In a new twist, United States President Donald Trump says Rudi Giuliani, who joined his legal team this week, “will get his facts straight”.
This follows statements made by the former New York Mayor who joined Trump’s defense team in the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, confirming that President Trump did in fact repay his other attorney Michael Cohen for the payment of 130 000 dollars to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Trump had previously denied he had any knowledge of such payment raising serious questions about where the truth lies.
At the heart of all this confusion from the President and his team are the legal ramifications – and this fundamental question: Did President Trump break campaign finance laws when his personal lawyer Michael Cohen paid the 130 000 dollars to adult film star Stormy Daniels to win her silence about an alleged affair during Trump’s campaign for president?
Federal election laws cover transactions for the purpose of influencing federal elections – and buying the silence of Stormy Daniels might have influenced the election result. This was Trumps’ new lawyer Rudy Guiliani on Wednesday in conversation with Fox News opinion Host Sean Hannity.
“Having something to do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman $130,000 — I mean, which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money, no campaign finance violation.”
That contradicted previous statements by the President and lawyer Michael Cohen that Trump had no knowledge of the payment and denied any affair with the adult film star who is now suing him for defamation. This was the President earlier Friday essentially undercutting everything his lawyer had said just days earlier.
“Rudy is a great guy, but he’s just started a day ago. But he really has his heart into it. He’s working hard. He’s learning the subject matter. And he’s going to be issuing a statement too. But he is a great guy. He knows it’s a witch-hunt. That’s what he knows. He’s seen a lot of them. And he said he’s never seen anything so horrible. As an example, 33000 e-mails requested by Congress with a subpoena and they get burned, they get deleted, and nobody says anything — give me a break. So Rudy knows it’s a witch-hunt. He started yesterday. He’ll get his facts straight. He’s a great guy, but what he does is he feels it’s a very bad thing for our country and he happens to be right.”
The emails reference is yet another comment about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. He was also asked why his story on Stormy Daniels keeps changing.
“We’re not changing any stories. All I’m telling you is that this country is right now running so smooth and to be bringing up that kind of crap and to bring it up witch hunts all the time that’s all you want to talk about. You’re going to see. Excuse me! Excuse me! you take a look at what I said. You go back and take a look you’ll see what I said. But this is a witch hunt like nobody’s ever seen before. What they should do is look at the other side where terribly bad things have happened were terribly bad things have been done.”
Daniels alleges that she had a sexual relationship with Mr Trump in 2006 which the White House to this day maintains that Trump has denied.
Trump also says he’s prepared to sit down and answer questions from the Special Counsel regarding possible Russian collusion with his campaign but he first has to establish that he will be treated fairly.
