Rudy Giuliani’s latest Fox News interview had CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin stunned into laughter on Thursday.
Toobin appeared on the network to weigh in on the many bombshells Giuliani, former New York City mayor, dropped during his Wednesday night interview with Sean Hannity and his subsequent follow-up chat with “Fox & Friends” on Thursday morning.
During his interview with Hannity, Giuliani said President Donald Trump had reimbursed his lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment he’d made to porn star Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, just before the 2016 election. Daniels says she had an affair with Trump and was paid for her silence.
Giuliani told Hannity the transaction was “perfectly legal,” and that “that money was not campaign money” and thus not a campaign finance violation. Trump supported that argument in a series of tweets on Thursday, stating that “Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction.”
Giuliani elaborated on the payment in a subsequent interview on “Fox & Friends,” saying: “Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton. Cohen didn’t even ask [if he should pay Daniels]. He made it go away. He did his job.”
After a clip of Guiliani’s statement on “Fox & Friends” was replayed, Toobin looked stunned and laughed.
“I hadn’t heard that clip before,” he said. “I mean, that’s a confession! That’s a confession this is a campaign finance violation because they wanted to shut her up in October of 2016.”
The legal analyst said it sounded as though Guiliani was engaging in “mindless riffing” during his recent interviews on Fox News.
“I mean, so that’s why the payment was made then,” Toobin continued. “It was obvious to all of us, but now you have the president’s lawyer confessing that this was a payment for the benefit of the campaign, which had to be reported.”
Check out Toobin’s comments in the video above.