Trump denies campaign funds were used to pay off porn actor
● President says his lawyer paid for deal out of his monthly retainer
President Donald Trump says reimbursement to his personal lawyer for money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels was done through a monthly retainer and “had nothing to do with the campaign”.
On Twitter, Mr Trump says his personal lawyer Michael Cohen received a monthlyre ta in er“from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as anon-disclosure agreement, or NDA”.
He added that the agreement “was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair”. Mr Trump’s tweets came after Rudy Giuliani, one of his lawyers, said on Wednesday Mr Trump reimbursed Mr Cohen for $ 130,000 (£ 95,000) in hush money to Ms Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election.
That appeared to contradict the president’s past claims that he did not know the source of the money.
During an appearance on Fox News Channel’s Hannity, Mr Giuliani said t he money to repay Mr Cohen had been “funnelled ... through the law firm and the president repaid it”.
Asked if Mr Trump knew about the arrangement, Mr Giuliani said: “He didn’t know about the specifics of it, 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. These are busy people.”
The comments appeared to contradict statements made by Mr Trump weeks ago, when he said he didn’t know about the payment to Ms Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement she signed days before the presidential election.
Mr Giuliani later suggested to The Wall Street Journal that while Mr Trump had repaid the money, Mr Cohen settled the payment to Ms Daniels without his knowledge at the time.
MrGuil ian i’ s revelation seemed aimed at reducing the president’s legal exposure but experts said it raised a number of questions, such as whether the money represented repayment of an undisclosed loan or could be seen as reimbursement for a campaign expenditure.
Asked aboard Air Force One last month whether he knew about the payment, Trump said flatly: “No.” He also said he did not know why Mr Cohen made the payment or where he got the money.
In a phone interview with Fox and Friends last week, however, Mr Trump appeared to muddy the waters, saying Mr Cohen represented him in the “crazy Stormy Daniels deal”.
MrGiu li a ni, a former New York City mayor and ex-US attorney who joined Mr Trump’ s legal team last month, said the president had repaid Mr Cohen over several months.
That indicates the payments continued through at least the presidential transition, if not into his presidency. He also said the payment “is going to turn out to be perfectly legal” because “that money was not campaign money”.
There have been some people who have suggested Donald Trump may not be as rich as he appears. But all such talk should now end. For it has emerged that the US president personally paid a lawyer more than $ 460,000 for “incidental expenses” and other costs incurred on his behalf – without knowing what much of it was for.
Now, those of us who have not been as successful as the US president might have been mildly interested, but Trump didn’t get to where he is today by fussing about such trivial details. So he didn’t know the lawyer paid $ 130,000 to an ex- porn star, Stormy Daniels, as part of a deal to prevent her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump. And he didn’t know where the lawyer had got the money to pay her. How could he? After all, the reimbursement to the lawyer was made after the payment to Daniels. That lawyer, who decided entirely by himself to pay Daniels, must be fairly rich too.
Trump helpfully explained on Twitter that such non- disclosure agreements were “very common among celebrities and people of wealth”. Good to know.