Criminal law, Lawyering, Media, Politics

Giuliani: “I Never Said There Was No Collusion Between The Campaign, Or People In The Campaign”

Another interview, another controversy. Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani has found himself in another firestorm after telling CNN host Chris Cuomo: “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign.” The problem is that his client has . . . repeatedly.

Update: In what has become a pattern, Giuliani spent the next today walking back his statements.

Giuliani made some good points in the interview but whatever progress was made was quickly lost in the pileup over the collusion line. Giuliani was trying to focusing on the evidence against the President: “There is not a single bit of evidence the President of the United States committed the only crime you can commit here, conspiring with the Russians to hack the DNC.” In the heated exchange, he then said “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign… I have not. I said the President of the United States.”

Giuliani also said Trump has never denied there was no collusion:“[Trump] didn’t say ‘nobody,’ he said he didn’t, How would you know nobody in your campaign…” However, Trump has denied precisely that. This includes just last month, the president posted on Twitter, saying there was no collusion. In August, Trump tweeted “Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, one of the most successful in history, is a TOTAL HOAX.”

I will add that I continue to find the new and open advocacy of hosts like Cuomo to be jarring. There was a time when hosts tried to be neutral and allow for civil debate between guests. Hosts are now the advocates offering determined arguments for or against Trump.

If there is a strategy here, I cannot see it. Chaos is a situation, not a strategy, in litigation.

Giuliani put himself again at odds with what his client has said:

Moreover, Giuliani himself has made such denials.

157 thoughts on “Giuliani: “I Never Said There Was No Collusion Between The Campaign, Or People In The Campaign””

    1. try and say something relevant to any of the topics at hand. any of them! and in case you did not ever tell this to your students let me tell it to you. being oblique in writing is not better than being CLEAR

      1. I merely repeated what can be found in any mathematics text on deterministic chaos.

        Learn to use your search engine and grow a little. As it stands you appear to be one of the Verkrampte.

      3. Mr Kurtz says: January 17, 2019 at 1:59 PM

        i like what turley said. in litigation chaos is a situation not a strategy
        actually for some people it can be a strategy, just an ineffective one usually, which is why the saying arose.

        David B. Benson says: January 17, 2019 at 9:27 PM

        In deterministic chaos there are strange attractors.

        Mr Kurtz says: January 17, 2019 at 9:35 PM

        try and say something relevant to any of the topics at hand. any of them!

        Well, then, there you have it. Kurtz is aware of exactly one of his thoughts at the time that Kurtz thinks it. And then it’s gone. Poof. Voila.

    2. Mr Kurtz & mespo727272 — if you don’t appreciate the humor, ignore the comment.

  3. “If the FISA court judges don’t have hearings on the false “dossier” applications soon, they will be complicit.”

    – Mark Levin

    1. George:

      Yeah where are those high priests of the law dedicated to ethical conduct and ever willing to impose their will on citizens at the behest of the government?

        1. “Sometimes I guess there just aren’t enough guillotines.”
          – Robesgump

  4. The kindergartners are so incognizant they really, really think they have something on Giuliani and, by extension, President Trump. Giuliani simply said that he is representing President Trump, not the campaign or other individuals – that he has no facts about the campaign in general or other individuals.

    Chuck’s found his “temper tantrum” and its in the sand box of CNN – home of his play-date-mate, Adam Schiffy.

    Now you know why the American Founders restricted the vote to Male, European, 21 year-olds with 50 lbs. Sterling or 50 acres.

  5. The noose is beginning to tighten on the Obama Coup D’etat in America and all of its co-conspirators:

    Sessions, Rosenstein, Mueller/Team, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Kadzic, Yates, Baker, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Priestap, Kortan, Campbell, Steele, Simpson, Joseph Mifsud, Stefan “The Walrus” Halper, Kerry, Hillary, Huma, Mills, Brennan, Clapper, Farkas, Power, Lynch, Rice, Jarrett, Obama et al.
    _______________________________

    “Bruce Ohr Testimony Undercuts Adam Schiff’s Defense Of FBI”

