President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani compared Michael Cohen to some of history's most notorious traitors in a chaotic series of television interviews Monday.

Giuliani called Cohen 'Bendict Arnold', 'Iago' and 'Brutus' as well as a 'scumbag' as he ricocheted between Fox News and CNN, appearing on air on the latter for 32 minutes as he spoke about the Robert Mueller investigation.

He revealed that key players from the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 also attended another meeting days before - but claimed it was on an unrelated subject and the president wasn't there.

He revealed the meeting in morning TV interviews on Fox and Friends and CNN – then later called in to Fox News's Outnumbered show to try to clean up any misconceptions about it.

The former New York mayor said he put out information himself to try to head off media reports that gave the wrong impression - although none yet exist - and which were based on a version of events which he alleged is being peddled by Michael Cohen.

He said on CNN that the meeting occurred two days before the June 9 Trump Tower meeting that included a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties.

But he said the meeting wasn't to plan for the Russia meeting, as he said longtime Trump lawyer Cohen was alleging in what he said were calls to reporters.

'The guy is unethical, he’s a scumbag, he’s a horrible person,' Giuliani said on CNN.

Giuliani launched a personal attack at Cohen as a traitor on the CNN interview when it was put to him that he had previously called Cohen an 'honest man'.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani rattled off the names of several attendees at a Trump campaign meeting that he said was not about the same subject as a June 9 Trump Tower meeting with Russians

Claims: Rudy Giuliani claims that Michael Cohen has called reporters to tell them there was a preparatory meeting at Trump Tower for the meeting with the Russian offering Hillary Clinton dirt. But the president's lawyer says the meeting was not preparatory but on a different topic

He said that at the time he had no idea Cohen had tapes of his business dealings with the president - although Giuliani says only one, already released, features the president's voice - and therefore thought he was 'honorable'.

'What the hell are you picking on me for saying he was an honest, honorable man when I didn’t know he had recorded a conversation with his client?' Giuliani said on CNN.

'He was shaking people down for money, he was lying about what was on a tape and manipulating, doctoring tapes?

'I didn’t know any of that. George Washington didn’t know Benedict Arnold was a traitor.'

Challenged by New Day host Alisyn Camerota on whether that showed flawed judgment on the president's part, Giuliani compared Cohen to other traitors in Shakespeare.

'He turned out to have a close friend betray him, like Iago betrayed Othello, like Brutus put the last knife into Caesar. It happens in life,' he said.

However it may be the revelation of the meeting which is the most significant element of Giuliani's lengthy television appearances.

After disclosing the high-level meeting's existence he named the participants as Paul Manafort, then campaign manager, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Rick Gates, then Manafort's deputy and now a co-operating witness for the Robert Mueller probe, and possibly as many as two other unnamed aides.

But he said the meeting was not on Russia.

'That's a real meeting on another provable subject in which he was not participating,' he told CNN's 'New Day.'

Giuliani also referenced Cohen and his lawyer, Lanny Davis, as he discussed the other Trump campaign meeting, creating confusion about what he actually meant.

'Then you get to the other meeting he says he was at that the president wasn't at - it's three or four on one … Lanny Davis has added that there was a meeting two days before the meeting took place,' Giuliani said.

He also appeared to confirm the meeting happened when he said: 'And this meeting that Cohen's talking about took place before the meeting with the Russians.'

But in a later phone-in to Fox News, after speaking to Fox hours earlier, Giuliani said there was no meeting which was specifically about Russia.

'We deny that happened. We say it didn't happen,' the former prosecutor said.

He said the second meeting was brought to his attention by Trump lawyer Jay Sekolow and that two reporters were working on a story about it.

He said of the alleged participants, 'Every one of those people say that it didn't happen.'

'I thought it was going to come out,' Giuliani said, explaining his reason for talking about it.

The head-spinning commentary about a Trump Tower meeting that happened as well as two other meetings that he said didn't happen came on a day when Giuliani also said colluding with Russia may not even be a crime.

The comment raised a possible new legal defense even as he lowers the bar following a series of emphatic denials by Trump that there was no collusion.

Trump Tower meeting: Don Jr.'s now notorious encounter with a Russian at his father's eponymous New York office and home has become a central point in the controversy over the 2016 election campaign

Meeting: Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya famously got a meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort during the 2016 election season with a promise of producing dirt on his Hillary Clinton

He made the the statement in an interview with CNN where he argued that the hacking itself constituted the criminal act – and said that Trump did not pay Russia for its election hacking.

'Four months, they're not going to be colluding about Russians – which I don't even know if that's a crime, colluding about Russians,' Giuliani said.

'You start analyzing the crime, the hacking is the crime. The hacking is the crime,' he concluded. 'Well the president didn't hack. He didn't pay them for hacking,' Giuliani said.

Giuliani, who was minimizing former campaign chair Paul Manafort's role during four months as Trump campaign chair, then compared Trump's presidential campaign, which is being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller over Russia and its election hacking, to media outlets who might disseminate hacked information.

'If you got the hacked information from the Russians here at CNN and you played it, would you be in jeopardy of going to jail? Of course not,' Giuliani said.

Giuliani said colluding with Russia may not even be a crime – raising a possible new legal defense even as he lowers the bar following a series of emphatic denials by Trump that there was no collusion.

