Rudy digs Donald deeper
Rudy Giuliani has just exploded Donald Trump’s flimsy lie about being unaware of an election-eve porn star payoff — and possibly implicated the President in a violation of federal campaign finance law. In the process, he disgustingly smeared the FBI as “stormtroopers.” This an agency Giuliani honorably used as a prosecutor and dishonorably claimed was feeding him anti-Clinton intel during the 2016 election. The stew is getting thicker, and smelling more rotten by the day.
For months now, the President’s line on the $130,000 in hush money paid to Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 election — sealed in a nondisclosure agreement between Daniels, her attorney, Cohen and Trump alias David Dennison, who never signed it — has been: I knew nothing; the affair and all related claims are lies.
“There was no knowledge of any payments from the President and he’s denied all of these allegations,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders from the White House podium.
When the question — “Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels” — was put straight to Trump on April 6, he answered: “No,” adding, “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen.”
Cohen had already said he paid the sum out of his own funds, and “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”
Got that? The payment to silence a porn star claiming an affair with the then-Republican nominee had nothing to do with the presidential campaign, and in any event, Trump knew zip about it.
Then the feds raided Cohen’s office, hotel room and home. Then Giuliani came on board the legal team. And admitted to Trump’s general knowledge of the payments, and that he reimbursed Cohen for all $130,000, through his personal funds.
“Funneled it through a law firm, and then the President repaid it,” Giuliani added, choosing a word usually reserved for financial activity known to be shady.
But don’t worry your pretty little head, says Giuliani, Trump hadn’t been told what this specific huge payment was for. This was just part of a longstanding arrangement by which Cohen, on retainer, took care of these kinds of things for him.
It “had nothing to do with the campaign,” the President or someone controlling his Twitter feed reiterated Thursday morning.
But just minutes later, Giuliani made clear the cash very much had something to do with the campaign. He told “Fox and Friends”: “Imagine if that came out on Oct. 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.”
This is no mere matter of salacious interest. Federal law says “if any person, including a relative or friend of the candidate, gives or loans the candidate money ‘for the purpose of influencing any election for federal office,’ the funds are not considered personal funds of the candidate even if they are given to the candidate directly.
“Instead, the gift or loan is considered a contribution from the donor to the campaign, subject to the per-election limit and reportable by the campaign.”
That’s the law; nobody’s above it.