CNN's Chris Cuomo explains what Trump gets wrong about 'perjury traps,' drags in Brett Kavanaugh

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/CNN)

published 21 August 2018

President Trump's lawyers really don't want Trump to sit down with Special Counsel Robert Mueller for an interview in Mueller's investigation of Russian election interference and possible collusion or obstruction of justice by Trump or members of his team. Specifically, lead lawyer Rudy Giuliani argues that Mueller is setting a "perjury trap" for Trump.

Trump made his own version of that argument on Monday. "So if I say something and [former FBI Director James Comey] says something, and it's my word against his, and he's best friends with Mueller, so Mueller might say: 'Well, I believe Comey,' and even if I'm telling the truth, that makes me a liar," he told Reuters. "That's no good." On CNN Monday night, Chris Cuomo explained why Trump and Giuliani are wrong.

"Perjury traps" are a form of entrapment where prosecutors bring you in just to get you to lie, with no legitimate fact-finding objectives, Cuomo said. That's not the case with Mueller. "Perjury is what they're really worried about," he said, and perjury — "a material representation of fact for the purposes of deception" — is a crime, meaning it must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Giuliani knows this, Cuomo said, but he's intentionally spinning a narrative where Trump is being victimized.

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To illustrate what the Trump team is afraid of, he showed the newly released memo that Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's Supreme Court pick, wrote in 1998 as part of the independent counsel's team prosecuting President Bill Clinton. The questions he wrote for Clinton are "salacious and disgusting" and "raunchy," but Kavanaugh also phrased them in a way would ensnare "someone like Trump," Cuomo said. "That's what his folks are worried about — not what will be done to Trump, but what he will do to himself when he's confronted by smarter people who are motivated to show that he has lied and falsely disparaged the special counsel." Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.