Rudy Giuliani on Cuomo last night:
Rudy Guiliani to @ChrisCuomo tonight: “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign… I have not. I said” no collision with, “the President of the United States.” pic.twitter.com/Smb0OuNzL9
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) January 17, 2019
According to Giuliani, what Trump meant in the sixty tweets in which he’s said “no collusion,” often in all caps and accompanied by one or more exclamation points, wasn’t that there was no collusion by anyone in his campaign. After all, how could Donald Trump hope to know what the rest of the people in his campaign might be on about? Nope. Every time Giuliani, or Trump, or Sarah Sanders, or Kellyanne Conway, or any of the whole toxic ecosystem of Trump surrogates bellowed “no collusion” what they really meant was that Donald Trump, personally, was not conspiring with Russia.
Now, he might be right. Rudy himself may never have said there no collusion between people in the campaign and Russia. I haven’t seen a clip where he said that.
But Rudy has said — many times — that the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt. And that certainly suggests that there are no witches, in Rudy’s view. After all, a “witch hunt” would mean the entire investigation by Mueller is worthless. And it clearly isn’t, since it has snagged Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, of colluding with Russia.
Yes to this:
From the vantage point of legal criminal defense — which yes is a very narrow way to view the President — a lawyer can validly fixate on what their client did and dismiss most other people’s (potential) wrongdoing.
— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) January 17, 2019
So maybe POTUS should stop saying and tweeting NO COLLUSION since apparently he had no idea wtf was going on in his own campaign 🙄 https://t.co/c2zgU71Y24
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) January 17, 2019
Assume Giuliani is telling the truth (🙄) & they never denied that people in the campaign may have colluded with Russia. Then the response to the investigation would’ve been, “Have at it, find out what those people did & hold them accountable.” But it wasn’t. Because Trump knew.
— Mimi Rocah (@Mimirocah1) January 17, 2019
In other scandal front, the Wall Street Journal reports that Michael Cohen once paid a small tech company to create a computer script aimed at boosting Trump’s standing in two online polls in 2014 and 2015, before Trump declared his candidacy for president.
Cohen, the Journal reported, said he would pay John Gauger, Liberty University’s chief IT guy, in exchange for rigging online polls to show wide support for Trump. A year later, Cohen asked Gauger to set up a Twitter account, @WomenForCohen, that described Cohen as “strong, pit bull, sex symbol, no nonsense, business oriented and ready to make a difference!”
When Cohen asked the Trump Organization for $130,000 to pay Stormy Daniels, the Journal reported, he also included a handwritten request for $50,000 to pay Gauger for “tech services.” But Gauger never got that money: Instead, Gauger told the Journal, Cohen provided renumeration in the form of a Walmart bag full of cash — roughly $13,000 — and a baseball glove that Cohen said had been worn by a famous Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter.
As for the @WSJ article on poll rigging, what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump @POTUS. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.
— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) January 17, 2019
Note: “AT THE DIRECTION OF….”