CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Tuesday showed off a letter that directly contradicts a claim made over the weekend by Rudy Giuliani, attorney for President Donald Trump.
Giuliani was asked on Sunday about a proposed Trump Tower under negotiation in Moscow prior to the 2016 presidential campaign.
“It was a real estate project,” Giuliani said. “There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed it.”
However, the 2015 letter Cuomo held up had the president’s famous bold signature:
Trump has insisted he would have been allowed to pursue such a deal.
“There would be nothing wrong if I did do it,” the president said last month. “I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities?”
However, Trump and his camp have given seemingly conflicting statements about the project, including Giuliani’s denial that Trump signed a letter of intent.
“Here’s what’s going on: This doesn’t matter legally, and that’s the point,” Cuomo said. “They’re not preparing for trial. Don’t examine it that way. They’re preparing for a PR campaign to convince you of what they want you to believe.”
Giuliani, in an interview with The New York Daily News following Cuomo’s report, called the signed letter of intent “bullshit.”
“It means nothing but an expression of interest that means very little unless it goes to a contract, and it never did,” Giuliani said.
Trump’s legal team has submitted the nonbinding letter of intent to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team for review in the Russia investigation, Giuliani said.
“I don’t think I said nobody signed it,” Giuliani claimed ― the opposite of what he said on Sunday. “How could you send it but nobody signed it?”
Watch Cuomo’s full segment above.
This article has been updated to include Giuliani’s response.
Hayley Miller contributed reporting.