Rudy Giuliani screws up Donald Trump’s statement after Paul Manafort agrees to cooperate with Robert Mueller

| 6:35 pm EDT September 14, 2018
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Paul Manafort just pleaded guilty and formally agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the Trump-Russia investigation. This a devastating development for Donald Trump, and it was almost difficult to see how this could possibly get any worse for him. Then his attorney Rudy Giuliani stepped to the plate and made it even worse for Trump.

Rudy Giuliani released this official statement to the media on behalf of Donald Trump’s legal team, which was posted by CNBC and others: “The President did nothing wrong and Paul Manafort will tell the truth.” Then just a few minutes later, Giuliani released this revised statement: “The President did nothing wrong.” So Rudy has blown it yet again. This gaffe reveals that he and Trump can’t get their act together about whether they want to put on a brave face about the Manafort deal, or begin trying to undermine Manafort as a cooperating witness. But this is more than just embarrassing, as there may be legal implications.

Team Trump just made an official statement that they believe Paul Manafort’s testimony will be truthful. Even though they sorta kinda ended up retracting the statement, there’s really no taking it back. If it becomes necessary, we could potentially see prosecutors use Donald Trump’s endorsement of Manafort as a witness in order to validate Manafort’s eventual testimony against Trump.

As has tended to be the case with other recent developments, the Paul Manafort cooperation deal is already terrible news for Donald Trump – and Rudy Giuliani’s bungling of the situation serves to add insult to injury. In this instance it may end up adding injury to injury. Yet Trump continues to allow himself to be represented by a guy who’s arguably even more mentally vacant than he is.