Rudy Giuliani Says ‘Collusion Is Not A Crime’ After Trump Repeatedly Denied Collusion With Russia
President Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, began a Fox & Friends interview by dismissing Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump campaign officials colluded with Russia.
After erupting in laughter at a compilation of the media reaction to the Cohen tapes, Giuliani stated that “I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime,” Giuliani adding. “Collusion is not a crime.”
Giuliani went on to claim that the secretly-recorded conversations between Trump and his former attorney Michael Cohen are proof that the president “didn’t do anything wrong,” reports The Hill.
In the Fox & Friends interview, the president’s attorney acknowledges that collusion may have occurred but insists that Mr. Trump was not involved.
During Mueller’s investigation into the Russian meddling in the 2016 election, President Trump has not been indicted or accused of any collusion.
Trump said that former FBI director James Comey told him on three occasions that he was not under investigation. The president later said in an interview that he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he decided to fire Comey.
However, he later denied that he fired Comey over the Russia investigation.
In another interview on the same day on CNN, Giuliani further asserted that collusion is not a “crime.”
“I don’t even know if that’s a crime, colluding [with] Russians. You start analyzing the crime — the hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay them for hacking. If you got the hacked information from the Russians here at CNN, and you played it, would you be in jeopardy of going to jail? Of course not.”
Michael Cohen reportedly claimed that Donald Trump Jr. told his father about the June 2017 Trump Tower meeting before it occurred.
Rudy Giuliani retreats all the way to arguing ‘collusion is not a crime’ https://t.co/jO7ZCur4Zc pic.twitter.com/uLQkdeDRg3
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) July 30, 2018
Officials in the Trump campaign, including Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Trump Jr., met with Kremlin-associated attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. Trump Jr. disclosed that he attended the meeting expecting information that could hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Rudy Giuliani: "Every day, something new is tweeted that's unfair, untrue…"
CNN's Alisyn Camerota: "A lot of that is because President Trump is tweeting it." pic.twitter.com/Q5mdWccJHL
— CNN This Morning (@CNNThisMorning) July 30, 2018
President Trump has denied knowing about the Trump Tower meeting. However, Michael Cohen has indicated that he is willing to testify that Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
Cohen does not have any audio of the exchange in which Trump Jr. allegedly told his father about the meeting.
Collusion is not a federal crime, but if the alleged exchange between Trump campaign officials and Russia involved criminal intent, some crimes may have been committed.
Donald Trump Jr. has testified before Congress that his father was not aware of the Tower meeting in advance.
