On Sunday, Rudy Giuliani said talks for a Trump Tower project in Moscow were held as late as October or November 2016. On Monday, he distanced himself from those comments, saying President Trump doesn't recall whether discussions went on through the election.
On Meet the Press Sunday, Giuliani, one of Trump's lawyers, said the president remembered the talks maybe lasting "up to as far as October, November [2016]." That story shifted on Monday, when he told CNN that because no records were kept of the discussions, no one knows when they ended. Trump, he added, saw the project as a "minor matter." Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was in charge of the Moscow project, and in November, he pleaded guilty to lying about how long he was in negotiations over the deal; he originally said discussions ended in January 2016, but later said they went through June 2016.
Giuliani also released a statement on Monday saying that when he made his comments on Sunday, he was just speculating based on a hypothetical situation, and his remarks were "not based on conversations I had with the president. My comments did not represent the actual timing or circumstances of any such discussions. The point is that the proposal was in the earliest stage and did not advance beyond a free non-binding letter of intent."
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