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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] It may prove to be the most-talked-about secret payment in American political history — the $130,000 that President Trump’s lawyer Michael D. Cohen paid to the pornographic film actress Stephanie Clifford to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump before he became president. That payment to Ms. Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, was a mere 0.005 percent of the $2.4 billion spent on the 2016 election. But it could have an outsize impact on the presidency. The payment has helped spur a lawsuit by Ms. Clifford against Mr. Trump and a federal investigation into Mr. Cohen. Campaign finance watchdogs assert the transaction was the result of a secret, and illegal, effort to subvert election spending laws on behalf of the president. Mr. Trump on Thursday rejected any notion that payments to Ms. Clifford had violated campaign finance laws, though in the course of his defense he contradicted earlier statements that he had known of no payments to the actress. The...

[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] 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] 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...