OPINION

Jonathan Wilson | Iowa View contributor

What is “truth?” The president’s personal “lawyer,” Rudy Giuliani has put the question on the table for public consumption and debate when he infamously said, “Truth isn’t truth.”

As silly as that statement sounds in isolation, the legitimate point he was doubtless wanting to make (and made more artfully in his subsequent walk-back from the original statement), was that the truth can be hard to know with certainty in a proverbial he-said-she-said situation. He was making that point in reference to the differing version of events surrounding the one-on-one exchange between Trump and then-Director of the FBI, James Comey.

Comey claims the president asked him to give fired National Security Advisor Michael Flynn a break in the pending criminal investigation against him. Trump claims otherwise. Giuliani, despite previously admitting Comey’s account of the exchange, now wants the world to believe that the exchange was a classic case of he-said-she-said — and didn’t happen — and in such situations it’s impossible to know what actually happened. It’s one person’s word against another’s, and there you have it — end of discussion. End of inquiry.

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If that really were the end of the matter, we could just do away with our judicial system for getting at the truth in any he-said-she-said situation. Accusation, denial, next case.

Over the course of many years practicing law, I’ve seen countless cases of he-said-she-said. It is inevitable that our memories of mutually witnessed events fade with the passage of time. It’s equally inevitable that our memories always fade in our favor. Often folks show up in court telling different accounts of a single event, each telling what they recall to be the truth, convinced that the other party is lying.

I don’t suppose that Trump appreciates the fact that this happens all the time and we have established, common-sense ways to resolve such differences and determine the truth of what actually happened despite the differing accounts. Trump may not, but Giuliani, as a lawyer, would be disingenuous to claim he doesn’t understand this.

One thing used by fact-finders is to consider any contemporaneous records that either party to the event may have created. Such records are considered because they offer a protection against fading memories. They are considered so reliable that they are an exception to the rule against reliance upon hearsay evidence. Once something is established as a contemporaneous record, it becomes a “second witness,” and the situation is no longer one-against-one; it becomes two against one.

Anyone following this saga is aware that, immediately after his various interactions with the president-elect and president, Comey created a contemporaneous record of what transpired. Comey, a lawyer and consummate, disciplined professional, knew that to be the way things should be done. It had been his standard operating procedure during his entire career. Trump was just the opposite. He disdains reading, let alone writing anything down. The last thing Trump wants is a hard and fast, documented account of what he does and says behind closed doors.

Add to that the relative reputations for truthfulness between two parties giving conflicting accounts of a single event, and any regular citizen (or juror) will be getting close to figuring out the truth. The actual truth and not just one party’s distorted perception of it.

Giuliani doesn’t want Trump talking to special counsel Robert Mueller about Russian collusion or obstruction of justice. He knows that Trump can lie to the public (as Giuliani himself has done repeatedly) and get by with it. Lying to a special counsel is a different matter — that’s a felony, the statute of limitations on which will not expire until after Trump’s term in office has expired.

Truth? We do need to get down to it. The Bible says that the truth will set you free. In the situation of talking to Mueller, the truth could get you locked up.

Jonathan Wilson is an attorney practicing in Des Moines.