Trump rebutted on hush money
Sources: He was aware of payoff before his denial
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump knew about a six-figure payment that Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer, made to a pornographic film actress several months before he denied any knowledge of it to reporters aboard Air Force One in April, according to two people familiar with the arrangement.
How much Trump knew about the payment to Stephanie Clifford, the actress, and who else was aware of it have been at the center of a swirling controversy for the past 48 hours touched off by a television interview with Rudy Giuliani, a new addition to the president’s legal team. The interview was the first time a lawyer for the president had acknowledged that Trump had reimbursed
Cohen for the payments to Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels.
It was not immediately clear when Trump learned of the payment to Clifford, which Cohen made in October 2016 o silence her about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006. But three people close to the matter said that Trump knew that Cohen had succeeded in keeping the allegations from becoming public at the time the president denied it.
Clifford signed a nondisclosure agreement, and accepted the payment just days before Trump won the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied he had an affair with Clifford and insisted that the nondisclosure agreement was created to prevent any embarrassment to his family.
Giuliani said this week that the reimbursement to Cohen totaled $460,000 or $470,000, leaving it unclear what else the payments were for beyond the $130,000 that went to Clifford. One of the people familiar with the arrangement said that it was a $420,000 total over a 12-month period.
Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, has known since last year the details of how Cohen was being reimbursed, which was mainly through payments of $35,000 per month from the trust that contains the president’s personal fortune, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement.
One person close to the Trump Organization said people with the company were aware that Cohen was still doing “legal work” for the president in 2017, but declined to say more about what Weisselberg knew. Another person familiar with the situation said that Weisselberg did not know that Cohen had paid Clifford when the retainer payments went through.
If Weisselberg was involved in directing the use of the funds to silence Clifford, it could draw the president’s company deeper into the federal investigation of Cohen’s activities, increasing the president’s legal exposure in the case involving the lawyer.
In interviews Wednesday and Thursday, Giuliani had insisted that the president had reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 hush payment — and then paid him another $330,000, if not more — which was in direct conflict with the long-standing assertion by Trump and the White House that he did not know about the hush money or where it came from.
In an interview with the New York Times on Friday, Giuliani sought to clarify his statements by saying that he did not know whether Trump had known that some of the payments to Cohen had gone to Clifford.
“It’s not something I’m aware of, nor is it relevant to what I’m doing, the legal part,” Giuliani said.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for the organization did not respond to an email about Weisselberg.
The president has said that he would view any investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into his finances or those of his family as “a violation.” However, the probe into Cohen is being run by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
The payment to Clifford is a part of that investigation. The circumstances surrounding it had become murkier this week after Giuliani gave an explanation of how the funds to Clifford were accounted for that contradicted all those that came before it.
The nature of the payments is significant because of campaign finance laws that regulate who may contribute to candidates and how much they can give.
If Cohen or others paid to silence Clifford primarily out of fear that a public airing of her story would have harmed Trump’s election prospects — rather than to keep it from his family for personal reasons — then the payment would most likely be viewed as an illegal campaign expenditure.