Donald Trump contradicts lawyer amid Stormy Daniels affair
US President Donald Trump has undercut Rudy Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor who the President recently hired to represent him. Giuliani conducted a series of news media interviews this week that only intensified the controversy involving Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and other matters.
“Rudy is a great guy, but he just started a day ago. But he really has his heart into it. He’s working hard. He’s learning the subject matter,” Trump said.
“He’ll get his facts straight,” Trump added, though he did not specify the statements by Giuliani, who joined the president’s legal team on April 19, to which he was referring.
Giuliani late on Wednesday revealed that Trump had repaid Cohen for the $130,000 the lawyer had provided to Daniels. Trump previously had denied knowing about the payment.
The next morning, Trump said on Twitter that Cohen was paid back through a monthly retainer, not campaign funds, to stop Daniels’ “false and extortionist accusations”.
Hours after Trump said his lawyer Rudy Giuliani did not have “his facts straight,” the former New York mayor issued a statement on Friday saying $130,000 in hush money paid to an adult-film star before the 2016 election was not an election law violation.
Giuliani on Thursday had connected the payment to Stormy Daniels by the president’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to keep quiet about a 2006 sexual encounter she said she had with Trump to the election, remarks that raised the possibility that the transaction violated federal election law.
“There is no campaign violation. 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,” Giuliani said in a brief statement “intended to clarify the views I expressed over the past few days.”
Giuliani in a TV interview on Thursday wondered what would have happened if Daniels’ claim of an affair had come up in a debate between Trump and his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, adding, “Cohen made it go away. He did his job.”
Source:euronews.com