President Donald Trump altered a statement to the press about a Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, saying it was about “adoptions,” the Mueller report determined. But when pressed about the “lying” by Chris Cuomo on CNN, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani barked at him not to use the word “lie.”
“Would you please stop using the word ‘lie’ when you don’t know what you’re talking about?” Giuliani said.
Donald Trump Jr. attended the meeting with then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-law Jared Kushner during the presidential race. Trump Jr. later wrote a statement about the purpose of the meeting after The New York Times found out about it.
The president told former White House communications director Hope Hicks to say instead “only that Trump Jr. took a brief meeting and it was about Russian adoption,” according to the Mueller report. The statement dropped any mention of attempting to gather damaging information on Clinton.
Giuliani told Cuomo on Thursday: “It was about adoptions.”
“Oh please,” Cuomo protested.
Giuliani said: “That meeting was set up on a pretext … that they had dirt on Hillary Clinton. That’s why he had the meeting in his office. Not a crime, by the way.”
Cuomo responded: “It was wrong and it was boneheaded to do it.”
“It was wrong? Okay. Was it the best exercise in judgment? I don’t know,” conceded Giuliani
Check it out in the video above.