Wasnt plausible, Wasnt Believable but it was at least relatively co teernt. To recap, Michael Cohen and his surrogates on tv had been claiming for months that Michael Cohen, the president s attorney, facilitated as cohen put it 130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels who says she had an affair with the president 12 years ago. Now, the money came out of cohens pocket allegedly taken from a Home Equity Line of credit we were told. The president had not repaid it. In fact, mr. Trump knew nothing about it they claimed and despite coming as it did in the closing days of the campaign the payment supposedly had absolutely nothing to do with the election. Nothing to do with skel change an embarrassing story 11 days before the election. On wednesday night Rudy Guiliani went on fox and said this to sean hannity about the daniels payoff. Its not Campaign Money. No Campaign Finance violation. They funneled it through a law firm. Funneled through a law firm and the president repaid it. Oh, i didnt know he did . Yeah. The president repaid cohen, he said, so that that was the damage control. And its a sign of how well it played that mr. Guiliani was back on fox the very next morning to try to clean up his mess, except he didnt, he made an even bigger mess because he blew a hole in perhaps the most important claim that Michael Cohen had been making, that the original hush payment had nothing to do with the election. Cue legal eagle, Rudy Guiliani. Imagine if that came out on october 15th, 2016 in the middle of the last gate. Cohen didnt even ask. Cohen made it go away, he did his job. Imagine if it came out then, just like that Michael Cohens claim that it was just a coincidence this happened less than two weeks before the election became even more laughable. Remember, cohen had said he could have made the payment months before but just happened to do it when he did it. Just a short time after that fox appearance as all this was blowing up mayor guiliani told cnn he had, quote, carefully coordinated with the president
on his hannity appearance. Quote, you wont see any daylight between me and the president , he said. So then yesterday the president put out that string of tweets which were in very lawyerly language expanding on what guiliani had laid out. Today, though, the coordination broke down. First on the south lawn and then at joint base andrews, the president knowingly or not made a stunning admission, his surrogate while nice enough had his facts wrong. He started yesterday. Hell get his facts straight. He is a great guy. But what he does is he feels its a very bad thing for our country i will tell you this, i will tell you this, when rudy made the statement, rudy is great, but rudy had just started and he wasnt totally familiar with every you know, with everything and rudy, we love rudy, he is a special guy. What he really understands is this is a witchhunt. He understands that probably better than anybody. So the president of the United States sent out his
lawyer who didnt have the facts straight who had just started to clean up the mess with full confidence. He did not say exactly about what Rudy Guiliani did not have his facts straight about and guiliani is it not clarify matters with a statement late today. Quote, there is no campaign violation, it reads. The payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president s family. It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not. My references to timing were not describing my understanding of the president s knowledge but instead my understanding of these matters. Now, maybe its because i did not go to law school, but i have no idea what that last sentence means. Quote, my references to timing were not describing my understanding of the president s knowledge, but instead my understanding of these matters. Guiliani was apparently referring to his claim on Fox And Friends Yesterday that the president only fully learned about his repayments to cohen, monthly bills totaling nearly half a Million Dollars very recently. He didnt know the details of
this until we knew the details of it, which is a couple weeks ago. Maybe not even a couple maybe ten days ago. Okay. Wait a minute. So Rudy Guiliani is saying that neither he nor the president explained i mean, they neither explained how it could be that the president who is not known as someone who throws his money around loosely or sometimes at all could have been paying all that money without knowing what it was for and didnt learn about what it was for until ten days ago. So when the lawsuit was filed against him and Michael Cohen, he never asked anyone about what had happened when he watched Stormy Daniels on 60 minutes along with some 20 million other people, he never asked anyone if he had repaid Michael Cohen . That just seems hard to believe. This morning the president refused to clarify. When did you find out what the retainer was being youre going to find out because were going to give a full list and people know and virtually everything said has been said incorrectly and its
