What does former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Attorney Ty Cobb, and Dr. Harold Bornstein have in common? They’ve each just made life that much more difficult for Donald Trump.
Politics
In March, Donald Trump blasted The New York Times for reporting what he called the “fake news” that Ty Cobb was not happy as a member of Trump’s legal team and could soon step aside. However, on Wednesday, Ty Cobb did, in fact, remove himself from the Trump defense delegation, proving The Times exactly right in their story that all was not well in Trump paradise.
Then, in an attempt to confirm his claim that he only hires “the best people,” Donald Trump added former NYC Mayor and political ass kisser Rudy Giuliani to his legal squad earlier this week. However, by Wednesday evening, Trump was likely already regretting that decision.
In his first interview since joining the Trump legal club, Giuliani stunned Sean Hannity of Fox News by admitting that Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen (his personal lawyer) the $130,000 hush money he paid porn star Stormy Daniels — which was in direct contradiction to what Donald Trump previously stated.
Here is the shocking exchange between Hannity and Giuliani:
GIULIANI: Having something to do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman $130,000? Which, I mean, is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violation.
HANNITY: They funneled it through a law firm.
GIULIANI: They funneled through a law firm, and the president repaid it.
HANNITY: Oh. I didn’t know that. He did.
GIULIANI: Yep.
HANNITY: There’s no campaign finance law.
GIULIANI: Zero. Just like every — Sean, Sean —
HANNITY: So this decision was made by —
GIULIANI: Everybody was nervous about this from the very beginning. I wasn’t. I knew how much money Donald Trump put into that campaign, and I said, “$130,000? He could do a couple of checks for $130,000.”
When I heard of Cohen’s retainer for $130,000, he was doing no work for the president. I said, “Well, that’s how he’s repaying it, with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes for Michael.
HANNITY: But you know the president didn’t know about this?
GIULIANI: Ah, he didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this. Like, I take care of this with my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.
Quickly realizing Giuliani had just admitted on national television that Donald Trump basically paid Stormy Daniels hush money via his attorney and a law firm (to cover his tracks), Hannity attempted to give Giuliani a “do-over” to retract the incredibly damning statement. However, instead of changing his tune, Rudy simply doubled down.
GIULIANI: I was talking about the $130,000 payment —
HANNITY: Right.
GIULIANI: The settlement payment, which is a very regular thing for lawyers to do. The question there was, the only possible violation there would be: Was it a campaign finance violation? Which usually results in a fine, by the way, not this big stormtroopers coming in and breaking down his apartment and breaking down his office. That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the way I would do, out of his law firm funds or whatever funds — it doesn’t matter — and the president reimbursed that over the period of several months.
Here’s the problem with Giuliani’s admission: Because Cohen admitted he paid off Stormy Daniels to help Donald Trump’s chances in the 2016 election and because Giuliani has now admitted Trump “reimbursed” Cohen the $130,000 payment to the adult-film actress, campaign finance experts say this could significantly strengthen the criminal case against both Cohen and Trump for failing to properly disclose the payment.
It was yet another high-profile goof from Rudy Giuliani, who seems to be an expert at making them.
Politics
Giuliani’s incredible admission came only a day after “The Donald’s” former doctor admitted to lying about Trump’s health.
When Dr. Harold Bornstein used bizarre prose to describe then-candidate Donald Trump’s health back in 2015, the language was eerily similar to the style of his patient. Now, there’s a very valid explanation for that.
According to Bornstein, Trump actually wrote the health letter himself.
“He dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter,” Bornstein confessed. “I just made it up as I went along.”
The pretend doctor’s note spoke of Donald Trump in glowing terms and was suspiciously absent of any sort of professional medical vernacular.
“His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary,” the letter boldly stated. “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
The letter went on to say that Trump’s blood pressure was “astonishingly excellent” and that because of his 15-pound weight loss, Trump’s cardiovascular health was also “excellent.” His physique was even compared to that of professional football player Tim Tebow. Yeah, right!
Now, Dr. Bornstein has admitted that the entire letter was a fraud and its wording was a lie.
“I was just rushed for time,” Bornstein said. “I had people to see.”
With this week’s antics from Rudy Giuliani, Ty Cobb, and now Dr. Bornstein, Donald Trump is almost certainly thinking: “With friends like this, who needs enemies?” However, the triple threat of bad news against “The Donald” is only the tip of the iceberg for what is about to come.
Stay tuned…
DJ thank you for doing this post. You covered even more of the nonsense than I expected you to and I couldn’t appreciate it more!
When this news broke last night all I could do was sit and shake my head. I mean Lord…Lol. You really cannot make this stuff up can you!?!
Is this not the DUMBEST, most corrupt, LYING-azz bunch of clowns you’ve ever seen!?!
Seriously, Trump and his cohorts new meaning to the phrase “the gang that can’t shoot straight.”
And here’s the real kicker…..they actually think they’re being clever. Yep..Lol. Outsmarting us all…smh.
Oops! I meant to write….
