President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, told the New York Times that he shelled out $130,000 of his own money to porn star Stormy Daniels, who once claimed to have had an affair with Trump.
Revealing new details about the 2016 payment to the actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, Cohen, who worked as a counsel to the Trump Organization for more than a decade, said he wasn’t reimbursed.
“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,” Cohen said in a statement to the Times. “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”
He declined to say if Trump had been aware that he made the payment, why he made the payment or whether he had made similar payments to other people over the years.
Cohen has previously said Trump has denied an affair with Clifford.
It was the first time he acknowledged his role in the payment, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Cohen said he’d given a similar statement to the Federal Election Commission in response to a complaint filed by the government watchdog group Common Cause, which charged the payment was an in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign.
A statement released by Cohen in Clifford’s name in January denied an affair; she has refused to directly answer questions about it, the Times noted.
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