Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that President Donald Trump had no idea his personal lawyer Michael Cohen was using part of a $35,000-per-month legal retainer as hush money for porn actress Stormy Daniels.
The former New York City mayor, who has emerged as the latest legal Trump-whisperer, said the president’s lawyers gave him that information just weeks ago.
‘I don’t think the president realized he paid him back for that specific thing until we made him aware of the paperwork,’ Giuliani said of the $130,000 payoff to Stormy Daniels.
He told NBC News that Trump responded, ‘Oh my goodness, I guess that’s what it was for.’
Trump-whisperer Rudy Giuliani, the president’s newest legal spokesman, says Trump found out only recently that he had reimbursed lawyer Michael Cohen for his hush-money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels
Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 in exchange for her silence about what she claims was a Trump affair a decade ago; Trump paid him $35,000 per month in retainers throughout all of 2017, part of which was a reimbursement
NBC News analyst Willie Geist said Friday that Cohen told friend Donny Deutsch that Giuliani ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about’
NBC analyst Willie Geist tweeted Friday morning, however, that Cohen believes Giuliani is twisting the facts of the case.
‘In a conversation last night with @DonnyDeustch, Trump attorney Michael Cohen says “Rudy Giuliani doesn’t know what he’s talking about”,’ Geist wrote.
Deutsch and Cohen have been seen dining together in the past week, and leaving the posh Barney’s New York together after one lunch.
Multiple different, and sometimes seemingly contradictory, accounts of the money trail in the now famous transaction could all be true.
Trump’s close counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters Friday that she was unaware of the Daniels payoff, which happened in October 2016 while she was Trump’s campaign manager
Cohen claims he withdrew cash from a home equity line of credit in October 2016 to pay for Daniels’ silence, and later said neither the Trump presidential campaign nor the president’s real estate company paid him back.
Trump said a month ago that he knew nothing about the $130,000 payoff and was unaware of where the money might have come from.
And Giuliani is now suggesting that was true at the time, and that Trump was shocked to learn the truth – that he had been paying Cohen $35,000 per month throughout all 12 months of 2017, a total of $420,000.
Trump’s close counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters Friday that she was unaware of the Daniels payoff, which happened in October 2016 while she was Trump’s campaign manager.
She ‘never heard about that during the campaign,’ she insisted. ‘I was the campaign manager. A lot crossed my desk.”
Conway also said she ‘did not’ hear about the payment last year at the White House while the reimbursements were ongoing.
Giuliani revealed this week in a Fox News Channel interview , that Trump repaid Cohen – but maintained that the president found out only weeks ago
Giuliani first said Wednesday night that Trump personally refunded the Stormy Daniels hush money to Cohen through legal-retainer payments over a series of months.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 by Cohen in late 2016 to keep quiet over her alleged affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007
Even some legal analysts’ claims that the initial payment represented a campaign finance violation – an impermissibly large ‘in-kind’ donation – could be off-base, if Cohen didn’t intend it to be a campaign-saving Hail Mary.
That might be the case if he thought, as most pollsters indicated at the time, that his boss would lose the election to Hillary Clinton.
Trump tweeted his own unusually lengthy account on Thursday.
‘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,’ the president wrote.
‘These agreements are very common among celebrities and people of wealth. In this case it is in full force and effect and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels). The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair.’
‘Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction,’ Trump concluded.
Giuliani also denied the payment Cohen made was a political move, saying on Fox News that it was ‘to save their marriage,’ referring to Donald and Melania Trump.
‘I think he was trying to help the family. And for that, the man is being treated like some kind of villain.’
But in the same interview Giuliani seemed to give Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti fresh ammunition, suggesting that if Daniels’ claims of a Trump affair become public during the election campaign, it could have been disastrous for the future president.
‘Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton,’ he said.