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[ad_1] WASHINGTON — President Trump knew about a six-figure payment that Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer, made to a pornographic film actress several months before he denied any knowledge of it to reporters aboard Air Force One in April, according to two people familiar with the arrangement. How much Mr. Trump knew about the payment to Stephanie Clifford, the actress, and who else was aware of it have been at the center of a swirling controversy for the past 48 hours touched off by a television interview with Rudolph W. Giuliani, a new addition to the president’s legal team. The interview was the first time a lawyer for the president had acknowledged that Mr. Trump had reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payments to Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels. It was not immediately clear when Mr. Trump learned of the payment, which Mr. Cohen made in October 2016, at a time when news media outlets were poised to pay her for her story about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump in 2006. ...

[ad_1] WASHINGTON — President Trump undercut his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Friday, and said the former New York mayor will eventually get the facts right regarding a payment to a pornographic actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Giuliani, who joined Mr. Trump’s legal team last month, “started a day ago,” Mr. Trump said, speaking to reporters on Friday as he left Washington to attend a National Rifle Association convention in Dallas. “He’s a great guy,” Mr. Trump said. “He’ll get his facts straight.” It was the first time the president addressed the inconsistent narrative about the payment made by his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels. Mr. Giuliani kicked off the confusion with an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, surprising even some of Mr. Trump’s other attorneys. In a series of Twitter posts the following morning, the president backed up what Mr. Giuliani said. But, on Friday...

[ad_1] In the end, a jury acquitted Mr. Edwards of one charge while deadlocking on the other five, and prosecutors opted not to seek a new trial. Richard L. Hasen , a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, said that after the Edwards mistrial, federal prosecutors will be reluctant to go forward with similar cases unless they have “documentary proof, a smoking gun, that a payment was in fact election-related.” What is the argument that the payment was not campaign-related? In an interview on Thursday on the Fox News program “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Giuliani insisted that the payment was not a campaign contribution. He said Mr. Cohen was trying to help Mr. Trump’s family “to save their marriage — not their marriage so much as their reputation.” But then, muddying that message, Mr. Giuliani said, “Imagine if that came out on Oct. 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.” Separately, in an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Giuliani ac...

[ad_1] On April 5, President Trump specifically said he had no knowledge of the $130,000 payment Michael Cohen made to Stormy Daniels, and referred all questions back to Cohen. Last night, Rudy Giuliani admitted that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 in a series of payments that completed in 2017. During Thursday’s White House press briefing, Sarah Sanders was presented with a  very difficult task are explaining how these two things are consistent. She barely tried. Sanders initially said that “this was information the president didn’t know at the time but eventually learned.” But how could Trump not know about the $130,000 payment by Cohen if he had already reimbursed Cohen? That’s precisely what Sanders was asked next by ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “How could he not have known, he was paying him back?” “I’m not going to get into those details,” Sanders replied. This isn’t an answer but an acknowledgement that there is no answer. CNN’s Jim Acosta gave it another shot. “How can...

[ad_1] HANNITY: They funneled it through a law firm. GIULIANI: They funneled through a law firm, and the president repaid it. HANNITY: Oh. I didn’t know that. He did. GIULIANI: Yep. HANNITY: There’s no campaign finance law. GIULIANI: Zero. Just like every — Sean, Sean — HANNITY: So this decision was made by — GIULIANI: Everybody was nervous about this from the very beginning. I wasn’t. I knew how much money Donald Trump put into that campaign, and I said, “$130,000? He could do a couple of checks for $130,000.” When I heard of Cohen’s retainer for $130,000, he was doing no work for the president. I said, “Well, that’s how he’s repaying it, with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes for Michael. HANNITY: But you know the president didn’t know about this? GIULIANI: Ah, he didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this. Like, I take care of this with my clients....

[ad_1] Mr. Giuliani said that he had spoken with the president before and after his interview on Fox News, and that Mr. Trump and other lawyers on the team were aware of what he would say. On Thursday, Mr. Trump said that he paid a monthly retainer to Mr. Cohen, suggesting, as Mr. Giuliani had, that the payment to Ms. Clifford was not a campaign contribution. The president has repeatedly denied that he had an affair with Ms. Clifford, who has described having intimate contact with Mr. Trump before he became president. Mr. Giuliani’s comments are also in direct contrast to what Mr. Cohen has been saying for months — that he used his own money to pay Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels. Mr. Cohen is under investigation by the F.B.I., which raided his home and office last month and seized documents that included information about the payment to Ms. Clifford. Video Trump Speaks About Stormy Daniels Scandal I...

[ad_1] After months of relative silence, Donald Trump has taken to using Twitter to address the allegations of Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who said she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006. The first occasion, an April 18th tweet in which Trump did not mention Daniels by name but nevertheless complained about “A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools,” earned the president a defamation lawsuit . But this morning, in a series of three tweets, he has made things much worse. Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. These agreements are….. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2018 Trump starts this tweet by admitting that he was fully aware of the $130,000 payment made to Daniels. He had to be aware because he “reimbursed” Michael Coh...

[ad_1] Photo President Trump backed up a surprising announcement by his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who said Mr. Trump repaid a $130,000 payment that Michael D. Cohen made to the actress Stephanie Clifford. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Thursday that he paid a monthly retainer to his former lawyer and fixer, suggesting that a payment to a pornographic film actress was not a campaign contribution — comments that appear to contradict his earlier statements that he knew of no such payment to the actress who says she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The president continues to deny the affair. In a pair of Twitter posts Thursday morning, Mr. Trump backed up a surprising announcement that came late on Wednesday by the president’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who said Mr. Trump repaid a $130,000 payment...

[ad_1] In his first public comment about the Stormy Daniels hush payment, President Trump pretended he knew nothing about it . Pressed on why his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, would, just before the 2016 election, make a $130,000 hush payment to Daniels — a woman who claims to have had an affair with Trump — Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael.” On March 7, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders specifically denied Trump had any knowledge about the payments. Yeah, I’ve had conversations with the President about this…There was no knowledge of any payments from the president and he’s denied all of these allegations. During his first interview as a member of Trump’s legal team , Rudy Giuliani told a very different story about the payment. Giuliani said that Trump personally reimbursed Cohen for the “perfectly legal” payment, but downplayed how unusual that would be. “That money was not...