“My comments did not represent the actual timing or circumstances of any such discussions," said Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images Legal Giuliani walks back statements on Trump Tower Moscow talks

Rudy Giuliani on Monday walked back statements he made this weekend concerning potential conversations between then-candidate Donald Trump and Michael Cohen about plans to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Giuliani, the former New York mayor and current attorney for the president, said during an interview Sunday on NBC that discussions between Trump and his ex-fixer regarding the project may have lasted up until Election Day.


“It's our understanding that they went on throughout 2016,” Giuliani said, adding that “there weren't a lot of them, but there were conversations. Can't be sure of the exact dates, but the president can remember having conversations with him about it."

Giuliani sought to retract those remarks in a statement to reporters Monday.

“My recent statements about discussions during the 2016 campaign between Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump about a potential Trump Moscow ‘project’ were hypothetical and not based on conversations I had with the President,” Giuliani said.

“My comments did not represent the actual timing or circumstances of any such discussions. The point is that the proposal was in the earliest stage and did not advance beyond a free non-binding letter of intent.”

The discussion of the timeline of Trump's proposed project feeds into the concerns of political opponents who fear that the president was, and might still be, too close to Russia and President Vladimir Putin.

On Sunday, Giuliani extensively discussed the Trump Tower situation on “Meet the Press.” When host Chuck Todd asked him to confirm that the conversations had gone on “throughout 2016,” Giuliani replied: “Yeah. Probably up to, could be up to as far as October, November. Our answers cover until the election. So anytime during that period they could have talked about it, but the president's recollection of it is the thing had petered out quite a bit.“

Longtime Trump lawyer Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison for tax and fraud charges, and for a pair of campaign finance violations stemming from hush money that prosecutors in the Southern District of New York allege Trump directed his former fixer to pay to a porn star and the National Enquirer tabloid.

Cohen was also sentenced, in part, for lying to Congress about communications related to the potential Russian real estate deal. He told lawmakers in closed-door testimony that negotiations relative to the deal ended in January 2016, but later stated in his guilty plea that discussions continued into June of that year.