President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani’s “collusion” comments in a fiery interview with CNN Wednesday night are turning heads for what host Chris Cuomo portrayed as a reversal on one of Team Trump’s oft-repeated assertions.
“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign,” Giuliani told CNN’s left-leaning Chris Cuomo. “I have no idea if …”
“Yes, you have,” Cuomo interrupted.
“I have not,” said Giuliani in his trademark combative manner. “I said the President of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the President of the United States committed the only crime you can commit here, conspiring with the Russians to hack the DNC.”
Giuliani has repeatedly hammered the “no collusion” theme and echoed Trump’s dismissal of the Robert Mueller investigation as a partisan “witch hunt” that has veered from its original mandate. On Wednesday, he again asserted unequivocally that Trump himself did not collude with Russia, but also said that it was impossible for him to know if someone on his campaign had attempted to work with Russian contacts on their own.
In response to Giuliani’s reference to the lack of any evidence that Trump is connected to the crime of hacking the DNC, Cuomo said, “First of all, crime is not the bar of accountability for a president. It’s about what you know, what was right and what was wrong, and what did you deceive about.”
“Well, he didn’t collude with Russia, either,” said Giuliani, stressing again: “The president did not collude with the Russians, whatever ‘collusion’ is.”
Cuomo responded by saying that Trump has said no one in his campaign colluded with Russia.
“He didn’t say nobody. He said he didn’t,” said Giuliani. “How would you know nobody in your campaign …”
“He actually did say that,” Cuomo interjected, but then he qualified his answer: “He said nobody, but then he said ‘as far as I know.'”
“Well, as far as he knows that’s true!” Giuliani declared. “As far as the president knows, and as far as I know …”
Cuomo asked how no one knew what Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was up to and citing the media-hyped Cambridge Analytica data.
Giuliani countered by saying, “How about reporting this: And [the Republicans] ended up with a stronger platform on Ukraine than they started with.”
“No they didn’t,” said Cuomo, noting that they took out a “lethal” force language, but Giuliani hit back by noting that it was much stronger than the Democrats’ stance.
Giuliani later hammered something he said the media hasn’t ever bothered asking, suggesting they don’t want to know the answer: Why have reporters not asked about the conclusion of the counter-intelligence national security investigation started before the Mueller probe? The reason, he said, is they found no breach of national security.
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