Rudy Giuliani Says Trump ‘Wouldn’t Remember’ Stormy Payout, Suggests More Hush Money Agreements May Exist

President Donald Trump‘s longtime friend and new personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has joined his legal team with guns blazing, vowing a speedy end to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and unleashing a tirade of controversial media interviews.

It’s almost as if Giuliani can’t keep up with his own words: First, he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday night the president had repaid his other lawyer, Michael Cohen, the $130,000 accompanying a gag order for Stormy Daniels. Until then, the president had claimed not to know anything about the agreement, which arose near the end of the 2016 election after Daniels claimed to have an affair with Trump years earlier.

By Thursday, Giuliani appeared to be correcting the record, telling the Washington Post in a phone interview that Trump “wasn’t told” about the payment to Daniels “but even if he was told, he wouldn’t have remembered it.”

Via Washington Post:

The Washington Post’s Robert Costa: When was the president told about these payments?

Rudolph W. Giuliani: He wasn’t since it was somewhere between 10 and five days before the election. And he wasn’t told. But even if he was told, he wouldn’t have remembered it, like I wouldn’t have remembered it. When, when he paid out of his own personal funds — and if you listen to Cohen’s statement, it was very careful, he said, ‘I wasn’t paid from the campaign and I wasn’t paid from the Trump Organization.’ Absolutely true. He was paid by Donald Trump’s personal funds. And he was paid out of personal funds, which covered that, and possibly a few other things that, you know, would be considered incidental. This is not the kind of money that you would absolutely think of as the settlement of some kind of substantial case. It’d be more the kind of money that you’d think of to be used to pay for a harassment case, which is the way they always thought of this. They never thought of it as true. And I don’t think it’s true. And I’m absolutely positive it’s not true.

Later on in the interview, Giuliani mentioned there may be other payments made during the 2016 election similar to Daniels’, in which Cohen allegedly was repaid with the Trump’s personal funds to silence various women alleging affairs with the future commander in chief.

“The repayments took place over a period of time, probably in 2017, probably all paid back by the end of 2017,” he continued. “That and probably a few other situations that might have been considered campaign expenses.”

Like many other statements Giuliani has provided to the press since joining Trump’s outside legal team, his comments about the president not being able to remember possibly being told about the $130,000 payment to Daniels is questionable. Trump has previously boasted about his ability to remember virtually anything, claiming to have “one of the great memories of all-time” last year.

Meanwhile, there appears to be a shift in ideology among Trump’s legal counsel regarding a potential sit-down interview between the president and Mueller’s team. White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who took an amenable approach to the Russia probe and seemed to be encouraging Trump to meet with Mueller, announced his departure from the president’s legal team on Wednesday. His federal post is being filled by Emmet Flood, a Washington attorney who represented former President Bill Clinton during his impeachment. Giuliani, meanwhile, appears to be ready for a swift conclusion to the investigation; whether that includes a firing or not remains unclear.

Watch above, via Fox News.

[image via screengrab]

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