President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said Sunday that he wants the public to hear more of Michael Cohen’s recordings as he continued to claim that they vindicated Trump.
“These are tapes I want you to read,” Giuliani said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday. “I want you to hear them.”
However, Giuliani said he himself was “not allowed” to release the tapes, which include what he said were “183 unique conversations,” citing rules concerning the audio, which was among the materials seized from Cohen’s office, home and hotel in New York in April amid a criminal investigation of Cohen by the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.
“We don’t violate these rules,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani’s comments came days after CNN aired audio of a recording Cohen made of him and then-candidate Trump discussing a potential payment to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who has alleged she had an affair with Trump about a decade ago.
During his televised appearances Sunday, Giuliani continued to rail against Trump’s former personal attorney, telling CBS, “I don’t see how you can believe Michael Cohen,” and accusing Cohen of violating Trump’s attorney-client privilege.
In response to Giuliani’s claims this weekend that Cohen had violated the privilege, Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis issued a statement calling Giuliani “confused.”
“He expressly waived attorney client privilege last week and repeatedly and inaccurately – as proven by the tape – talked and talked about the recording, forfeiting all confidentiality,” Davis said.
Giuliani’s recent attacks against Cohen’s character have been in stark contrast to his prior praise for Cohen. Asked about the reversal on “Fox News Sunday,” Giuliani said if he had known about Cohen’s recordings, he would have called him a “scoundrel” instead of praising him.
“The man is a pathological manipulator, liar,” Giuliani said. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know him well, but I knew nothing bad about Michael Cohen until all of this started to happen in the last couple weeks.”
Giuliani once praised Michael Cohen as ‘honest,’ but now says Cohen has ‘lied all his life’
In an interview that aired on Fox News Saturday evening, Giuliani said Trump’s legal team was investigating the tape of Trump and Cohen and suggested it might have been doctored. In response, a source close to Cohen mocked Giuliani, saying, “You mean Rudy is floating reckless, fact-free, false, wild speculation as if he were unhinged? Obviously it’s a lie. Shocking.”
In his Fox appearance on Sunday, Giuliani said Trump felt “disappointed” that his former ally had turned against him, acknowledging the split that now existed between Trump and Cohen while saying they did not feel “at war” with Cohen at this point.
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he thought Cohen and Trump were once “very loyal to each other,” but that maybe the federal raids in April had jarred Cohen.
“I wish these guys could put down their arms, recognize the longevity of their relationship and stop the backbiting and the infighting,” Scaramucci said.
CNN’s Jake Tapper and Jim Acosta contributed to this report.
