Transcript for Christie reacts to Trump’s legal team shuffle
A lot to talk about with Dan Abrams and Chris Christie. Federal prosecutor before serving as governor of new Jersey and, Chris, let me begin with you. Rudy Giuliani asked about the dossier. He responds talking about stormy Daniels but this is strategy. There is ran old saying hang aylan tern on your problems. He knows there’s been different stories told about this payment and how it was made — Not just different stories. The president said he knew nothing about it. Those are different stories. Rudy has to clean it up. That’s what lawyers are hired to do. He puts it out rather than having some reporter give breaking news that the president reimbursed it so it’s a typical — it’s a typical thing to do and it wasn’t surprising at all. Also shows you that they know Mueller knows this. They know in particular after the raid of Michael Cohen that Mueller knows exactly what happened with that payment. They also know that Mueller knows why Donald Trump fired James Comey. They talked to a lot of people who are there at the time and I think at this point they’re saying let’s get this out there so when it comes out later just as Chris says where it’s not going to be a surprise or news, let’s just put as much out there as possible. Meantime, the president and Rudy Giuliani saying there’s no campaign finance violation, not necessarily. Yeah, but, George, I’ve always thought that was a weak case no matter which it race of the story you were going on. Bob Mueller is look at much bigger things. When you look at the questions he put out it backs up what we said, you can’t let this guy be interviewed. You cannot let the president be interviewed. You look at the list and without follow-ups that’s 10, 12 hours of questioning there. You don’t want to expose your client to that. The challenge of campaign finance violations is you can you prove it was done for the purpose of influencing the campaign as opposed to protecting him from Melania. Right? Finding out — That’s the big question. By the way he’s still denying he even had an affair so sort of shocking we’re seeing in the tweets he’s still denying the affair. Yet he’s admitting he repaid Michael Cohen now for the amount through Rudy Giuliani. Right. So to some degree the entire story makes even less sense. The problem is that the motivation for it, whatever it was is all subjective. You’re not going to see a memo, an e-mail from Donald Trump saying, I’m worried this will hurt my campaign so pay her the money. Okay, it’s a subjective thing and it’s just as easy for people to believe that he didn’t want his wife to know if there was some affair. One thing that’s not subjective is Donald Trump did not report it on his financial disclosure, another vulnerability. If it’s determined to be a loan. You don’t know that’s what it would be. What we’re also seeing and Jon Karl brought it up, you got emmet flood in there, you’ve got Rudy Giuliani in there. Going to your point, this is clear now that Donald Trump does not want to talk to Robert Mueller. I think it goes beyond that. I think he wants to go after Robert Mueller, right? He wants a legal team who are going to be his spokespeople, not just who aren’t going to necessarily cooperate but who are willing to attack and undermine Robert Mueller. Because up to now that has not been the position of his attorneys. George, listen, I’ve been saying for months that he had a below grade legal team and that everything that was going on including waiving of certain privilege, not only on the president’s behalf but on behalf of people who worked in the white house was an awful strategic dig and now what he’s got in Giuliani and in emmet flood are two very experienced warriors, flood having been through it with the Clinton situation and Rudy Giuliani having been through enough wars himself to know how to fight them. A lot more to come. Thank you. Michael.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
