Trump lawyer ADMITS to paying Stormy Daniels $130k…

Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen has now admitted to paying Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, $130k in hush money just before Trump’s campaign began in 2015:

Here’s more from the Washigton Post:

A longtime personal attorney for President Trump said Tuesday that he paid $130,000 to an adult-film star who had told people she had an affair with Trump a decade before he won the presidency.

Michael Cohen, who had previously dismissed stories about the payment, said he paid Stormy Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — using his own money, rather than involving the Trump Organization or the Trump presidential campaign. His comments came after a watchdog group argued that the payout should be viewed as an unreported campaign expense, which Cohen denied.

“I am Mr. Trump’s longtime special counsel and I have proudly served in that role for more than a decade,” Cohen said Tuesday night in a statement first reported by the New York Times. “In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford. Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”

In his statement, Cohen did not say why he made a payment to Daniels or whether Trump reimbursed him or knew about the payment. He did not respond to follow-up questions about these topics.

The watchdog group Common Cause announced last month that it was filing federal complaints alleging that the reported $130,000 payout may have violated campaign finance laws. The group argued that the payment was an unreported in-kind contribution to Trump’s campaign. In a letter to federal authorities, Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance expert with Common Cause, said the settlement should have been considered a campaign expense “because the funds were paid for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential general election.”

This FEC complaint was the reason Cohen actually came out with a statement admitting to the payment:

Note that this is just a complaint to the FEC and we don’t have word as to whether the FEC has actually launched an investigation.

But here’s the rub. While Cohen isn’t explicitly admitting that the affair occurred, the fact that he paid Clifford $130k out of his own pocket suggests to me that the affair really happened and the wanted to keep it off the books. You don’t just pay someone $130k over something untrue.

Besides, if it truly never happened, why not just deny it like they did other allegations that came up during the campaign?


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