On the heels of the President’s Sunday evening attacks on the special counsel probe, Rudy Giuliani spent Monday making the talk show rounds in an effort to move the goal posts on the collusion story.
Donald Trump has spent the last year insisting that there was “no collusion!” between his campaign and the Kremlin. Since May 8, 2017, Trump has tweeted about “collusion” 84 times.
Now, that narrative is in jeopardy thanks to Michael Cohen, who reports suggest is set to tell Robert Mueller that the President knew about the infamous Trump Tower meeting ahead of time, a contention which, if true, contradicts more than a dozen explicit denials of prior knowledge from Trump, his lawyers and his surrogates. If Cohen is telling the truth, it also means Don Jr. lied to Congress.
Reports that Cohen is prepared to talk to Mueller aren’t a surprise. In June, ABC reported that Cohen is now likely to cooperate with federal prosecutors and in July, Trump’s former fixer indicated he is not in fact prepared to go down with his former boss’s ship, telling George Stephanopoulos that when push comes to shove, “my wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will.”
Still, the idea that Cohen would implicate Trump in the same collusion the President insists never happened is a disconcerting turn of events, especially in light of separate reports that Trump Foundation CFO Allen Weisselberg has been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury as part of the Cohen criminal probe.
For his part, Trump contends that Cohen is lying about the Trump Tower meeting in an effort to save himself from an unrelated investigation into loans made to Chicago taxicab moguls.
At this point, it’s unlikely that any lawyer on Earth could spin this situation as anything other than a train wreck, but Rudy Giuliani is doing an even worse job than you’d expect under the circumstances. On Monday, after suggesting that collusion isn’t a crime (and that was the attempt to move the goal posts) Giuliani inexplicably “denied” that Trump was present at any Trump Tower meetings to do with Russians, a bizarre contention given that i) nobody ever said he was, and ii) the public was previously unaware that there were meetings (plural).
Rudy tried to “explain” things to Fox later in the day and it didn’t go well. I never thought I’d say this, but God bless Melissa Francis, because her exchange with Giuliani at the end of the interview was absolutely priceless.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s falling apart. The narrative is falling apart.
On Tuesday, Trump piggybacked on Giuliani’s contention that collusion isn’t a crime, but seemingly aware of how strange it looks to spend a year tweeting “no collusion!” only to turn around and say “collusion is not a crime”, the President tried to hedge. Here’s what he came up with:
Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!
Fast forward to Wednesday, and Trump was back at it, this time taking aim at Jeff Sessions (again).
“This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further”, Trump tweeted, before reiterating his contention that Mueller is “totally conflicted”. He then accused Mueller’s “17 Angry Democrats” of “doing dirty work” for the special counsel on the way to calling them (the Democrats) “a disgrace to USA!”
As a reminder, the April FBI raid on Cohen was conducted on orders from Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein (a.k.a, “Mr. Peepers“) after Robert Mueller referred evidence to federal authorities in New York.
The involvement of “Peepers” is the direct result of Jeff Sessions’ recusal, which Trump blames for everything under the sun. In angry comments delivered just after news of the Cohen raid hit, Trump explicitly mentioned Sessions and since then, Jeff has been battling to keep his job and has endured withering criticism from Trump’s increasingly unhinged Twitter feed.
In May, Trump essentially told his 54 million Twitter followers that he wishes Jeff had never been born.
What’s especially mind-boggling about Wednesday morning’s tweets is they come just days after the New York Times reported that Mueller may be using Trump’s tweets to help build an obstruction case. Some of the tweets in question relate to Trump’s earlier attempts to pile pressure on Jeff Sessions. Recall this, from the Times, out late last week:
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is scrutinizing tweets and negative statements from the president about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to three people briefed on the matter.
Several of the remarks came as Mr. Trump was also privately pressuring the men – both key witnesses in the inquiry – about the investigation, and Mr. Mueller is examining whether the actions add up to attempts to obstruct the investigation by both intimidating witnesses and pressuring senior law enforcement officials to tamp down the inquiry.
Well, if what Mueller is looking for are tweets to suggest that Trump is attempting to pressure Sessions about the special counsel probe, then witness Exhibit A:
..This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2018
Donald Trump, expert own-hole-digger for hire.
Have “very good brain”, will travel.
Beats having to rely on Nytol.