Giuliani: Tapes Show Cohen ‘Explaining Something’ Trump ‘Doesn’t Understand’
President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday evening scrambled to spread his legal team’s conflicting take on what was revealed in the release of audio of Trump’s conversation with his former lawyer about a payment to a former Playboy model just ahead of the 2016 election.
Giuliani claimed that the recording, made by ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, “doesn’t” indicate that Trump knew about plans to purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story — about an alleged affair with Trump — from American Media Inc.
“That’s open to interpretation, and we can have a fight about that. … To me it sounds like Cohen is explaining something to [Trump] that he doesn’t understand,” Giuliani told The Washington Post on Tuesday evening, shortly after Cohen’s lawyer gave CNN a copy of the recordings. “He doesn’t seem that familiar with anything. There is nothing to indicate he knew anything in advance.”
Giuliani also took his spin to Fox News on Tuesday night, telling the network that there’s “no indication of any crime being committed on this tape” and claiming the tape was “leaked on us with a very, very scurrilous description” of what was on it.
Giuliani disputed a key claim made by Cohen’s lawyer — that the tape shows Trump suggested that Cohen use cash to make the payment. Giuliani claimed Trump said “don’t pay with cash.”
“There’s no way the President is going to be setting up a corporation and then using cash, unless you’re a complete idiot,” he told Fox News.
Read the full transcript of the recording here and listen the audio of the exchange in question here.