WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump suggested Friday that Rudy Giuliani, the aggressive new face of his legal team, needed to “get his facts straight” about the hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election. Giuliani quickly came up with a new version.
Trump chided Giuliani even as he insisted that “we’re not changing any stories” about the $130,000 settlement, which was paid to Daniels to keep her quiet about her allegations of an affair with Trump.. Hours later, Giuliani backed away from his previous suggestion that the Oct. 27 settlement had been made because Trump was in the stretch run of his campaign.
“The payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president’s family,” Giuliani said in a statement released Friday. “It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not.”
A day earlier, Giuliani had said on Fox News: “Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.”
Trump said Friday that Giuliani was “a great guy but he just started a day ago” and the former mayor of New York City was still “learning the subject matter.” Giuliani revealed this week that Trump knew about the payment to Daniels made by his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the president paid Cohen back.