In an appearance on NBC‘s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Rudy Giuliani supplied the latest evidence that President Donald Trump and his legal team are abandoning their efforts to claim that a meeting the president’s son had with a Russian lawyer in 2016 was not held for the purposes of gathering opposition research on Hillary Clinton from a foreign power.
“The meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about Clinton,” the president’s lawyer said.
“Which in itself is attempted collusion,” host Chuck Todd interjected, to which Giuliani scoffed. “You just said it. The meeting was intended to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from a Kremlin lawyer. That was the intention of the meeting.”
Watch:
ON #MTP: Rudy Giuliani says the “original intention” of the Trump Tower meeting was to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. pic.twitter.com/bGKCuUOEaC
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) August 19, 2018
Giuliani’s statements indicated that the Trump team is now leaning on their claims that advisers Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and other officials who met with Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, did not know the meeting had been scheduled on behalf of the Russian government.
This is insane.
In admitting the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting was to get dirt on Clinton, Giuliani also says they didn’t know Veselnitskaya “represented the Russian government” (The email setting up the meeting literally said it was on behalf of the Russian government) pic.twitter.com/egd7svawgS
— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) August 19, 2018
Email correspondence between Trump, Jr. and Rob Goldstone, a publicist who helped to arrange the meeting, showed that the content that was to be shared was “very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” and “would be very useful to your father.”
The interview came weeks after Trump himself tweeted that the meeting was a “totally legal” attempt to get information about Clinton—a claim that numerous legal experts immediately dismissed.
.@RudyGiuliani just said on @MeetThePress that the original intent of the Trump Tower meeting was to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. This directly contradicts the entire strategy of the Trump legal team on this meeting up til this point #MTP
— Melissa Holzberg (@mel_holzberg) August 19, 2018
In the same interview, Giuliani told Todd that he does not want the president to rush to testify to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team for fear that he’ll be “trapped into perjury.”
“When you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth,” Giuliani told Todd.
“Truth is truth,” Todd responded.
“No, it isn’t truth. Truth isn’t truth,” the former New York mayor said, suggesting that it isn’t possible for the Mueller probe to determine whether the president’s campaign colluded with Russia and whether Trump has obstructed justice.
WATCH: Rudy Giuliani tells Chuck Todd that he doesn’t want President Trump to be caught in a perjury trap by speaking with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. #MTP #IfItsSunday
Giuliani: “Truth isn’t truth” pic.twitter.com/U5uErcLIJn
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) August 19, 2018
The exchange drew condemnation on Twitter—but Inside Higher Ed columnist John Warner warned that the Trump legal team will likely see no consequences for changing their long-held narrative and essentially admitting to attempted collusion, and issued a reminder that voters likely have a greater capacity to end the Trump presidency than Mueller’s probe.
Anyone who thinks Rudy’s “Truth isn’t truth” is a gaff or misstatement isn’t paying attention to the Trump defense strategy. Trump knows he’s guilty. Rudy knows he’s guilty. The only way to get Trump off is to redefine guilt as something else. It’s working.
— John Warner (@biblioracle) August 19, 2018
This article originally posted here.
