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Rudy Giuliani defends his ethics, jokes he is afraid ‘He lied for Trump’ will be on his gravestone

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 22, 2019, 9:05 am CST

One of President Donald Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, defended his ethics and clarified his comments about the timing of talks over a Trump Tower project in Moscow in an interview with the New Yorker on Monday.

Giuliani told the New Yorker that his sense of ethics “is as high as anybody you can imagine. I’ve been doing this forever. I am doing what I believe in. I may not always be right, but I am doing what I believe. And I believe this man [Trump] has been treated horribly.”

Giuliani said he is a criminal defense lawyer who defends people against unfair criminal charges. “I am not an ethicist,” he said.

The New Yorker asked Giuliani whether he feared his legacy would be speaking for Trump and not always being truthful about it. “Absolutely,” Giuliani said. “I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. ‘Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.’ Somehow, I don’t think that will be it. But, if it is, so what do I care? I’ll be dead. I figure I can explain it to St. Peter. He will be on my side.”

The Washington Post and the Huffington Post are among the publications reporting on the New Yorker interview.

Giuliani spoke with the New Yorker after telling NBC News and the New York Times on Sunday that Trump had been involved in discussions to build the Moscow tower project throughout the campaign. The Times quoted Giuliani as saying Trump told him the discussion continued through “the day I won.” Giuliani issued a statement later on Sunday saying his comments were hypothetical.

Questions about the timing of the Moscow projected followed a BuzzFeed article on Thursday that alleged Trump had directed his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about the timing of negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The article was based on information from anonymous sources.

According to the BuzzFeed allegations, Cohen acknowledged the directive to lie after the special counsel’s office already had gathered information about it from witness interviews, emails, text messages and a cache of other documents.

The special counsel’s office released a statement Friday evening that said the BuzzFeed report is not accurate. “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate,” the statement said.

The New Yorker asked Giuliani about the BuzzFeed story. “There are no tapes, there are no texts, there is no corroboration that the president told [Cohen] to lie,” Giuliani said. “That’s why the special counsel said that the story was inaccurate. First time the special counsel has ever done that. As a prosecutor, having done that for 15 years, that is quite a heavy rebuke of BuzzFeed. And the reality is that the president never talked to him and told him to lie.”

Giuliani said he knew the BuzzFeed story was inaccurate as soon as he read it “because I have been through all the tapes, I have been through all the texts, I have been through all the emails, and I knew none existed.”

“Wait, what tapes have you gone through?” the New Yorker asked.

Giuliani said he has listened to tapes, “but none of them concern this.”