Rudy Giuliani says he is '100% certain' Trump did not tell Cohen to lie to Congress

Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's lawyer, said Sunday that he is "100 percent certain" that the president did not tell his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress, in response to a BuzzFeed News report that made that allegation.

"I knew from the very beginning it wasn't true," the former New York City mayor said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" when asked about the BuzzFeed story that was published Thursday.

The BuzzFeed report cited two unnamed federal law enforcement officials who said Trump directed Cohen to lie during his congressional testimony about the efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Those efforts continued into the 2016 presidential campaign despite Trump's claims during the campaign that he had nothing to do with Russia. The report said there were documents and witnesses to support the allegation.

But special counsel Robert Mueller's office made a rare public statement denying the BuzzFeed report.

"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," said Peter Carr, the special counsel's spokesman.

"To their credit, the Justice Department and the special counsel's office said that the story was inaccurate," Giuliani said Sunday on "Meet the Press." "And the inaccuracy is that there's no evidence that the president told him to lie."

In an interview on CNN's State of the Union, Giuliani said BuzzFeed "should be sued" and "under investigation" for reporting that "the president of the United States counseled someone to lie," although he did not say what they should be investigated for. He also denounced the media "hysteria" that followed the report.

BuzzFeed has said they stand by their reporting despite the statement from Mueller's office.

"My sources are solid. This reporting is accurate," Anthony Cormier, the BuzzFeed reporter who wrote the story with Jason Leopold, said Sunday on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

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Giuliani said he could "categorically" say that Trump's "counsel to Michael Cohen throughout that entire period was, 'Tell the truth.' We thought he was telling the truth. I still believe he may have been telling the truth when he testified before Congress. But in any event, his lawyers thought that, our lawyers thought that, and the president thought that at the time."

When asked on "State of the Union" if he was admitting that Trump might have spoken to Cohen about his testimony, Giuliani said, "I don't know if it happened or didn't happen."

"And so what if he talked to him about it, if it's the truth?" Giuliani asked.

In December, when news broke that Cohen lied to Congress about the negotiations for the Trump Tower Moscow project, Giuliani said Trump told Mueller in his written answers to the special counsel that the talks might have continued all the way up until the 2016 election.

On Sunday, Giuliani added that Trump had conversations with Cohen about the "active proposal" on the projet "up to as far as October, November. Our answers cover until the election. So anytime during that period, they could've talked about it."

Giuliani said there "weren't a lot of them, but there were conversations. Can't be sure of the exact date. But the president can remember having conversations with him about it."

Although the president's attorney regularly attacks Cohen's credibility, Giuliani conceded on this issue that "Cohen would have a much better recollection of it than the president."

"It was much more important" to Cohen than Trump and it was Cohen's "sole mission" while Trump "was running for president of the United States," he explained. "So you’ve got to expect there's not going to be a great deal of concentration on a project that never went anywhere."

Giuliani also tried to clarify a statement he made last week on CNN in which he claimed that he "never said there was no collusion between the campaign" and Russia, despite numerous occasions where he and the president have said exactly that. In his previous statements, he meant there was no collusion "to my knowledge," he explained.

"So, if I'm saying there's no collusion on the campaign, of course, I don't know everyone on the campaign. To my knowledge, there's no collusion on the campaign," he said. "I probably didn't qualify it every time I said it."

When asked if he thought Trump has been "100 percent truthful" with him, Giuliani said, "Yes, absolutely."

"Probably since May I haven't learned any new facts except the few things that have come along," he said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rudy Giuliani says he is '100% certain' Trump did not tell Cohen to lie to Congress