Speaking of "advice of counsel"

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, except where nobody gets killed or robbed.” https://t.co/H5W6gDGTIq

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) December 14, 2018

Trump's defense is a novel theory that, if a lawyer says it's okay, it can't be a crime to follow that advice.  But it wasn't a crime because it wasn't a campaign contribution and besides, he was following legal advice, so "King's 'X'"!  Except somebody forgot to tell his new lawyer:

Trump insists he is innocent of any related crimes because he never explicitly asked for Cohen or AMI to violate campaign finance law by sitting on stories of his extra-marital affairs. And the president’s current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, contends that the scandal is overblown entirely.

“Nobody got killed, nobody got robbed… This was not a big crime,” Giuliani told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. He added, sardonically, “I think in two weeks they’ll start with parking tickets that haven’t been paid.”

It's a crime, says Rudy, but "This was not a big crime."  See?  Only "big crimes" matter.  I'm sure Rudy heard that defense against white collar crime many times when he was a prosecutor.  Trump says there was no crime; his lawyer says it was a crime, but a small one. "Advice of counsel" as a defense is getting weaker and weaker.

And then he realizes his error:

CORRECTION: I didn’t say payments were not a big crime. I have said consistently that the Daniels and McDougall payments are not crimes and tweeted a great article yesterday making that point . If it isn’t a witch-hunt why are they pursuing a non-crime.

— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) December 14, 2018

Of course now we're back to "deep state conspiracy," but that sounds so nuts even Giuliani prefers "witch hunt!"  Because if these are non-crimes, why did Cohen plead guilty and get a judge to accept it?  Non-crimes don't generally end up with three-year prison terms approved by a trial judge.  But at least he's not undermining the President's non-legal argument, so that's something.