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.