U.S. President Donald Trump says he, not his campaign, paid hush money through his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in 2016 just days prior to his election — but asserts he did not know it at the time.
“Later on, I knew,” Trump has told Fox News Channel.
Part of the interview was released by Fox on Wednesday afternoon. In the clip, the president insists campaign funds were not used for the payments to two women who claimed they had affairs with Trump.
“That could be a little dicey,” said Trump of the use of campaign funds and then insisted, however, “it’s not even a campaign violation.”
Cohen told a federal judge on Tuesday in New York City that he made the payments to two women “for the principal purpose of influencing the election” of Trump and that the presidential candidate ordered him to do so.
Legal filings released allege Trump’s real estate company authorized paying $420,000 to Cohen for the effort to silence two women who claimed they had affairs with the Republican candidate. Bogus invoices that allegedly concealed the nature of the payments could further focus direct prosecutorial scrutiny on both Trump’s company and his campaign.
Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, in a series of media interviews Wednesday, indicated his client would cooperate with the investigation by former FBI director Robert Mueller and could implicate Trump in other wrongdoing.
Cohen’s plea did not include an agreement to cooperate with prosecutors, but Davis, on Twitter, said he “would tell the truth about Donald Trump.”
Trump also is publicly downplaying the significance of Cohen and his former campaign manager becoming felons.
In a series of Wednesday morning tweets, Trump again assailed his own Justice Department for carrying out a “witch hunt” and praised Paul Manafort, who the president said refused to break and make up stories to get a deal as did Cohen.
Manafort, who ran Trump’s 2016 election campaign for three pivotal months, is likely to be sentenced to years, if not decades, of prison time after his conviction on eight fraud charges. Manafort also faces a second trial on a different set of charges next month in Washington.
Trump noted that 10 of the 18 charges could not be decided in Manafort’s case, for which the judge yesterday in Alexandria, Virginia, declared a mistrial. But veteran federal prosecutors say the eight convictions for financial crimes validate the special counsel established to investigate ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Many legal and political observers expect Trump to eventually pardon Manafort, whose case was the first to be brought to trial by Mueller, whose team repeatedly has been heavily criticized by the president.
“Fake news and the Russian witch hunt,” said the president on stage at a political rally Tuesday night in the state of West Virginia. “Where is the collusion?”
Besides Cohen, three other men who worked for Trump also have pleaded guilty to crimes: former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates and a campaign foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos.
The growing legal storm buffeting the unconventional president is increasing speculation that opposition Democrats will commence impeachment proceedings should they capture a majority in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections less than three months away.
White House press officials, prior to a Wednesday afternoon briefing, did not comment on Tuesday’s federal courtroom developments, referring reporters to Trump’s own comments on Twitter about Manafort and Cohen.
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