Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
As probe closes in, Trump distances himself from Cohen
Abandoned by two of his most powerful protectors, President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that he did not violate campaign finance laws and that the liability for hushmoney payments to two women alleging affairs with him rests with his former fixer, Michael Cohen.
Both Cohen and American Media Inc., the company that owns the National Enquirer tabloid, now say they made hush-money payments to a porn actress and a Playboy Playmate for the purpose of helping Trump’s 2016 White House bid, a campaign finance violation. Trump, in recent months, has gone from denying knowledge of any payments to saying they would have been private transactions that weren’t illegal. He offered yet another explanation Thursday.
“I never directed him to do anything wrong,” Trump said of Cohen in an interview with Fox News. “Whatever he did, he did on his own.”
Federal prosecutors say the payments were made at Trump’s direction. The president, reiterating his claim that he is victim of an overzealous investigation, also argued that any payments were unrelated to his presidential campaign and thus not a violation of federal law.
“Nobody except for me would be looked at like this,” Trump said.
Trump tweeted earlier Thursday that Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges “in order to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence.” The president claimed the charges were “unrelated to me.”
“In retrospect, I made a mistake” in hiring Cohen, Trump told Fox News. “I hire usually good people.”
Although prosecutors have implicated Trump in a crime, they haven’t directly accused him of one, and it’s not clear that they could bring charges against a sitting president even if they want to because of Justice Department protocol.
Nonetheless, Trump’s changing explanations have clouded the public understanding of what occurred and are running head-on into facts agreed to by prosecutors, AMI and Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other crimes and was sentenced on Wednesday .
“You now have a second defendant or group of defendants saying that these payments were made for the primary purpose of influencing the election, and that it was done in coordination with Trump and his campaign,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.
Trump’s first explanation of the payment that would eventually help lead Cohen to a three-year prison sentence came at 35,000 feet (10,700 meters) over West Virginia.
Returning to Washington on Air Force One on April 6, Trump for the first time answered questions about the reports of $130,000 in hush-money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels, issuing a blanket denial to reporters while saying they would “have to ask Michael Cohen.”
Three days later, the FBI raided Cohen’s office, seizing records on topics including the payment to Daniels. Furious, Trump called the raid a “disgrace” and said the FBI “broke into” his lawyer’s office. He also tweeted that “Attorneyclient privilege is dead!”
The raid was overseen by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and arose from a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian election interference and potential coordination with the Trump campaign. In May, Trump and his attorneys began saying Cohen received a monthly retainer from which he made payments for nondisclosure agreements like the one with Daniels. In a series of tweets, Trump said that those agreements are “very common among celebrities and people of wealth” and that “this was a private agreement.”