been said wrong or its been covered wrong by the press. Just like nbc and abc yesterday covered the story wrong. But you will be finding out. Its wait a minute. Its actually very simple. Its actually very simple. But there has been a lot of misinformation really, people wanting to say and i say, do you know what, learn before you speak. Its a lot easier. Learn before you speak, its a lot easier. The president says its actually very simple. You would think if its so simple Rudy Guiliani would have cleared it up in his multiple Tv Appearances or his multiple published statements. You now know that the president is someone who believes in thinking before speaking and not having the facts is short coming unless it comes to more than 3,000 false or misleading statements after taking office according to the new york post. In all fairness bob mueller worked for obama for eight years. Thats republican bob mueller nominated by republican george w. Bush who served five years in the obama administration. Always good to have your facts straight. Now it seems he cannot even keep his story straight. Sources tell us that the White House Legal Team is calling Rudy Guilianis performance a fiasco, though apparently theyre using stronger language than that, the word theyre using rhymes with hit show. Here is the cherry on top, the one person other than the president who truly knows everything says Rudy Guiliani doesnt know what hes talking about, were talking about Michael Cohen talking to Donny Deutsch. According to Donny Deutsch he said, look, there are two people who know exactly what happened, myself and the president and you will be hearing my side of the story. More tonight on how the white house is handling all of this or mishandling, pamela brown joins us with that. The president saying guiliani needs to get his facts straight. According to your sources how prepared was he before he went on fox . Not prepared at all. Anderson, im told by a source familiar with the matter that he had very Little Information before he went out on fox to
discuss the Stormy Daniels matter. That he wasnt fully briefed up on all the details, had hasnt looked at paperwork surrounding the case, surrounding these payments and repayment. So essentially he was winging it and flying blind in a sense without having all of the facts. But as you pointed out, anderson, Rudy Guiliani said that he had coordinated this with the president but yet then the president came out today and undermined Rudy Guiliani, saying that he needs to get his facts straight before he goes out there and talks. He wasnt specific on how he needs to get his facts straight and, you know, whether he really did coordinate with Rudy Guiliani. He also sort of tried to explain it away, anderson, by saying he just started. Look, he is brandnew, he went out there, just started, go i have him a break kind of thing. Well, look, he started a couple of weeks ago, anderson, he has already met with Robert Muellers team. Rudy guiliani didnt just start when he gave that fox news interview. Also, i mean, theres no
there was no reason he had to go on fox news on that day to do this. So you would think if theyre choosing to send him out on fox news, that he would have read some papers about it. What is behind i mean, do we know whats behind the Shifting Stories . Right. And on top of that lets remember Rudy Guiliani isnt wasnt brought on board to be part of the Stormy Daniels case. I mean, all of that dealing with Michael Cohen, the payment, so forth, thats run out of new york. Rudy guiliani was brought on to represent the president in the Robert Mueller investigation which makes it even more puzzling that he would go on and just bring up these details that only added confusion. It does seem like there are Shifting Stories. The president came out today and said the story hasnt changed at all, but best Case Scenario is it just created a lot of confusion because the president had said aboard Air Force One he didnt know about the payment Michael Cohen made to stormy
daniels, then you have his attorney if going on fox news a couple days ago saying that the president had repaid Michael Cohen for that payment and then we just saw cleanup ever since with that Interview Raising questions about whether the president lied and whether this was a Campaign Finance violation because it wasnt reported to the fec. Then you had Rudy Guiliani himself attempt to go clean up with the statement he released today, anderson, saying that there is no campaign violation, that it would have been made whether the president was a candidate or not. And then going on to say the references to timing were not describing my understanding of the president s knowledge but yet he said he coordinated with the president , anderson. Yeah, i mean, its its baffling. Pam brown, thanks. Two legal views now from Alan Dershowitz also norm eisen. Professor dershowitz is author of many books, most recently
trumped up. Professor dershowitz, every day there is a shifting explanation and more confusion when it comes to the Stormy Daniels payment. Is it even clear to you at this point what the president s official story is and has this back and forth with Rudy Guiliani opened him up to even more legal exposure . Well, it certainly exposes him to criticism. They have not been speaking with one voice or presenting one clear narrative. I think the best narrative they have, i dont know whether its true or not, is that this guy cohen was on retainer, he was the fixer, he was paid 35,000 a month to fix up all the problems and at the end of the year they would true up and find out if he paid more than he got and the president didnt want to know specifics about any particular cases, he just wanted everything to be fixed. You know, that really does create more political problems than it does