There was a lot of crazy stuff this morning when President Trump called into Fox & Friends, the Fox Morning Show. A lot of color. But I want to zero in on several key claims or admissions he made about the Russia, Cohen and Stormy Daniels cases.
1. Trump categorically denied that he told James Comey he didn’t overnight in Moscow in November 2013 at the Miss Universe Pageant. Comey recorded Trump saying this twice in his contemporaneous memos. This is a key claim since it is clearly false and it appeared to be a falsehood manufactured to rebut the prostitute allegations. From one perspective it’s one guy’s word against the other. The problem for Trump is that the space-time continuum being what it is, it’s not at all clear how Comey would know to make this up in contemporaneous memos written in early 2017. He would have no way to know it would be significant. It simply makes no sense. There does appear to be at least one witness, Reince Priebus. It will be interesting to see what he says.
BREAKING: Trump denies telling Comey he didn’t overnight in Moscow, then starts rambling about Hillary getting debate questions. pic.twitter.com/zGc9WnTcMc
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 26, 2018
2. The President said Michael Cohen is mainly a businessman and only secondarily a lawyer. That at least undercuts his privilege argument. He says what prosecutors are looking at only has to do with Cohen’s personal business dealings, not with his representation of Donald Trump. He also said that he knows nothing about Cohen’s private business dealings. (“I don’t know his business… They’re looking at something having to do with his business. I have nothing to do with his business.”) That’s almost certainly false.
So Trump says he knows nothing about Cohen’s businesses, that Cohen is mainly a businessman and is barely even his lawyer. I’m sure that will help with the privilege argument. pic.twitter.com/JchJY2iLDX
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 26, 2018
3. However, Trump says explicitly for the first time that Cohen does represent him with Stormy Daniels: “He represents me like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal.” We know that of course. But Cohen and Trump’s lawyers have been trying to hide behind the fiction that Cohen simply represents the LLC which is also a party to the hush deal.
