Trump played central role in Stormy Daniels payoff, report says
Wall Street Journal reveals details of hush money payments
President Donald Trump — already implicated in campaign finance violations over a hush payment issued to porn star Stormy Daniels — likely committed other crimes by failing to disclose that payoff in his sworn financial disclosure last year, a new report reveals, according to government ethics experts.
A bombshell Wall Street Journal report published Friday corroborates in exhaustive detail Michael Cohen’s guilty plea from earlier this year, which implicated Trump in committing campaign finance crimes by authorizing Cohen to pay Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election in exchange for her silence about allegedly having sex with the president over a decade ago.
However, the report also reveals previously unknown details about Trump’s involve- ment and awareness of a scheme his corporate lawyer Allen Weisselberg set up to reimburse Cohen for the hush payment — which ethics experts say prove the president broke false statement laws since he wilfully omitted that debt in his 2017 financial disclosure form.
Shortly after Trump’s election, Cohen met with Weisselberg to discuss reimbursing Cohen for the payment he made to Daniels, the Journal reported.
At Trump’s direction, Weisselberg then reportedly designed a reimbursement plan in which Cohen would be paid off in monthly instalments of $35,000, docked in Trump’s financial records as legal fees.
Trump’s financial disclosure form submitted under penalty of perjury in June 2017 did not list that hush payment debt to Cohen.
The Journal's Friday report was based on three dozen interviews, corporate records, court papers and other documents.
A justice department spokeswoman declined to comment.