Back in January, Rudy Giuliani told reporters President Trump asked him to help craft a legal "Muslim ban," using, in fact, that very phrase to describe it. Giuliani claimed he assisted the President in creating an Executive Order barring travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. "Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible, and that’s what the ban is based on," Giuliani told Fox News at the time. Unfortunately for Rudy, a number of high-ranking federal courts have taken issue with that whole "perfectly legal" thing, and now Giuliani says he wasn't involved at all.
According to papers filed in Manhattan court this week, Giuliani claimed he had nothing to do with Trump's now-infamous travel ban. “I have not served on any Trump administration Commission ‘relating to the so-called Muslim Ban Executive Orders,’" he wrote, adding, "For clarity, I have not participated in writing any of the Executive Orders on that subject issued by the Trump Administration."
This claim contrasts rather sharply with a declaration Giuliani made on Fox News shortly after Trump's inauguration, in which he asserted that he did assist with an executive order banning immigration from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen for 90 days. That executive order was met with widespread censure and eventually blocked by several courts, but Rudy was quite proud of it before all that, telling the Fox News anchors:
I’ll tell you the whole history of it: When he first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally.' I put a commission together with Judge Mukasey, with Congressman McCaul, Pete King, a whole group of other very expert lawyers on this. And what we did was we focused on, instead of religion, danger. The areas of the world that create danger for us, which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible, and that’s what the ban is based on.
Here he is saying exactly that on recorded video at around 3:40:
That executive order was replaced by a new, very similar executive order in March, which has also been blocked by a number of courts. Giuliani's recorded broadcast has been cited as evidence that the Trump administration's travel ban was issued on the basis of religion, rendering it unconstitutional. Though Giuliani's affidavit this week pertained to an unrelated money laundering case, earlier this month a federal judge in Michigan demanded the Trump administration release a memo Giuliani allegedly wrote as an outline for the ban. The Justice Department declined that request.