Giuliana also tried to explain this comment in his FOX call-in. 'So I said today that there was no collusion therefore – and that collusion also is no crime. I've been saying that from the very beginning,' he said.

'It's a very, very familiar lawyers argument that the alternative, my client didn't do it and even if he did it, it's not a crime. And I have said that over and over again – collusion is not a crime.'

'The only crime there is hacking and it's ridiculous to think that the president hacked. Now why do I say that? I say that to attack the legitimacy of the investigation,' Giuliani said.

He also called the claim that the president's son walked into his office and told him about the Russia meeting. 'That is categorically untrue. Did not happen – two witnesses demonstrate that,' Giuliani said. He didn't name them but he also referenced Don Jr.'s testimony to Congress.

Also present: Paul Manafort, whose trial on tax and bank fraud charges starts Tuesday, was at the meeting revealed by Giuliani and the encounter with the Russian

Probe: Robert Mueller is investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election but it is unclear if the meeting which was also attended by Jared Kushner is in his spotlight

On Fox, Trump said of the meeting before the meeting with Russians: 'We checked with their lawyers, the ones we could check with, which were four of the six. That meeting never-ever took place. It didn't happen.

'It's a figment of [Cohen's} imagination or he's lying. The only meeting they found for that day that included any of these people is a meeting about the Hispanic judge that the president had criticized back around that time. So that hopefully sets the record straight.'

In this comment, Giuliani appears to be referring to judge Gonzalo Curiel. Trump was under fire during the campaign for saying the judge couldn't rule fairly because of his Hispanic heritage in a Trump University lawsuit. He ended up settling for $25 million.

Amid a flood of questions about whether this was a new defense, President Trump took questions from just two American and two Italian journalists at a press conference with the Italian prime minister and managed to avoid having to get into the topic.

The former New York mayor, a former federal prosecutor, made the statement in an interview with CNN where he argued that the hacking itself constituted the criminal act – and said that Trump did not pay Russia for its election hacking.

'Four months, they're not going to be colluding about Russians – which I don't even know if that's a crime, colluding about Russians,' Giuliani said.

You start analyzing the crime, the hacking is the crime. The hacking is the crime. Well the president didn't hack. He didn't pay them for hacking. Rudy Giuliani

'You start analyzing the crime, the hacking is the crime. The hacking is the crime,' he concluded. 'Well the president didn't hack. He didn't pay them for hacking,' Giuliani said.

Giuliani attacked the manhood of special counsel Robert Mueller Monday – the day after the president said Mueller had an ethical conflict because of their own 'nasty' relationship.

Giuliani took to the airwaves Monday morning to keep up the president's attacks on Mueller, who is heading the Russia probe, and faulted him for failing to publicly buttress Trump's position regarding a leaked recording of a tape between Trump and his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen discussing a payment involving a former Playboy playmate.

'When you're getting beaten up by all kinds of anonymous tweets coming from (Cohen lawyer) Lanny Davis and Cohen, and you put out something like that, you have every right to say you explain it, Mueller, stand up and be a man,' Giuliani told CNN's 'New Day.'

Host Camerota asked why it was up to Mueller to support the president's tweet.

'Because he has the conflict, not the president,' said Giuliani.

Giuliani also taunted Mueller in an interview with Axios published Monday.

'Why don't you write a report and show us what you have, because they don't have a goddamn thing,' Giuliani said. 'It's like a guy playing poker. He's bluffing and he's only got a pair of twos,' Giuliani added.

'Enough is enough,' Giuliani vented. But he claimed Trump still has a 'soft spot' for Michael Cohen, who Giuliani has been branding as a liar amid signals he may cooperate with Mueller.

Giuliani wouldn't disclose the Mueller business dispute with Trump, but may have referenced a spat over golf fees

Trump claims Mueller has multiple conflicts of interest

Trump is seen with former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal over a decade ago. In the secret recording Trump and Cohen discussed a payment to quash her affair allegations

'The president has always had a soft spot for Cohen. He almost still does. Even now with his betrayal by taping him he still is worried about him because he believes he's only hurting himself,' Giuliani said.

In the CNN interview, Giuliani referenced a conflict so severe that if it were him, 'it's one that would have kept me out of the investigation.' But he wouldn't divulge more. 'I can't tell you,' he siad.

He appeared to be referencing a dispute over golf fees at Trump's Virginia golf club that was reported in the New York Times.

'Maybe it explains why he hired 13 Democrats,' Giuliani said, referencing Trump's repeated claim that Mueller stacked his team with 'angry' Democrats, although FBI regulations would have precluded the Republican Mueller from using party affiliation to select his team.

Trump fumed about what he claimed were conflicts of interest on Twitter Sunday.

'Is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship, I turned him down to head the FBI (one day before appointment as S.C.) & Comey is his close friend...' Trump wrote in a three-tweet rant on the investigation on Sunday.

Trump, according to The Times, in the past complained to staff about what he called a conflict because the two men had a bad business deal over fees at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., which led to Mueller, who was FBI director at the time, to resign his membership there.

Trump also argued Mueller could not be impartial in the probe because he worked for a law firm that had represented Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Giuliani also said it 'sounds suspicious' that only one of 183 Cohen recordings obtained from FBI raids on his home and office has Trump on it.

'We have 183 unique tape recordings. Only 1 with the president of the united States,' Giuliani said. 'Sounds suspicious, doesn't it?' he added.