By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com
President Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is now claiming he “never said” the Trump campaign didn’t collude with Russia.
In an extraordinary interview on CNN on Wednesday night, Giuliani acknowledged there may have been “collusion” between the campaign and Russia, but Trump was not involved.
“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign. Or between people in the campaign,” Giuliani told CNN host Chris Cuomo on live television. “I have no idea.”
.@RudyGiuliani allows for the possibility of collusion with the campaign while saying it didn’t happen.
“If the collusion happened, it happened a long time ago. It’s either provable or it’s not. It’s not provable because it never happened…. there’s no chance it happened.” pic.twitter.com/gZKZGRksdN
— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) January 17, 2019
Truth is, Giuliani and Trump have both denied collusion.
“I have not,” Giuliani insisted. “I said the president of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here, conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC.”
In previous interviews, Giuliani denied anyone in the campaign colluded with Russia. He told Fox News in July that there was “no collusion” and then maintained that “collusion is not a crime.”
Trump has repeatedly insisted no one in his campaign colluded with Russia.
“There was nobody to collude with,” Trump said at a press conference with Vladimir Putin at his side last summer. “There was no collusion with the campaign.”
In previous tweets, including one as recent as December, Trump exclaimed, “No collusion!”
Giuliani’s latest rhetoric comes as Robert Mueller begins collecting more evidence of links between Trump, his campaign and Russia.
Last week, a court filing error by Paul Manafort’s attorneys showed that Manafort, Trump’s former champaign boss, met with Russian-linked operative named Konstantin Kilmnik and shared polling data with him. At one point, Manafort urged Kilimnik to pass the data to Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska, according to the court filing.
