Rudy and Trump are so, so guilty

And if Rudy keeps going on TV, the Mueller investigation will never end.

Today, on Fox and CNN, Rudy blew out another tire.

Cohen is now reportedly willing to tell prosecutors that Trump knew about, and approved, the [Junior Trump Tower] meeting ahead of time.

[...]

“Cohen is alleging that the meeting took place. We are making it clear that the President was not at that meeting. Cohen doesn’t even allege that. To cut it off.”

  TPM

No one said he was. This is an odd thing to have to make clear.

On the same day of the dirt meeting, Giuliani said Monday, Cohen (or someone speaking to reporters on his behalf) has claimed “that he was in President Trump’s office, Donald Trump Jr. walked in and told him about the Russian meeting.”

“That is categorically untrue,” Giuliani said. “Did not happen. Two witnesses demonstrate that. He has talked about this endlessly on those 183 unique recordings and he never mentions it at all.”

[...]

Giuliani added on Fox News: “So the public record contains a leak by Cohen that he was present at a meeting in which Donald Jr. came in and informed the President. We deny that happened. We say it didn’t happen and if it had happened, it would’ve been mentioned a long time ago on the various hours of tapes that we have.”

So who are the witnesses that Junior didn't come in to telll Trump about the meeting when Cohen was in the room?

The two witnesses, [Giuliani] told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota Monday morning, are the President and his son.

No comment necessary.

Giuliani told Fox News that he and Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow had heard from reporters who’d been told about another meeting “in which they [Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and ‘possibly others’], out of the presence of the President, discussed the meeting with the Russians.”

He categorically denied that the un-reported meeting he’d just brought up had ever happened.

[...]

Giuliani later said that the supposed meeting he’d heard about from reporters had happened “three days before” the Russian dirt meeting.

[...]

He added later, “The second meeting was brought to my attention through Jay Sekulow. Both of us dealt with it with two different reporters, essentially the same information, about this meeting that took place three days earlier [that is, three days before the dirt meeting] with a whole group of people.”

He continued: “Everyone of those people says it didn’t happen. And why do I mention it? Because first of all, I thought it was going to come out, and second, my experience is that when you have something like this floating around, it comes out. And I don’t want it to come out and be un-rebutted when it originally comes out.”

So, this is a pre-buttal, I guess.

“When I thought that it was going to be published,” Giuliani said, “I wanted to get out in front of it.”

But he didn't deny it originally. That only happened after he decided it wasn't going to be published. What he told CNN was it wasn't about Clinton dirt - and that it was before the Tower meeting.

Rudy Giuliani told CNN that two days before the Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton there was a planning meeting to prepare that meeting. It included Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and others.

  Political Wire

President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani says key players from the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 attended another meeting days before but it was on an unrelated subject and the president wasn't there.

Giuliani gave several confusing answers about the meeting in morning TV interviews – then called in to 'Fox and Friends' to try to clean up any misconceptions about it.

[...]

'That's a real meeting on another provable subject in which he was not participating,' he told CNN's 'New Day.'

[...]

He also appeared to confirm the meeting happened when he said: 'And this meeting that Cohen's talking about took place before the meeting with the Russians.'

[...]

The head-spinning commentary about a Trump Tower meeting that happened as well as two other meetings that he said didn't happen came on a day when Giuliani also said colluding with Russia may not even be a crime.

The comment raised a possible new legal defense even as he lowers the bar following a series of emphatic denials by Trump that there was no collusion.

[...]

'So I said today that there was no collusion therefore – and that collusion also is no crime. I've been saying that from the very beginning,' he [said].

It's a very, very familiar lawyers argument that the alternative, my client didn't do it and even if he did it, it's not a crime. And I have said that over and over again – collusion is not a crime. The only crime there is hacking and it's ridiculous to think that the president hacked. Now why do I say that? I say that to attack the legitimacy of the investigation,' Giuliani said.

[...]

On Fox, Trump said of the meeting before the meeting with Russians: 'We checked with their lawyers, the ones we could check with, which were four of the six. That meeting never-ever took place. It didn't happen. It's a figment of [Choen's] imagination or he's lying. The only meeting they found for that day that included any of these people is a meeting about the Hispanic judge that the president had criticized back around that time. So that hopefully sets the record straight.'

  Daily Mail

But of course it doesn't. Was there a meeting or not? I'm gonna say yes. And it was not about what Trump said about the Hispanic judge. Why would the Trump Tower meeting people be concerned about that and hold a meeting on it?

Giuliani took to the airwaves Monday morning to keep up the president's attacks on Mueller, who is heading the Russia probe, and faulted him for failing to publicly buttress Trump's position regarding a leaked recording of a tape between Trump and his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen discussing a payment involving a former Playboy playmate.

'When you're getting beaten up by all kinds of anonymous tweets coming from (Cohen lawyer) Lanny Davis and Cohen, and you put out something like that, you have every right to say you explain it, Mueller, stand up and be a man,' Giuliani told CNN's 'New Day.'

1) Why would Mueller be responsible for publicly backing Trump's statements?

Host Alisyn Camerota asked why it was up to Mueller to support the president's tweet.

'Because he has the conflict, not the president,' said Giuliani.

Did she just let that go? How is that an answer?

2) "Anonymous" tweets "coming from Lanny Davis and Cohen"? How does that work?

Giuliani also taunted Mueller in an interview with Axios published Monday.

'Why don't you write a report and show us what you have, because they don't have a goddamn thing,' Giuliani said.

Dear Rudy: the report comes at the end. And, since they already have several guilty pleas, several more indictments, and a couple of trials, I think we have to admit they do have something.

But he claimed Trump still has a 'soft spot' for Michael Cohen, who Giuliani has been branding as a liar amid signals he may cooperate with Mueller.

Perhaps that line was the whole point: Don't spill any more beans, Michael. The president might want to pardon you.

Giuliani is a hot mess. Here's the Fox call-in.



 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:





UPDATE:  7/31: