Updated
United States President Donald Trump has abruptly changed his story on what he knows about a pre-election hush money payment to the American porn star who claims to have had an affair with him.
Key points:
- Trump said money paid to his lawyer Michael Cohen was a monthly retainer
- He said the payment was "to stop a false and extortionist accusation" of an affair
- Mr Trump previously said he didn't know about the $US130,000 payment to Ms Daniels
Mr Trump reversed his denial that he had any knowledge of the $US130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels.
He had previously said the payment was entirely done by his lawyer Michael Cohen, but now Mr Trump says Ms Daniels was paid for "false and extortionist" claims.
On Twitter, Mr Trump said Mr Cohen received a monthly retainer "from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement".
Mr Trump's tweets outlining the arrangement came after Rudy Giuliani, one of his attorneys, said Mr Trump reimbursed Mr Cohen for the hush money paid to Ms Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election.
His comments appeared to contradict the President's past claims that he did not know the source of the money.
During an appearance on Fox News Channel's Hannity, Mr Giuliani said the money to repay Mr Cohen had been "funnelled … through the law firm and the President repaid it".
Asked if Mr Trump knew about the arrangement, Mr Giuliani said: "He didn't know about the specifics of it, as far as I know."
Mr Giuliani later suggested to The Wall Street Journal that while Mr Trump had repaid the $130,000, Mr Cohen had settled the payment to Ms Daniels without Mr Trump's knowledge at the time.
Mr Trump's comments come amid reports in US media that federal investigators kept logs of Mr Cohen's phone lines prior to raiding his offices, hotel room and home last month, seizing records and documents.
NBC had earlier reported that Mr Cohen's lines were wiretapped to allow investigators to hear the calls, but the news organisation later clarified investigators were only able to see who was calling who.
Undisclosed loan or reimbursement
Experts said revelations over Mr Trump's knowledge of the payment raised a number of questions, including whether the money could be seen as reimbursement for a campaign expenditure.
Asked aboard Air Force One last month whether he knew about the payment, Mr Trump said flatly: "No."
Mr Trump also said he didn't know why Mr Cohen had made the payment or where he got the money.
In a phone interview with Fox and Friends last week, however, Mr Trump appeared to muddy the waters, saying that Mr Cohen represented him in the "crazy Stormy Daniels deal".
The White House referred questions to the President's personal legal team.
Mr Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and ex-US attorney who joined Mr Trump's legal team last month, said the President had repaid Mr Cohen over several months, indicating the payments continued through at least the presidential transition, if not into his presidency.
He also said the payment "is going to turn out to be perfectly legal" because "that money was not campaign money".
No debt to Mr Cohen is listed on Mr Trump's personal financial disclosure form, which was certified on June 16, 2017.
Mr Giuliani also described the payment to Ms Daniels as "a very regular thing for lawyers to do".
Ms Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, called the comment "a stunning revelation".
"Mr Trump evidently has participated in a felony and there must be serious consequences for his conduct and his lies and deception to the American people," he said.
Hannity also Cohen's client
Mr Giuliani made the statements to Fox host Sean Hannity, who has his own connection to the case.
It was recently revealed in court that Mr Hannity is one of Mr Cohen's clients.
Mr Hannity has described his personal dealings with Mr Cohen as centred on real estate advice and said that it "never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone that I was asking him questions".
Ms Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, says she had a sexual encounter with Mr Trump in 2006, months after his third wife gave birth to his youngest child, and was paid to keep quiet as part of a nondisclosure agreement she is now seeking to invalidate.
She has also filed a defamation suit against Mr Trump after he questioned a composite sketch she released of a man she says threatened her to stay quiet.
The White House has said Mr Trump denies having a relationship with Ms Daniels.
Mr Cohen had said previously: "Neither the Trump Organisation nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly."
He notably did not include the President personally.
Asked about Mr Cohen's denial, Mr Giuliani said that he did not know whether Mr Cohen had made the payment without asking Mr Trump but that he had "no reason to dispute that".
'It implicates the President directly'
The payment to Ms Daniels has raised numerous legal questions, including whether it was an illegal campaign contribution and, now, a loan.
"If this is true then it looks like Cohen may have made an unreported loan to the campaign rather than a contribution," said Richard L Hasen, an expert in election law at the University of California, Irvine.
He said that might be better for Mr Cohen, but not for Mr Trump, because it undermines the argument that Mr Cohen was acting independently.
"The greatest significance is that it implicates the President directly," he said.
Law firms advance expenses for clients as a matter of course, and so there's nothing inherently improper about a lawyer covering a particular payment and then being reimbursed for it.
In this case, though, the client who apparently reimbursed the expense was running for President and the money was paid just days before the election, raising questions about whether Mr Cohen's law practice was functioning as a vendor for the campaign and whether the expense was therefore an unreported campaign expenditure.
If so, that could be legally problematic.
Andrew Herman, an attorney specialising in campaign finance law at Miller & Chevalier, said Mr Giuliani's argument that this was a private payment unrelated to the campaign appears to be "pretty far-fetched" given the timing — weeks before the election while Mr Trump was under fire for his behaviour with women and for an "Access Hollywood" tape in which he spoke of groping women without their consent.
But if Mr Cohen or Mr Trump could establish that discussions with Ms Daniels over the payment long predated his run for office, that could help them with the argument that the money was a personal rather than political expense.
ABC/wires
Topics: donald-trump, world-politics, united-states
First posted