{"id":198533,"date":"2019-01-20T21:27:12","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T02:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=198533"},"modified":"2019-01-20T21:27:12","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T02:27:12","slug":"giuliani-so-what-if-trump-and-cohen-discussed-testimony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/01\/20\/giuliani-so-what-if-trump-and-cohen-discussed-testimony\/","title":{"rendered":"Giuliani: ‘So what’ if Trump and Cohen discussed testimony"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Giuliani said in interviews with CNN and NBC that Trump never directed Cohen to lie to lawmakers. (File Photo<\/a>: @RudyGiuliani\/Twitter<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani left open Sunday the possibility that Trump and former personal attorney Michael Cohen might have discussed Cohen’s congressional testimony.<\/p>\n

But, he added, \u201cso what\u201d if he did?<\/p>\n

Giuliani told CNN’s \u201cState of the Union\u201d that he did not know if Trump had discussed with Cohen a 2017 congressional interview at which Cohen has admitted lying about a Trump Tower real estate project in Moscow. He also acknowledged in a separate interview with NBC News that conversations about that project stretched throughout 2016, including possibly up until October or November of that year.<\/p>\n

The question arose in light of a BuzzFeed News report from last week that said Trump had instructed Cohen to lie to Congress and that Cohen relayed that to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators. Mueller’s office took the unusual step of issuing a statement disputing the story. BuzzFeed said it stands by its reporting.<\/p>\n

Giuliani said in interviews with CNN and NBC that Trump never directed Cohen to lie to lawmakers. But on CNN he acknowledged the possibility that Trump and Cohen might have discussed Cohen’s testimony, saying that while he had no knowledge of such a conversation, he wasn’t ruling it out and that it’d be \u201cperfectly normal\u201d anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know if it happened or didn’t happen,\u201d Giuliani said, later adding, \u201cAnd so what if he talked to him about it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Giuliani’s suggestion that dialogue about the Trump Tower project could have stretched into the fall of 2016 extends the timeline for negotiations well beyond what the president has publicly acknowledged. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress by saying that he had abandoned the project in January 2016 even though prosecutors say he actually continued pursuing it into that June.<\/p>\n

Giuliani said on NBC’s \u201cMeet The Press\u201d that Trump recalled having conversations with Cohen about the project throughout 2016, though there \u201cweren’t a lot of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president also remembers — yeah, probably up — could be up to as far as October, November,\u201d Giuliani said. \u201cOur answers cover until the election. So anytime during that period they could’ve talked about it. But the president’s recollection of it is that the, the thing had petered out quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giuliani made a similar comment last month on ABC News when he suggested that the president knew that Cohen was pursuing the project into 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the answer that he gave, it would have covered all the way up to \u2014 covered up to November, 2016. Said he had conversations with him but the president didn’t hide this,\u201d Giuliani said.<\/p>\n

Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and chairman of the House intelligence committee, said the panel planned to investigate why Cohen made false statements to Congress and determine what exactly Cohen and Trump might have discussed about his testimony.<\/p>\n

\u201cCongress has a has a fundamental interest in two things first in getting to the bottom of why a witness came before us and lied and who else was knowledgeable that this was a lie,\u201d Schiff said on CBS’ \u201cFace the Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani left open Sunday the possibility that Trump and former personal attorney Michael …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":198534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-eric-tucker","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}