wasn’t a “private transaction”.
