Trump says lawyer Cohen did ‘nothing wrong’
But he acknowledges ‘this crazy Stormy Daniels deal’
WASHINGTON – President Trump acknowledged for the first time Thursday that his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen represented him in a deal to buy the silence of adult film star Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Trump.
Weeks ago, Trump denied knowing about the agreement, when it was reached or how Cohen arranged to pay Daniels $130,000 days before the 2016 presidential election. He said he didn’t know where Cohen got the money.
On Fox and Friends Thursday morning, Trump offered a different version of events, saying Cohen represented him on “this crazy Stormy Daniels deal.”
“From what I see, he did absolutely nothing wrong,” he said. “There were no campaign funds going into this, which would have been a problem.”
Trump downplayed his interactions with Cohen as a legal client, saying that Cohen performed a “tiny, tiny little fraction” of his overall legal work and that “Michael is really a businessman.”
Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, and the federal prosecutors pursuing a criminal case against Cohen seized on Trump’s statements to bolster their legal arguments.
Avenatti said Trump’s reversal demonstrates that Trump and Cohen tried to mislead the public. “Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen previously represented to the American people that Mr. Cohen acted alone and Mr. Trump knew nothing about the situation with my client,” Avenatti said in an email to USA TODAY. “As I predicted, that has now been shown to be completely false.”
In a filing Thursday related to the criminal investigation into Cohen, federal prosecutors said very few of the documents seized in an FBI raid of Cohen’s homes and offices April 9 probably were protected by attorneyclient privilege because Cohen had few clients and did little legal work.
As evidence, they quoted Trump’s “tiny, tiny little fraction” remark.
Lawyers representing Cohen and Trump faced off against prosecutors in a federal courtroom in New York on Thursday to argue about who had the right to first review materials the FBI seized in the raid, which was part of a criminal investigation into Cohen’s business dealings.
Lawyers for Cohen wanted to screen the materials before they could be turned over to prosecutors, arguing they may be protected by attorneyclient privilege. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood appointed a former federal judge, Barbara Jones, on Thursday to serve as a special master to conduct an impartial review of the documents.