Rudy Giuliani, the former NY mayor who recently joined the president’s legal team, was first to disclose on Wednesday that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the payment over a period of several months.
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Trump asked Daniels, to which she replied, “A resignation”.
Mr Giuliani, who signed on to Donald Trump’s legal team last month, “just started a day ago”, Mr Trump said.”He is a great guy”, the President said as he left Washington for a National Rifle Association convention in Dallas, “He’ll get his facts straight”. Donald Trump has denied that he knew about a payment to Stormy.
Rudy Giuliani, who has had a disastrous week as Trump’s mouthpiece, tried to clean up some of his recent comments that tied Trump directly to payoffs to porn star Stormy Daniels. One of the people familiar with the arrangement said that it was a US$420,000 total over a 12-month period. Trump is anxious that the payment – which prevented a potential scandal just days before the 2016 election – might constitute an illegal campaign donation if Cohen used his own funds, as he has claimed, and was not reimbursed.
Giuliani’s insistence the money had nothing to do with the campaign is complicated by the fact that Daniels’ silence was secured just days before the 2016 presidential election, and as Trump was dealing with the fallout from the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women. Last month, FBI agents raided Cohen’s home and offices as part of a criminal investigation in NY into the longtime Trump lawyer and fixer.
The attorney for adult-film actress Stormy Daniels is calling the latest statements by President Donald Trump’s new attorney “an absolute unmitigated disaster”.
“It’s a trainwreck”, Avenatti said, pointing to multiple contradictory statements Giuliani had made.
“He’s entitled to that”, Giuliani said to Hannity, adding, “So he fired him”.
Giuliani acknowledged that “politically”, it could be troublesome.
“He’s working hard learning the subject matter”, Trump said.
Trump’s lawyers could negotiate a civil penalty that would be a maximum double the amount originally paid, small change for Trump. “But a storm’s a’comin’, baby”, she said.
The payment to Clifford is a part of that investigation.
Kate McKinnon played Rudy Giuliani, “Trump’s lawyer and worst nightmare”.
“How could I ever be confident” that the president won’t take the Fifth Amendment, Giuliani said to ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview on This Week on Sunday.
“What do you need for all this to go away?”
In his Friday statement Giuliani said that his “references to timing” were to his own “understanding of these matters”. Noah concluded. “The Stormy Daniels thing was supposed to be the simple scandal in Trump’s story, but now it’s about lawyers and campaign finance and bureaucracy”.
But to Giuliani’s central thesis – that the repayment meant that no campaign finance laws were broken – the law is fairly clear.
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After the parade of star power continued to dazzle, Trump finally asked Cohen to settle things once and for all with Daniels, and his former lawyer made the call.
