Illegal hush money paid at Trump’s ‘direction’: court filing
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump directed illegal payments to buy the silence of two women whose claims of extramarital affairs threatened his presidential campaign, the first time prosecutors have connected Trump to a federal crime.
In a court filing, prosecutors said former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen arranged the secret payments at the height of the 2016 campaign “in co-ordination with and at the direction of” Trump. Cohen has previously said Trump was involved in the hushmoney scheme, but court documents filed ahead of Cohen’s sentencing made clear prosecutors believe Cohen’s claim.
The filing stopped short of accusing the president of committing a crime. Whether a president can be prosecuted while in office remains a matter of legal dispute.
But there’s no ambiguity in Friday’s filing that prosecutors believe Cohen’s act was criminal and Trump was directly involved, a disclosure with potential political and legal ramifications for a president dogged by investigations. The payments are likely to become a target for House Democrats gearing up to investigate the president next year. It’s unclear whether Trump faces legal jeopardy over his role.
Federal law requires that any payments made “for the purposes of influencing” an election must be reported in campaign finance disclosures. The court filing Friday makes clear that the payments were made to benefit Trump politically.
In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including campaign finance violations, and detailed an illegal operation to stifle sex stories and distribute hush money to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who had both claimed they had affairs with Trump. Trump has denied having an affair.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement signed days before the 2016 election and is suing to dissolve that contract.
Trump denied in April that he knew anything about Cohen’s payments to Daniels, though the explanations from the president and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, have shifted multiple times since then.
After Friday’s filing, Trump tweeted: “Totally clears the President. Thank you!”
In August 2016, the National Enquirer’s parent company reached a $150,000 deal to pay McDougal for her story of a 2006 affair, which it never published. In 2015, the company’s chairman met with Cohen and Trump and “offered help with negative stories” about Trump’s relationships with women by buying rights to the stories, prosecutors said.
After McDougal contacted the Enquirer, the chairman of its parent company, American Media Inc., contacted Cohen about the story. After Cohen promised the company would be reimbursed, the Enquirer paid McDougal $150,000, according to court documents.