Rudy Giuliani is backtracking and pretending he isn’t. The president’s lawyer is now saying that Donald Trump never discussed former national security adviser Michael Flynn with then-FBI Director James Comey. When he was asked why he said the opposite just last month, Giuliani tried to make it seem like never said what he actually said.
“There was no conversation about Michael Flynn,” Giuliani said on CNN Sunday. “That is what he will testify to if he’s asked that question.” That would contradict not only Comey, who had told senators that Trump told him he wanted him to drop an ongoing investigation into Flynn, but Giuliani himself. Talking to ABC last month, Giuliani denied that Trump had asked Comey to drop the probe—but did say the two talked about it. “He didn’t direct him to do that,” Giuliani had told ABC. “What he said to him was, ‘Can you give him a break?’” When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Giuliani about that discrepancy, the president’s lawyer denied he ever said that. “That’s crazy. I have never said that,” he added. “What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said. I have always said the President denies it.”
Giuliani says the disagreement between what Trump told Comey is at the heart of what he believes could be special counsel Robert Mueller setting a “perjury trap” because he would favor the former FBI director’s account of what happened to that of the president. “The president says he never told Comey he should go easy on Flynn. Comey says the president did; he put it in his memo,” Giuliani added. “So if he goes in and testifies to that under oath, instead of this being a dispute, they can say it’s perjury.”
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