U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday confirmed a $130,000 hush money payoff to adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election about allegations of a decade-old affair with him, but said no campaign funds were involved.
Trump said he reimbursed his personal attorney, New York lawyer Michael Cohen, in monthly increments after the lawyer had made the payment to the porn star to keep her quiet about what she has claimed was a one-night affair with Trump in 2006 at a Nevada hotel, a few months after Trump’s wife had given birth to their son.
The president, in a string of Twitter comments, said the money paid to Cohen was “not from the campaign” and had “nothing to do with the campaign.”
Trump said the non-disclosure agreement reached with the 39-year-old Daniels was “very common among celebrities.”
One of Trump’s lawyers, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, first disclosed his reimbursements to Cohen Wednesday night in a wide-ranging interview with talk show host Sean Hannity on Fox News.
“I said, ‘That’s how he’s repaying it, with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes,'” said Giuliani.
He added that Trump “didn’t know about the specifics of [the payment], as far as I know, but he did know about the general arrangement that Michael would take care of things like this. Like I take care of things like this for my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along.”
On Thursday, in another interview on Fox, Giuliani said the payment to quiet Daniels came at a sensitive time in Trump’s campaign, just before the November 8, 2016 election against his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the, you know, last debate with Hillary Clinton,” Giuliani told the “Fox & Friends” show. “Cohen didn’t even ask. Cohen made it go away. He did his job.”
Contradictory statements
Trump’s confirmation of the reimbursement to Cohen directly contradicts earlier comments he has made about the payments.
A month ago, in an interview on Air Force One, Trump said “no,”when he was asked if he knew about the payment Cohen had made to Daniels and said he did not know why Cohen had made the payment.
“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” Trump said. “Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael.”
Asked if he knew where the money came from, Trump said, “No, I don’t know.”
Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders deflected a question Thursday about the “disconnect between what the president said aboard Air Force One” and Giuliani’s disclosure of the payments to Cohen.
“I think it’s fair to say that there’s ongoing litigation and the president’s attorneys who have the greatest amount of visibility into this have spoken about this, both at length last night, again this morning, the president’s put out multiple tweets on this this morning,” Sanders said. “I don’t have anything else to add.”
After Giuliani’s disclosure of the payment, Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said that Americans “should be outraged.”
“We predicted months ago that it would be proven that the American people had been lied to as to the $130,000 payment and what Mr. Trump knew, when he knew it and what he did in connection with it,” Avenatti wrote on Twitter.
Cohen has said he took out a personal loan to make the payment through a corporation he created.
Campaign funds
The issue of whether the funds ultimately came from Trump or through the campaign is perhaps a distinction of note under U.S. law. The $130,000 payment far exceeds the allowable size of personal campaign donations that Cohen could have made, although Trump could make sizable donations to his own campaign. Daniels-related expenses have not been reported as campaign donations.
With his Thursday statements, Trump is saying the money was paid as part of a private agreement irrespective of the campaign.
Subsequent to Cohen’s first acknowledgement of the payment to Daniels, federal agents raided his New York office and home as part of a criminal investigation into his business affairs and searching for information about Trump’s dealings with the lawyer.
Trump has assailed the raid, an offshoot of the year-long investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller of Trump campaign links to Russia and accusations that Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.
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