President Donald Trump has acknowledged that he compensated his personal lawyer for the money given to a porn star Stormy Daniels after previously claiming he didn't know about the payments at all. However, in a tweet, the president noted that he did so in order to "stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair," and the money paid to her right before elections "had nothing to do with the campaign."
These tweets follow a statement of Trump's legal aide Rudy Giuliani, who told Fox News on Wednesday that Trump had reimbursed his attorney Michael Cohen the $130,000 paid to Daniels. Asked if the president was aware of the arrangement, Giuliani said, that Trump "didn't know about the specifics of it," adding, however, that he knew, that "Michael would take care of things like this like I take care of things like this for my clients." On Thursday, Giuliani added that Cohen may have considered $130,000 payment to be "cheap."
"They said it wasn't true," Giuliani said. "However, imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton. Cohen didn't even ask. Cohen made it go away. He did his job."
Cohen previously denied that the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Daniels, claiming that Trump had never reimbursed him for the payment, either directly or indirectly.Despite his claims, the member of Trump's legal team is facing a criminal investigation in New York, with FBI agents raiding his home and office last month, searching for records about the nondisclosure agreement.
Earlier in April, Daniels released a sketch of a man who allegedly threatened her to stay silent on the issue in 2011.
"A guy walked up on me and said to me, 'Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,'" Daniels told Anderson Cooper in an interview. "And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, 'That's a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom.' And then he was gone."
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Daniels is currently trying to break away from the nondisclosure agreement she signed prior to the 2016 election which has kept her from speaking on the alleged affair she had with Trump in 2006. For the White House, the very fact that a payment in course of 2016 campaign may have taken place could be problematic and raise serious legal pressure.