Fact Checker: Unraveling Rudy Giuliani’s talking points on the Mueller report
By Glenn Kessler Glenn Kessler The Fact Checker Email Bio Follow April 23 at 3:00 AM “Any candidate in the whole world in America would take information, negative … Who says it’s even illegal? Who says it’s even illegal? … There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians. … And there were people on Hillary’s campaign that were talking to Ukrainians.”
Reminder: The Trump campaign’s initial statement about Russian contacts, via then-spokeswoman Hope Hicks, was a flat denial after a Russian government official was quoted as saying the Russians had contact with members of Trump’s entourage before the election: “It never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.
Mueller considered whether to bring charges of conspiracy to violate laws prohibiting foreign contributions, especially because emails made it clear to the participants that the meeting concerned information from Russian sources. The report noted a number of court rulings and Federal Election Commission regulations that had determined that polling data and membership lists were things of value.
Giuliani noted that the Trump Tower meeting took place on June 8, before it was publicly known that Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee. So he argues that communication from Russia would not have raised any alarm bells among Trump campaign staff. Other experienced political operatives have said that any offer of help from a foreign government should have raised red flags.
Indeed, the report also strongly suggests that Trump himself was worried that he had committed a crime. The report said that the president’s conduct, apparently aiming at undermining the Mueller investigation, reflected “potential uncertainty about whether certain events — such as advance notice of WikiLeaks’ release of hacked information or the June 9, 2016, meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians — could be seen as criminal activity by the President, his campaign, or his family.
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