Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal attorney, acknowledged during an appearance on CNN on Sunday that it's possible the president spoke with Michael Cohen prior to Cohen's congressional testimony, but questioned why it matters.
"I don't know if it happened or didn't happen," Giuliani told CNN's Jake Tapper. "And it might be attorney-client privilege if it happened where I can't acknowledge it. But I have no knowledge that he spoke to him. But I'm telling you, I wasn't there then."
Pressed again as to whether or not the president might have had a conversation with Cohen about his testimony, Giuliani said: "And so what if he talked to him about it?"
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The line of questioning follows a report from BuzzFeed News which claimed that President Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress about dealings with a prospective Trump Tower Moscow project. On Friday night, special counsel Robert Mueller's office took the unusual step to release a statement knocking down the story in response.
“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” Mueller spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement without further elaboration.
Giuliani pushed back on the BuzzFeed story during the interview, “It was horrible. They should be sued. They should be under investigation....what they did yesterday is truly fake news and it's disgusting.”
In a separate interview on Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Giuliani also said that he was completely certain that the president did not tell Cohen to lie in his congressional testimony.
“To answer your question, categorically, I can tell you his counsel to Michael Cohen throughout that entire period was, ‘Tell the truth,’" Giuliani said. "We thought he was telling the truth. I still believe he may have been telling the truth when he testified before Congress.”
Giuliani also reasserted that conversations about a potential Trump Tower deal in Moscow continued until “as far as October, November” 2016.
Last month, he said that the president's legal team would not rule out any dates that Cohen and Trump may have discussed the deal including up to the 2016 election.
