It’s Giuliani Time!

I started to call this post the “rich man’s burden.” Perfectly innocent rich men, you see, are just perpetually having to pay large amounts of money to women of ill repute. It goes with the territory. Anna North wrote at Vox,

If anyone in America still needed an explanation of how rich people use their money to silence others, President Donald Trump has you covered.

In a series of tweets Thursday morning, he laid out the process by which “celebrities and people of wealth” like himself use nondisclosure agreements to keep people from talking about them in public. Trump specifically explained that he reimbursed his lawyer, Michael Cohen, for paying porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence.

I believe Trump is still claiming he didn’t have sex with that woman (he changes his story so much it’s hard to keep track), which makes me wonder why more women don’t get on this gravy train. All you have to do to get $130,000 is threaten to tell the world that you’ve had sex with Mr. Bigbucks! Easiest scam in the world! It must happen all the time!

Of course, the flip side to NDAs is that they perpetuate a system by which the very wealthy can get away with anything by buying their victims’ silence. I think NDAs should be done away with, except perhaps in regard to legitimate proprietary business information.

Conor Friedersdorf compiled a list of Trump’s changing stories about the $130,000 payment.

And that brings us to Wednesday night. Now, Rudy Giuliani says that Trump repaid the $130,000 to Michael Cohen. The lawyer didn’t use his own money after all. The new story produced a remarkable followup segment on Fox News, in which Laura Ingraham grudgingly implied that Trump and his allies have proven themselves to be liars by blatantly contradicting themselves–then quickly softened that heretical conclusion by reframing it as though the important thing is what the left will say, not the actual truth of the matter.

At about the 1:26 mark, Ingraham speculates, “Well did Trump pay it after April 6?” It would be odd to wait that long to reimburse one’s lawyer for a six-figure expense, but that would allow Trump to claim he wasn’t lying on Air Force One. What Ingraham could not have known then is that after the Hannity interview, Giuliani gave an interview to Robert Costa of The Washington Post.

What Guiliani told Costa is that the reimbursement was over a period of time, in monthly payments of $35,000. Which means the reimbursement began long before April. (Trump’s tweets today suggested that the $35,000 a month was merely a legal retainer, which must have been a sweet deal for Cohen, considering he does very little legal work.)

It probably didn’t occur to Giuliani that he was throwing the Fox News crew under the bus along with Trump. But no statement coming out of the White House can ever be trusted. Something that’s a “disgusting” rumor and “fake news” one day turns out to be true the next day. This happens a lot.

The problem, as I understand it, is that Giuliani seemed to believe that if Trump paid the $130,000 out of his own pocket, he’s off the hook for campaign finance violations. However, all kinds of commentary today says that if the $130,000 was paid in connection to the campaign in any way, and not reported, it’s still a campaign finance violation.

On Thursday morning, Trump tweeted that Cohen “received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign … used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair.”

“Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction,” the president insisted.

But Giuliani quickly contradicted that explanation in an interview with Fox and Friends Thursday morning, indicating that the payment to Daniels was meant to prevent damaging information from emerging in the latter days of the 2016 campaign. “Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton,” Giuliani said. “Cohen didn’t even ask. He made it go away. He did his job.”

That statement, legal experts said, appears to confirm that the payment was a campaign expenditure. “This is good circumstantial evidence this was campaign-related,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. “Giuliani did Trump no favors.”

Jonathan Turley asks, “Is Rudy Giuliani working FOR Donald Trump or AGAINST him?” See also Josh Marshall, “Rudes in Twillight.”

My best guess is that Guiliani and Trump and other members of the legal team had discussed this story (true or not) as a way to escape a claimed FEC violation. They did so with what appears to have been a fairly limited understanding of campaign finance law. But they thought it was a good idea. Giuliani then meandered his way into floating it during his interview with Sean Hannity. Note how he immediately fixes on the point that this solves the campaign finance problem (even though it appears not to). He’s adamant and cocky about it. He is then caught off guard when Hannity — himself caught off guard and scrambling in response to the initial claim — reminds him that the story is that Trump never knew anything about the Daniels deal at all and did not know where the money was from.

Later in the interview and now this morning he has groped his way to a new hybrid story which is that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment without ever knowing that the payment had been made, who it had been made to or how much it was for. With sufficient grease and spit and oblong pieces of cardboard, Rudy is halfway able to make this make sense. But by any real measure, it makes no sense. …

…What you have are a half dozen brainstorms cooked up by a group of old men in a room used to bending reality to their purposes when something goes wrong. That’s much more difficult on a national stage in front of intense scrutiny. That’s what happened last night. Rudy Giuliani is far, far past his prime, used to the accommodating hothouse world of Fox News cronies and cash and carry deal-making in his law firm gigs. This was as sloppy as it looked and did his client no favors.

In other news: NBC reports that the feds had tapped Michael Cohen’s phones. We don’t know when the tap started, but it was before the raids on his home(s) and office(s). At least one call between Cohen and the White House was intercepted.

15 thoughts on “It’s Giuliani Time!

  1. No fool like an old fool

    I've  been saying for months,  I wish a group of women would camp out in front of Cohen's office with signs saying "I screwed donald, where's my 130,000?"

  2. It kind of looks like Guiliani is giving Trump a pay back for not giving him the position of Attorney General.. He goes on Hannity's show and sinks Trump deeper in legal shit, then departs with a farewell note of — Trust me! And Trump is so stupid he thinks Rudy pulled off the perfect legal caper.

