Analysts, lawyers, and campaign finance experts are dissecting Rudy Giuliani's bombshell on Wednesday night's Hannity that his newest client, President Trump, paid back his lawyer Michael Cohen for Cohen's $130,000 pre-election hush agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels. But Giuliani also had a potentially problematic new explanation for why Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last year, when Comey was overseeing the investigation into Russian election meddling and possible Trump campaign collusion.
"He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn't a target in the investigation," Giuliani told Sean Hannity. "He's entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that, and he couldn't get that. ... So he fired him, and he said, 'I'm free of this guy.'" Officially, Trump fired Comey because of how he handled the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server, and Giuliani appears to be referencing Comey's statement clearing Clinton at the end of the FBI investigation. (The Trump-Russia investigation is still ongoing, now headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.) Trump quickly told NBC's Lester Holt that he'd fired Comey because of the Russia investigation, and days later he told Russia's top diplomats behind closed doors in the Oval Office that Comey was a "real nut job" and firing him removed "great pressure because of Russia."
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