New revelation on Trump’s payment to porn actress.
WASHINGTON — President Trump knew about a six-figure payment that Michael 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 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 this week touched off by a television interview with Rudy Giuliani, a new addition to the president’s legal team. The interview was the first time a lawyer for the president had acknowledged that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the payments to Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels.
It was not immediately clear when Trump learned of the payment to Clifford, which Cohen made in October 2016, at a time when media outlets were poised to pay her for her story about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006. But three people close to the matter said Trump knew that Cohen had succeeded in keeping the allegations from becoming public at the time the president denied it.
Clifford signed a nondisclosure agreement and accepted the payment just days before Trump won the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied he had an affair with Clifford and insisted that the nondisclosure agreement was created to prevent any embarrassment to his family.
Giuliani said this week that the reimbursement to Cohen totaled $460,000 or $470,000, leaving it unclear what else the payments were for beyond the $130,000 that went to Clifford. One of the people familiar with the arrangement said that it was a $420,000 total over a 12-month period.
Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, has known since last year the details of how Cohen was being reimbursed, which was mainly through payments of $35,000 per month from the trust that contains the president’s personal fortune, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement.
One person close to the Trump Organization said people with the company were aware that Cohen was still doing “legal work” for the president in 2017, but another person familiar with the situation said Weisselberg did not know Cohen had paid Clifford when the agreement was struck and when the payments went through.
Weisselberg’s knowledge of the retainer agreement could draw Trump’s company deeper into the federal investigation of Cohen’s activities, increasing the president’s legal exposure in a wide-ranging case involving the lawyer often described as the president’s “fixer” in New York City.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for the organization did not respond to an email about Weisselberg.