Giuliani just created a new Stormy Daniels problem for Trump – ThinkProgress

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In his first public comment about the Stormy Daniels hush payment, President Trump pretended he knew nothing about it.

Pressed on why his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, would, just before the 2016 election, make a $130,000 hush payment to Daniels — a woman who claims to have had an affair with Trump — Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael.”

On March 7, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders specifically denied Trump had any knowledge about the payments.

Yeah, I’ve had conversations with the President about this…There was no knowledge of any payments from the president and he’s denied all of these allegations.

During his first interview as a member of Trump’s legal team, Rudy Giuliani told a very different story about the payment.

Giuliani said that Trump personally reimbursed Cohen for the “perfectly legal” payment, but downplayed how unusual that would be.

“That money was not campaign money,” Giuliani said. “No campaign finance violation… Funneled it through a law firm, and then the president repaid it.”

Giuliani’s revelation surprised Hannity.

“Everybody was nervous about this from the very beginning, I wasn’t,” Giuliani said. “I knew how much money Donald Trump put into that campaign. I said, ‘$130,000? You can do a couple of checks for $130,000.'”

Hannity then asked Giuliani if Trump knew about the circumstances surrounding the payment.

“He did know about the general arrangement,” Giuliani said. “Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this for my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.”

Later, Giuliani characterized Cohen’s payment to Daniels as “a very regular thing for lawyers to do.”

“That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the president reimbursed that over the period of several months,” he said, adding that he had no reason to disbelieve the story Cohen has told about how he used his own funds for the payment.

Cohen has said he made the payment independently, without Trump’s knowledge and without looping in the Trump Organization — a move that would be unusual and unethical, as lawyers don’t generally make payments on behalf of clients without their knowledge.

Giuliani’s disclosure also positions the Cohen payment as a loan, potentially creating legal liability for Trump, who would be required to have reported such a loan on his presidential financial disclosures.

Whoa, Rudy may just have proven our @CREWcrew complaint that Trump broke the law by failing to disclose the loan from Cohen on his federal presidential financial disclosures. Those are filed under criminal penalty for false statements, 18 USC 1001. https://t.co/1W1BP4RvIT

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) May 3, 2018

It’s unclear why Giuliani, who is representing Trump in his dealings with special counsel Robert Mueller, spoke out about the Daniels matter in the first place. Trump has separate lawyers representing him in the Daniels litigation.

At no point during the interview did Hannity note that he has a conflict of interest when discussing Cohen, as Cohen has done legal work for him in the past.

UPDATE (11:22PM): The White House responds:

https://twitter.com/Sarah_Boxer/status/991876961944272900

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Rick Santorum says Trump ‘has a problem’ with lying – ThinkProgress

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Former Pennsylvania senator and CNN commentator Rick Santorum said on Wednesday that President Trump “has a problem” with lying, during an interview with CNN’s New Day.

“The president says things that don’t comport with the facts,” Santorum told host Chris Cuomo. “I don’t like calling people liars, but the reality is this president has a problem. And I have said that over and over again. I wish he wouldn’t go out and say things that don’t comport with the facts.”

Santorum’s admission came in response to analysis released by Washington Post fact-checkers this week, which showed that, since taking office in January 2017, President Trump has made 3,001 “false or misleading claims…an average of nearly 6.5 claims a day.”

“We have never seen a record like this,” Cuomo said. “…How do you justify this data from the Washington Post?”

Santorum initially responded by claiming President Obama lied about the Affordable Care Act when he said people would be able to keep their doctor and current insurance if they liked them. He also claimed Obama had lied about a $400 million cash payment to Iran in January 2016, which Trump himself has argued should’ve been investigated. That payment was essentially part of a larger settlement for past military purchases that the United States still owed to Iran ($1.7 billion total), over a failed arms deal first made in 1979.

“‘You can keep your doctor, you can keep your insurance, we didn’t pay off the Iranians’…. I think the substance of the previous president’s lies were much more important than the substance of what the crowd size was at the [inauguration],” he said. “I mean, those are the things I really care about.”

After Cuomo accused Santorum of “moral relativism” and noted he had refused to answer questions about Trump’s lies up front, however, Santorum eventually changed gears.

“Look I’m not being–I’ll say it right here. You have seen me criticize President Trump for his hyperbole,” he said. “…I’m not saying he is not subject to hyperbole and exaggeration and other things. He is.”

The Washington Post’s analysis, published on Tuesday, reveals Trump’s tendency to not only skew the truth but shows his habit of repeating some of those lies at an astounding rate.

Trump has repeated 113 of those 3,001 false claims at least three times each, according to the study, including claiming he passed the largest tax cut in history (72 times), claiming the Russia investigation is made up or a “witch hunt” (53 times), claiming a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border will stop illegal drugs from flowing into the United States (34 times), and claiming that the border wall is already under construction, even though it isn’t (13 times in the past five weeks alone).

On one day last year — July 25, 2017 — Trump made 53 separate “misleading claims.” The second-highest day, in terms of the number of falsehoods the president made publicly, came on November 29, 2017, when Trump made at least 49 inaccurate statements or outright lies.

Notwithstanding Santorum’s comments on Wednesday, many Republicans appear willing — if not eager — to ignore the frequency with which Trump makes up statements or distorts the facts. At least one prominent Republican recently argued that it’s also not the business of the press to report those lies.

During an interview with CNN Monday, American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp claimed that journalists were the cause of many political rifts, and that reporters should aim to let the public decide what’s true and what isn’t.

“We have political disagreements in this country, and I think it’s wrong for journalists to take that next step,” he said. “Just present the facts. Let the American people decide if they think someone is lying. The journalist shouldn’t be the one to say the president or his spokesperson is lying, because what that does is to 50 percent of the country, is it makes them feel like they aren’t credible to listen to anymore.”

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