20 People Knew

Rudy Giuliani: 20 People Knew About Trump’s Hush Money Payments

Watch the president’s lawyer call the president’s old lawyer a “liar.”

JAMILAH KING

Rudy Giuliani says there’s a perfectly good reason to explain Trump’s hush money payments to women ahead of the 2016 election, and it wasn’t about his campaign for president.

“I can produce an enormous number of witnesses,” claimed the former New York mayor and current Trump attorney. “I can produce 20 witnesses to tell you what he was concerned about.”

Guiliani made the comments, which indicate that a broader than previously known circle of people knew about the payments, on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. The witnesses, according to Giuliani, would be able to confirm that Trump was worried that the women, including Stormy Daniels, represented a threat to safety of his family.

This would rebut the explanation offered by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal fixer and attorney—and one confirmed by the parent company of the National Enquirer, which was involved in at least one payment—that Trump knew the money was to keep news of his sexual affairs from reaching voters and damaging his chances at election.

The appearance came just days after Cohen was sentenced to three years in prion after pleading guilty to making the payments, which he admitted were a violation of campaign finance laws.

Guiliani insisted the payments were not a crime, and came out swinging against Cohen, fighting back against his claim that the Trump team had attempted to offer him a pardon in exchange for refusing to turn.

“That liar can say what he wants,” Giuliani said about Cohen’s allegations. “There [was] no discussion of a pardon.” But, he quickly added, “That doesn’t mean the president doesn’t have the power.”

Giuliani’s comments came shortly after Trump sent a series of tweets in which he called Cohen a “rat” and wondered why the FBI didn’t raid the offices ofHillary Clinton or the Democratic National Committee.