     Michael Avenatti pointed out that if Trump paid the $130,000. in installments in an effort to hide the purpose of what that money was intended to be used for it would be considered structuring which is a crime in itself (remember Dennis Hastert).

  3. If any part of the Stormy Daniels payoff was illegal, whether Trump broke the law or Cohen broke the law, the client-attorney shield is broken. Other stuff between Trump and Cohen may be privileged, but the Stormy file is fair game.

    What I'm hearing is that the warrants would not have been issued for campaign stuff. Something else much bigger threatens Cohen. If the hurdle to get a warrant was much higher for a lawyer, one that works as Trump's fixer, Cohen was 99.9 guilty in the eyes of the judge who signed off. 

    Cohen has two potential lifelines. The first is a presidential pardon, but at the point he gets a pardon, Cohen can't take the fifth with a grand jury. A pardon creates jeopardy for Trump as he digs himself a deeper hole in the obstruction case. The second lifeline is for Cohen to throw Trump under the bus. Cohen knows where all the bodies are buried in NYC.  And there is NY State law. If Trump pardons Cohen, but Cohen's federal crimes overlap NY State statutes, Cohen could still be looking at hard time and Attica is a worse place than most federal jails – or so I hear from federal prison.

  4. Past his prime for sure Rudy shows some bright spots in his public re-emergence.  Though struggling with diminishing talents and other signs of long-ness of tooth, he has been able to construct some sentences without the use of the numbers 9 and 11. This is an improvement.  Rudy  thinks he is throwing life savers, me thinks, but the tide pays him as much heed as most of us.  He would not me my choice to send out on a last ditch Hail Mary play, but then this might be his last call-up.  My guess he will continue to fail and has little chance for political redemption.  

  5. Giuliani has provided me with several guffaws in the past 24 hours. 😉 It may even be that he is working against Trump. But whatever his motives, his outbursts of apparent candor seem to be having an anti-Trump effect on Fox News, and, by extension, on Trump's base. Trump's public life is built upon an edifice of lies, and Giuliani may have removed one Jenga block too many. 

  6. Might Giuliana and Trump have a real strategy to nuke all opposition? If I was Rudy and wanted power & glory… (Of course Rudy is famous for his humility, but this is speculation…)  I'd have a signed pardon from Trump before I accepted the job of Acting Attorney General. With that "get-out-of-jail-free" card, I'd shut down both/all investigations and seize all evidence. Everything goes away and Trump's power as king is cemented (or Trump overplayed his hand and is deposed) with Rudy at his right hand.

    Why couldn't it happen that way? 

  7. If Trump says the money used to pay Stormy Daniels wasn't campaign funds, then you know that they were campaign funds.

  8. Bumbling tRUMP's incompetent and disorganized legal team looks like a corner of a shed with dozens of spiders, all spinning their 'webs to deceive' the public.  

    Only these aren't regular spiders.  

    No.  They're  spiders on acid.  And thus, instead of bugs caught in their webs, they may end up caught in their own webs.  

  9. Gulag..Maha was sending out a search party looking for you. If you're gonna kick the bucket please give advanced notice. In saw your comment on Disqus about Nunes needing the jaws of life and a team of proctologists to extract his head from Trump's ass. You got that right!

  10. Followup from the other day's Kremlin thread: The National Enquirer has a huge headline next week or two saying that Giuliani is a corrupt and crooked double-dealer who is working at the behest of Bill and Hillary. 

  11. The best explanation I've heard so far in regards to strategy for what Trump is doing is that he's decided to run the impeachment gauntlet figuring his best chance for survival is a political escape route. That's why Guiliani's crazy comments are not that crazy. If he can sow enough doubt and confusion about a deep state conspiracy to destroy Trump's presidency it might provide just enough support from GOP senators who are looking for cover to vote against impeachment, or failure to convict him in an impeachment vote. 

    When you're options don't look good, you still grab for the best option available. And it not like Trump would concern himself with appearances by restricting his options by the restraints of dignity and honor. He's a creature of survival… and morals be damned.  

  12. If the Dems take the House and Trump's popularity drops below 50% in 34 states, I think that the House will impeach and probably Trump will resign or the Senate will convict. 

    As a sometime court watcher, it seems to me that if the jury thinks you are a liar, that's the kiss of death. Impeachment is not a legal proceeding, but if Republican voters think he's a liar and he's impeached, I think he's a goner. (And probably indicted after leaving office.) Republican Senators may vote to convict in 2019, so that they will have time to recover by the 2020 election.

    And if, as Swami suggests, Trump is planning to weather impeachment, the sooner the better. As time goes on, more people are likely to get fed up with his lying.

  13. Trump is an alchemist! Not in the traditional sense where one would turn lead into gold, but more of a spiritual/ reputational alchemist who can turn one's credibility and reputation into shit. I mean when you look at the wreckage of the lives of the people who have brushed up against him it's pretty easy to see he does have a talent in that regard.

  14. The good old boy, rich men do this all the time , Rudy statement that this is common and we all do it ," it is a cheap way to make it all go away" is what makes this minimization/rationalization so disgusting. I really think all the conflicting statements, making people unsure of what is fact and therefore the object is turning people off the whole narrative. This is just a media tactic to make everyone apathetic as the facts cannot be ascertained. 

    Rudy is a vile old fart on the take. He heard the Trump campaign was paying lawyers and wanted some of the payout. Easy money. Go to Fox  News run mouth get paid. Laugh at media trying to decipher a blowhard.

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