Stormy Daniels case: Donald Trump admits he reimbursed his lawyer for paying the porn actress
Donald Trump, admitted this Thursday to have reimbursed one of his lawyers the US $ 130,000 paid to reach a confidentiality agreement with Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who claims to have maintained an intimate relationship with the now president of the United States.
In the admission, made through his Twitter account, the US president assured that the money given to his lawyer Michael Cohen did not come from the funds of his campaign for the presidency.
According to Trump, the goal of the payment was to end "the false and extortionate accusations" of the actress.
This comes a few hours after another Trump legal adviser, the newly appointed Rudy Giulani, said in an interview with the Fox News channel that the president had effectively reimbursed his lawyer the US $ 130,000 to pay for the silence of the porn actress Stormy Daniels.
Trump had previously said that he knew nothing about the payment made by attorney Michael Cohen to Daniels in 2016.
The president also denies having had an affair with the porn actress in 2006.
What did Giuliani say?
In the prime-time Fox News interview with host Sean Hannity, the former New York mayor said the money "was funneled through a law firm and the president reimbursed it."
Giulani also insisted that the $ 130,000 was not part of the funds for the presidential campaign. "It was completely legal and did not violate any funding laws."
Rudy Giuliani: #Trump repaid Cohen for Stormy Daniels payment https://t.co/C8jTlglAFv pic.twitter.com/1lsjXJSm52
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 3, 2018
Both Giulani and Trump stressed this because the current investigation is to establish whether the payment was made with money diverted from the campaign, which is a violation of federal election law.
In the interview with Fox Giulani, he added that "Trump didn't know the details that I know of. But he knew from the overall agreement, that Michael Cohen would take care of things like this."
Does it contradict the president?
Just a month ago, Trump denied knowing anything about paying Daniels.
"They will have to ask Michael Cohen," he told reporters who asked for explanations on the matter.
Michael Cohen told the New York Times in February that "neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was involved in the transaction" and that "no one reimbursed me for the money, directly or indirectly."
Giuliani's revelations also raise the question of whether Trump paid off an undisclosed loan. Trump's June 2017 personal financial disclosure form does not mention any debt to Cohen.
What has been the reaction?
Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, has said Americans should be outraged by Giuliani's comments.
"Months ago we predicted that it would end up proving that the American public had been lied to about paying the $ 130,000 and what Trump knew," he wrote on Twitter.
He also told the Associated Press: "Evidently Mr. Trump has been involved in a serious crime ... his conduct, his lies and deception must have consequences."
Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC Washington correspondent
There are two ways to look at Giuliani's shocking revelations about Trump's $ 130,000 refund to his attorney.
The first is that Giuliani was going on his own and has caught the president and the White House communications team by surprise. In that case, Giuliani's return to the political spotlight will be short-lived.
The other possibility is that this reveal was planned. Perhaps Giuliani and the president decided that the legal consequences of hiding the payment were more dangerous than the political risk of admitting that he signed the check and lied about it.
Trump has proven to be bulletproof in most of his political scandals and this one may not be any different. But paying the president and Mr. Cohen could be a violation of the election finance law.
In any case, it seems that the Stormy Daniels case is not going away anytime soon.
What is this payment and what has happened since then?
Stormy Daniels maintains that she had relationships with Trump in 2006, which he denies.
Cohen initially denied having made the payment to the porn actress, but he ended up admitting that she had privately transferred the sum to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016.
According to the lawyer, the payment was made with her own money in exchange for the actress signing a confidentiality agreement.
Cohen denied that the president was part of the deal.
The lawyer is now facing a criminal investigation. Recently, FBI agents searched his home and his New York office in connection with the confidentiality agreement.
In March of this year, Daniels filed a lawsuit against the president, claiming that the agreement was invalid because Trump had not signed it.
He later lost a court motion in which he asked Trump to testify under oath about their alleged relationship.
Although Trump denies having an affair with Daniels, his lawyers are seeking $ 20 million in damages from Daniels for breaking the confidentiality agreement.
The actress has also sued the president for a "defamatory" tweet after she revealed that she had been threatened by a man in Las Vegas to drop her allegations against Trump.
The president called her claims "a total scam."