legal problems. I mean, he has put his client in greater legal jeopardy and also i just dont even understand and im not sure they even understand what their stories are. Guiliani says absolutely this had to do with the campaign, then today he said no it didnt and he said also yesterday that the president only found out ten days ago, which is just ludicrous. The Campaign Finance argument, he exposed trump now to being part of a conspiracy with Michael Cohen. He even hinted that it had to do with the election when he went on Fox And Friends and talked about how it would have looked if it came out in october. He exposed mr. Trump to a Felony Charge for filing false president ial Financial Statements because he admitted that there was a debt to mr. Cohen that mr. Trump knew about it, paid it back. It wasnt on his forms that he filed. And then perhaps worst of all most telling of all on the Obstruction Front he came up with a third and yet a different story that trump wanted comey to exonerate him. Well, thats pressing for a
change in the investigation before its done. That implicates on obstruction as well as the changing stories. What a disaster. Professor dershowitz, i mean, to guilianis point that making this payment and if it had been known during the campaign that, you know, it would have been it would have been terrible for the campaign, that flies in the face of everything that Michael Cohen has said, Michael Cohens supporters have said, their whole line has been all along as incredulous an ridiculous as it sounded when they said this this had nothing to do with the Campaign Even though this deal was done 11 days before the election. Nobody would believe that. Thats not credible. The only credible story they could tell which would be helpful would be to say, look, mixed motives. He obviously didnt want his wife to find out about this, he didnt want his children to find out about this and he didnt want the American Public to find out about this. So all of these things were relevant to why cohen paid the money so that she wouldnt
announce, but it was 15 days before the election and the idea that maybe they didnt tell the president about this 15 days before the election, here is an event that could undo his campaign and he doesnt get to know about it, it just flies in the face of cred ult. The idea that Michael Cohen is on this permanent retainer, the president said he did very little legal work for mr. Trump, that he is on this permanent retainer, he just gets this money and mr. Trump doesnt know anything about what he is a he doing. I can understand maybe not wanting to get involved in the details as theyre happening but the idea that his attorney would not at least call him up and say, do you know what, that Stormy Daniels issue we took care of it, it was only 130,000, there is this other thing i mean, the idea that he wasnt informing him along the way now just seems ludicrous. Anderson, its just silly. Theyve tied themselves into a pretzel in order to cover for the president s statement on Air Force One standing there in the doorway of the cabin
unequivocally that he didnt know about the payments. Now they have to tie themselves into a pretzel. They are simultaneously saying that the president , who once won a spy magazine contest for the cheapest celebrity in america, i believe he cashed a check for 13 cents, that hes going to dish out 35 grand a month without knowing why. Its absurd. I want to give alan some credit because in acknowledging how ridiculous it is that the president wouldnt know about this event from the getgo, hes playing it straight. Of course the president knew about this, the problem is that as alan admits, the reality puts the president in deep, deep legal jeopardy. Norm guiliani violated alan guiliani violated the first rule you taught me almost 30 years ago. First do no harm. But, norm, dont give me
credit. Im not on trumps side. Im not trying to help trump. Im trying to tell the American Public what the law is and what the truth is. I have to tell you that i really do think that if they had played this straight from the very beginning what he did was probably not illegal. When you get to hear that there is this kind of come out before the election and you know it will hurt your family, you know it will hurt your standing, if the president had been straight and paid the money directly in order to avoid this coming out, there would be no crime here. There would be no violation of election laws, there would be no violation of any other kind of laws. Its the story that gets them into increasing difficulties because they dont have a single voice. And the other thing i hope i taught you is when youre representing somebody in a very complicated case, you have to speak with one voice. It has to be a single narrative. It has to be clear and unambiguous. It should be in writing. It shouldnt be off the cuff. It shouldnt be hannity on
television and it shouldnt be this guy saying one thing and the people in the white house learning about it by watching it on television. This has been terribly mishandled. Im not admitting anything, norm, im saying it because im not on his side. Professor dershowitz, ambassador eisen, thanks very much. There is a political dimension obviously to all of this that is making even republicans a bit queasy, retiring moderate republicans from traditionally blue states. Congress charlie dent for one. Lets put the shoe on the other foot, he