Now you hear me, now you don't

Rudy Giuliani keeps talking about a "perjury trap."  So let's start with the federal statute defining "perjury":

Whoever—

(1) having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true; or

(2) in any declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code, willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe to be true;

is guilty of perjury and shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by law, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. This section is applicable whether the statement or subscription is made within or without the United States.

Now the purpose of testimony under oath is to enforce a punishment for not telling the truth.  Usually this is done by impeaching the witness:  a witness who is proven to lie under oath is a pretty useless witness, and their testimony can be so tainted the jury can turn against them, or ignore whatever they say.  Let's say, for example, Paris Dennard was under oath when he said this today.  The subject under discussion is Trump's statement after Charlottesville that there were "very fine people on both sides:"

“Well, I think we should be accurate,” Dennard said. “He was not at Trump Tower. He did not — that wasn’t the full statement. I think we should read the full statement. As I interpreted what he said, he was talking about the violence on both — on many sides.”

“That’s not what he said,” Setmayer replied. “We’re still debating this? There’s still a question that there are ‘fine people on both sides?'”

“The president was referring to the fact that there was violence on both sides,” Dennard claimed.

“He said ‘very fine people on both sides,'” she shot back.

“Let’s be accurate. Go back and read exactly what he said,” Dennard instructed.

Now, as your memory and the video show (at the link), Trump says what everyone remembers him saying, except Paris Dennard.  If, as I said, Mr. Dennnard was under oath when he said this, would that be a "perjury trap"?  Well, how would you prove he knew it to be false but said it anyway?  You could impeach him, prove he is an unreliable witness and his statements are not to be trusted; you might even bring a civil action against him for misrepresentation.  But perjury?  I don't know a prosecutor who would bother.

So what is a "perjury trap"?  Oddly enough, it would probably look very much like this:

GIULIANI: Comey’s testimony is hardly worth anything. And nor did he ever — James Comey never found any evidence of collusion. And [he] rules out obstruction by saying the President had a right to fire me. So all the rest of it is just politics. I mean, the reality is Comey, in some ways, ends up being a good witness for us, unless you assume they’re trying to get him into a perjury trap by, he tells his version, somebody else has a different version.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How is he a good witness for the President if he’s saying that the President was asking him — directing him, in his words — to let the Michael Flynn investigation go?

GIULIANI: He didn’t direct him to do that. What he said to him was “Can you give him a break?”

STEPHANOPOULOS: Comey says he took it as direction.

GIULIANI: Well that’s OK. I mean, taking it that way — I mean by that time, he had been fired. And he said a lot of other things, some of which have turned out to be untrue. The reality is, as a prosecutor, I was told that many times. Can you give the man a break, either by his lawyers, by his relatives, by friends. You take that into consideration but, you know, that doesn’t determine not going forward with it.

That was Giuliani last month.  This was Giuliani yesterday:

“There was no conversation about Michael Flynn,” Giuliani said at the start of the interview Sunday. He added, referring to Comey’s claim that Trump had confronted him about Flynn: “We maintain the President didn’t say that.”

When Tapper specifically brought up Giuliani’s comments to ABC News, Giuliani protested: “I never told ABC that. That’s crazy. I’ve never said that. What I said was, ‘That is what Comey is saying Trump said.’”

This is practically a master class in what a perjury trap is, according to Giuliani. He's given his statement, only to find out the interrogator has a statement contradictory to Giuliani's. Except, of course, both statements are by Giuliani. How could he have avoided this "trap"? How, indeed.

Confronted with the clip of the earlier interview, Giuliani asked a reasonable question:  who are ya gonna believe: me, or me?

“I said it, but I also said before that I’m talking about their version of it,” Giuliani said after seeing the video. “Look, lawyers argue in the alternative. I know it’s complicated, but my goodness, we’ve been over it long enough that — I mean, why would I say something that isn’t true.”

“The President didn’t say to him, ‘Go easy on Flynn,’ or anything about Flynn.”

Which is enough to make everyone old enough to have heard it the first time proclaim: "Bill Clinton, all is forgiven for what the meaning of 'is' is."

Yeah, Giuliani is now that bad.