    “Justice Department official Bruce Ohr’s testimony about his meetings with FBI officials regarding dossier author Christopher Steele severely undercuts claims made in 2018 by California Rep. Adam Schiff and his fellow Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.
    Ohr told lawmakers Aug. 28, 2018, he briefed top FBI officials Andrew McCabe and Lisa Page in early August 2016, just days after he met with Steele, a former British spy who was investigating then-candidate Donald Trump.Ohr testified he told McCabe and Page about his interactions with Steele, who was working at the time for Fusion GPS, a Democrat-funded opposition research firm. The FBI relied heavily on Steele’s unverified dossier to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Republicans have focused on the Ohrs’ link to the dossier and Steele. In a memo dated Feb. 2, 2018, House Intelligence Republicans, led by then-Chairman Devin Nunes, asserted the FBI filed to disclose in their FISA applications Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS. They also noted in the so-called Nunes memo that the FISA applications do not reveal Steele’s anti-Trump bias. Ohr claimed Steele told him during a meeting Sept. 23, 2016, he was “desperate” that Trump not win election. Ohr testified he had shared details of his contacts with Steele with the FBI prior to the election. In addition to the meeting in early August 2016, Ohr met in late September 2016 or early the next month with Page, FBI counterintelligence deputy chief Peter Strzok, and Justice Department officials Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad and Andrew Weissmann. Ahmad and Weissmann are currently working on the special counsel’s investigation. Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) departs at the conclusion of a closed-door meeting between the House Intelligence Committee and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. July 25, 2017. The FBI obtained its first FISA against Page on Oct. 21, 2016, weeks after that meeting. Ohr’s testimony conflicts with House Intelligence Democrats’ claim in a memo released Feb. 24, 2018, that served as a rebuttal to the Nunes memo. That document sought to defend the FBI’s handling of the Steele dossier and its applications for the first FISA warrant. Democrats asserted Ohr did not meet with the FBI until after the 2016 election and thus had no opportunity to tell the FBI his wife worked for Fusion GPS. He was also unable to relay that Steele had communicated anti-Trump bias to him. “[Republicans] mischaracterize[s] Bruce Ohr’s role, overstates the significance of his interactions with Steele, and misleads about the timeframe of Ohr’s communication with the FBI,” the so-called Schiff memo reads. Democrats claimed only in “late November 2016” Ohr informed the FBI of “his prior professional relationship with Steele and information that Steele shared with him.” “This occurred weeks after the election and more than a month after the Court approved the initial FISA application,” reads the memo, which included the emphasis on “after.” “The Majority’s reference to Bruce Ohr is misleading,” Democrats asserted.
    The revelations in Ohr’s testimony create a bit of a dilemma for Schiff, who is chairman of the House Intelligence panel. In a Feb. 6, 2018, interview with The Atlantic, Schiff remarked on “how flawed the Nunes memo is.”

    – Chuck Ross | Reporter

  7. Turley says: “I will add that I continue to find the new and open advocacy of hosts like Cuomo to be jarring. There was a time when hosts tried to be neutral and allow for civil debate between guests. Hosts are now the advocates offering determined arguments for or against Trump.”

    Again, I say, Turley’s problem is viewing Trump as though he belongs in the ranks of Abraham Lincoln, JFK, FDR and other POTUSs. He does not. Are interviewers supposed to ignore all of the criminal conduct by his campaign? How about all of the daily, incessant lying? How about the lack of leadership, advocacy for Russia, putting innocent children in cages, and racist, misogynist utterances? Is the main stream media, as informers of the people, just supposed to go along with that and not question it, as if it’s normal? How about the historic deficit, tax cuts primarily for the wealthy, insisting on a border wall instead of smart, relevant and current technology to curb illegal immigration,, refusal to budge and shutting down the government in response to a pundit’s criticism? How can anyone be neutral when discussing any of this? What “civil debate” can there be about such matters? Send in the clowns. Giuliani is the head clown.

    1. Are interviewers supposed to ignore all of the criminal conduct by his campaign?

      It’s not difficult to ignore. It doesn’t exist. They’ve spent 30 months scrounging for it to please themselves and people like you, and they’ve found bupkis.

