TRUMP ON LAWYER COHEN’S GUILTY PLEA: ‘NOT A CRIME’
Trump: Hush, it’s my money
President Trump said yesterday it was no crime to pay off women who claimed they had affairs with him, because it was his personal money — eve n though l awyer Michael Cohen pleaded g uilty to c a mpai g n - finance violations.
President Trump on Wednesday insisted there was no violation of campaign-finance laws when his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen paid a porn star and Playboy centerfold hush money just days before the 2016 election.
“It’s not even a campaign violation,” he told “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt in a 50-second snippet of an interview airing Thursday morning.
Except a federal judge, prosecutors, Cohen’s defense and Cohen himself all agreed in court Tuesday that Cohen did, in fact, violate campaign-finance laws.
Cohen pleaded guilty to one count each of causing an unlawful corporate contribution and making an excessive campaign contribution — both of which are felonies.
When Earhardt asked Trump if he knew about the payments Cohen made, the president claimed he found out only after the fact.
“Later on, I knew. Later on,” he said.
He made that claim despite tapes Cohen released in July that appear to have Trump ordering him in 2016 to “pay with cash” to silence the women.
Trump then denied that the cash came from his campaign — although that was not really an issue for prosecutors.
The funds “didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me,” the president insisted. “In fact my first question, when I heard about it, was: Did they come out of the campaign? Because that could be a little dicey.”
Meanwhile, court documents showed that Cohen paid $50,000 for “tech services” during the 2016 presidential campaign. It was un- clear what those services were for.
Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, argued Wednesday on MSNBC that the president committed a felony simply by knowing about the payoffs and not rectifying the matter.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a campaign contribution or a corporate or a personal contribution — the campaign limits apply,” Davis said. “You committed a felony if you knew about it afterwards and didn’t take that money back.”
Davis also claimed that Cohen — who faces a maximum of 65 years in prison when he’s sentenced in December — would never accept a pardon from the “dangerous” and “corrupt” Trump.
“I know that Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the Oval Office,” Davis told NPR on Wednesday.
In the “Fox & Friends” clip, Trump also made an oblique reference to purported wrongdoing by former President Barack Obama.
“If you look at President Obama, he had a massive campaign violation, but they had a different attorney general and they viewed it a lot differently,” he said, an apparent reference to either Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch, Obama’s two attorneys general.
The feds fined Obama’s 2008 campaign for failing to expeditiously report last-minute contributions.
“It is ethically and morally entirely of a different character,” said Dan Petalas, former acting general counsel and head of enforcement at the Federal Election Commission.
Meanwhile, the Cuomo administration subpoenaed Cohen as part of its criminal probe into the president’ s nonprofit Trump Foundation.
“His attorney said on TV yesterday that Mr. Cohen will tell the truth to federal or state investigations because, you know, the state has an investigation on the Trump Foundation,” Cuomo said.
After the was subpoenaed, Cohen called the state Tax Department — one of the investigating agencies — to set up a time to talk, according to an official.
State Attorney General Barbara Underwood in June filed a suit against Trump and some of his family members, alleging “persistently illegal conduct.”