Donald Trump not only paid off Stormy Daniels to hush up about their affair, he may well have paid off others too through his conduit/fixer Michael Cohen, according to Rudy Giuliani, Trump's voluble attorney.
"If it was necessary, yes,” Giuliani said Sunday of other possible hush-money agreements, adding that he had "no knowledge of that."
So just to recap Giuliani's big reveals on Trump's hush-money deals over the last handful of days:
- Trump did in fact reimburse Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels
- Cohen may have paid off other women besides Daniels
- Trump knew about the payment to Daniels (though it's unclear exactly when he became aware based on conflicting statements)
When asked by The [Washington] Post if he was confident that Trump had no knowledge of the payments to Daniels during the campaign, Giuliani declined to directly answer...
So despite opening a can of worms on myriad legal issues for Trump, there's a lot Uncle Rudy didn’t know as he embarked on his fifth consecutive day of media appearances Sunday.
“My issue is getting up to speed on the facts here,” Giuliani told George Stephanopoulos during an interview Sunday on ABC News’s “This Week.” “I’m about halfway there.”
Perfect. In the meantime, just keep on shooting from the hip, Rudy G.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in legal ethics, said Giuliani’s interview Sunday reminded her of a garden hose that was whipping around wildly because nobody had a handle on it yet: “Just erratic, unpredictable, aimless.” [...]
“When he starts on a matter and the matter’s ongoing and he needs to get up to speed, yes, there’s risk involved in making any statement,” she said. “But what’s even more striking to me is, I couldn’t tell what he thought he was going to accomplish.”
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff was also baffled by Giuliani's approach, calling it "deeply hurtful" to Trump's case.
“His legal defense for the president seems to be a bit orthodox [sic], to start out by saying, ‘You can’t believe the president of the United States. That’s our defense. So when he says things you’ve just got to discount them,’” Schiff said. “‘And more than that, trust me, this wasn’t a violation of campaign laws.’ Neither one of those things is pretty persuasive.”
Trump, of course, had initially denied knowing anything about the Daniels payment.
But one thing does seem evident—Giuliani and perhaps Trump have concluded that federal prosecutors are in possession of evidence that clearly implicates Trump in the hush-money payment(s) and they decided they needed to get out in front of that revelation. Otherwise, why in the heck start making statements that unequivocally confirm Trump lied about the entire affair?
Of course, Giuliani's approach to heading off Trump's legal issues is deeply flawed. But just remember—he'd never be out there shooting his mouth off if explosive information wasn't lurking in the background.