        1. Manafort has been convicted for things that had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. Some of the things he has been charged with and did with the Ukranian government were done by the Podesta Group as well. In fact Hillary had more interractions with the Ukranians then did Manafort both before and after representing Trump. The Ukranians had to appologize to Trump for dealing with Hillary.

          Natacha, your head is filled with junk.

          1. see allan they are graceless conversants who challenge you and then always fail to admit or concede a point. natch is the worst, but some of our other partners in dialogue here are worthy of respect. she however has declared that she has not respect for karen so surely she has no respect for me. nor do I wish for her respect i spurn it and i spit on it and I laugh at her insofar as I even notice

      2. Understood that bupkis is all you could possibly be aware of from where you stand, confusing your opinion with facts, facts that no one has but Mr. Mueller. So we will see. Perhaps you are correct. Or not.

    2. The legendary Jim Lehrer of PBS Newshour once said that he saw his primary obligation as “telling the viewers what happened”; i,e., reporting the news.
      Journalist like Lehrer, or Brian Lamb of C-Span, are very rare.
      They are “straight down the middle” reporters who report the news, equally treat and challenge any subject they interview with scrupulous objectivity, and conceal their own political leanings.
      “Turley’s problem” is the death of that kind of reporting, replaced by “advocacy reporting”.
      I won’t get into Natacha’s problems, as I have other things to do for the next 10-12 hours.

  8. More From That WSJ Story:

    TRUMP, COHEN, JERRY FALWELL JR..

    AND THE MYSTERIOUS ‘POOL BOY’..!!

    Today we learn one small yet dramatic story that shows the way he and Trump did business. The Wall Street Journal reports:

    In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss’s favor before the presidential campaign.

    In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, Mr. Gauger said.

    Mr. Cohen disputed that he handed over a bag of cash. “All monies paid to Mr. Gauger were by check,” he said, offering no further comment on his ties to the consultant.

    Mr. Gauger owns RedFinch Solutions LLC and is chief information officer at Liberty University in Virginia, where Jerry Falwell Jr., an evangelical leader and fervent Trump supporter, is president.

    If the connection between Cohen and Jerry Falwell Jr. rings a bell, that may be because of the bizarre story that came out last year, in which Falwell and his wife, on a stay at a luxury hotel in Miami, developed a “friendly relationship” with a pool boy. Two years later they began loaning the pool boy (by then, all of 22 years old) funds that would total $1.8 million to start a business. BuzzFeed reported that “Falwell had discussed the [pool boy] case with Cohen prior to his unexpected decision to lend his backing to Trump,” an endorsement Cohen arranged and that was incredibly important to Trump in obtaining evangelical Christian support in 2016.

    I leave it to you to fill in the blanks on that one, but the point is that it has become amply clear there were many instances, like the hush-money payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, when Trump needed something a little shady taken care of and Cohen was the person he turned to.

    Edited from: “Michael Cohen Is About To Sing, And Trump Is In Big Trouble”

    Today’s WASHINGTON POST

    1. RE. THE JERRY FALWELL JUNIOR CONNECTION:

      Three years ago observers were surprised when evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Junior threw his support to Donald Trump. Trump had never been thought of as a ‘Christian’ conservative. One could hardly imagine Trump hanging out with southern Baptists. After all, Trump had a decades-long image as that of a New York playboy. ‘Why would evangelicals embrace a penthouse womanizer’?

      Well it now appears that Falwell Junior had something to hide, perhaps. Therefore Falwell struck an odd alliance with Donald Trump in exchange for.. (fill in the blank).

      All of Washington now eagerly awaits Michael Cohen’s February 7 appearance before Congess.

    2. Peter, do you do anything but regurgitate the day’s talking points? Even if Cohen’s not lying for effect, this is silly. No one pays any attention to online polls.

        1. Correction to above comment: The story is about Michael Cohen’s efforts to manipulate online polls. And the odd connection to Jerry Falwell Jr.

    3. ” And Trump Is In Big Trouble”

      I don’t know how many times the Shill posting ends with the above. Is that the Shills signature?

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