Seriously, Trump and his cohorts give new meaning to the phrase “the gang that can’t shoot straight.”
So a few minutes ago I read a comment on another site which prompted me to pause and consider if there might be something else going on here concerning Giuliani’s admission about $130,000 dollars.
[Quickly realizing Giuliani had just admitted on national television that Donald Trump basically paid Stormy Daniels hush money via his attorney and a law firm (to cover his tracks), Hannity attempted to give Giuliani a “do-over” to retract the incredibly damning statement. However, instead of changing his tune, Rudy simply doubled down.] -DJ
What if this was actually a “preemptive move on the part of Giuliani” to get the Truth out there now? ….knowing darn well the raid conducted on Cohen’s offices and hotel room surely “uncovered this information and more.”
Hmm. and now I’m wondering if this might also be a sign that Cohen has flipped? (or is about to?)
That is a good point Truth. I never thought about that.
I had a lunch meeting today so I didn’t get a chance to respond to this news until I got home. But this is some other level ish going on here. When you do wrong and you lie you have to keep making up other lies to cover the first one. That is what these fools look like right now. It’s obvious Trump has done a whole lot of wrong because if not they wouldn’t have to keep trying to cover things up. They could just tell the truth and that would be good enough. But they can’t tell the truth. So everybody is saying Guliani messed up but the only way he messed up is if he really needed to lie to cover up the first wrong. See where this is going? Then that doctor finally telling us what we all knew already. That whole letter sounded like Trump from the get go and now we know it was. Trump has lied so many times he can’t keep up anymore and now everybody connected to him is having to lie too so they can protect the other lies. DJ was right when he said this hole just keeps getting deeper and deeper. I feel sorry for Muller’s people who have to sift through all this and make sense of it. But I can’t wait until they get to the bottom of it all and this clown gets the karma coming to him.
“I feel sorry for Muller’s people who have to sift through all this and make sense of it.”
Yes but thankfully BD, Robert Mueller and his team actually DO love Our country and are competently up to the enormous task at hand.
Btw- given all of the blowback that’s occurred WITHIN the White House today (as per CNN and MSNBC) since Rudy’s appearance on Faux News last night and also on some show this morning, sounds like this latest incredibly STUPID idea was *THUNK-UP* by Trump himself and Giuliani.
I’ve heard it said quite a few times in recent years that Giuliani’s legend has long since outgrown his actual capabilities. Well….I think he just proved it.
(CNN) – Prosecutors have a venerable piece of advice that they often pass along to witnesses. “Always tell the truth,” they say, “It’s easier to remember.”
Of course, the main reason witnesses (and everyone else) should tell the truth is because it’s the right thing to do. But the advice from prosecutors gets at a different point. Lies beget more lies, and more lies generate more confusion, and soon the lies cause more trouble that whatever caused the controversy in the first place. This phenomenon is at the heart of President Donald Trump’s current legal problems.
Consider the matter of Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, who is now America’s most famous adult film performer. She asserts that she and the President had sex once in 2006. Five years later, a supermarket tabloid recounted their alleged sexual encounter.
And five years after that, at the climax of the 2016 presidential campaign, Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer and fixer, arranged for a shell corporation to pay Daniels $130,000 for her agreement to remain silent about her relationship with the then-presidential candidate. To this point, the story is seedy but almost certainly legal.
The lies and omissions started almost immediately. As Rudolph Giuliani, the President’s new lawyer, acknowledged Wednesday on Fox News, Daniels was paid because disclosure of her story on the eve of the election would have hurt Trump’s chances. And who paid Daniels?
For months, Trump and his allies stonewalled — that is, lied. Trump himself said he knew nothing about the payments,Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his press secretary — presumably relying on the word of her boss — said the same thing. Cohen himself put forward the implausible story that he paid the whole amount out of his own pocket as a reflection of his love for the Trump family.
Also on Fox Wednesday, Giuliani told an astonished Sean Hannity that Trump had indeed reimbursed Cohen for the payments to Daniels — and he did so, according to Giuliani, in some peculiar and imprecise series of monthly payments.
Consider, alternatively, if Trump’s team had told the truth from the start. He would have made a campaign report of a payment to Daniels, and that could have resulted in an embarrassing, but short-lived story.
Instead, the lies caused the Daniels fiasco to metastasize into a genuine crisis. Was there a campaign finance violation by Cohen — or by Trump himself? Did Trump file a false financial disclosure report, or a false tax return, based on improper accounting for a gift? Did anyone (Trump or Cohen, for example) make a false statement to a bank in connection with this payment? And even now, do we really know who supplied the money to pay off Daniels?
Then of course there is the political (and moral) fallout of the falsehoods: why, now, should the public believe anything Trump says after he so obviously misled the public on this subject of wide public interest?
Trump’s prevarications also made a mess of the even more consequential story of the firing of James Comey, the FBI director, in May of last year. The simple question of why Trump fired Comey has produced a still-changing collection of answers.
Does anybody know how to post a video on here?