Donald Trump repaid Michael Cohen the same year Stormy Daniels was given US$130,000 not to talk about ‘affair’, ethics office says
Trump wrote in a mandatory filing that Cohen was “fully reimbursed in 2017” for expenses made in 2016 – the year Daniels was paid off. The disclosure was not included in his 2017 filing, leading to a rebuke from the Office of Government Ethics
US President Donald Trump repaid his lawyer Michael Cohen at least US$100,001 for an expense that occurred in 2016 – the year Cohen paid off porn star Stormy Daniels over an alleged affair with Trump, the director of the Office of Government Ethics said on Wednesday.
Cohen paid Daniels US$130,000 in hush money shortly before the presidential election on November 8, 2016; Cohen said he used his own home equity line of credit to do so, and Trump previously denied knowledge of the payment. Then, two weeks ago, those claims were contradicted by Trump’s latest addition to his legal team, Rudy Giuliani.
Now, in a mandatory filing to the ethics office, Trump has admitted that “in 2016 expenses were incurred by one of Donald J Trump’s attorneys, Michael Cohen” totalling between US$100,001 and US$250,000. The filing says that Trump “fully reimbursed Mr. Cohen in 2017”. The disclosure was not included in Trump’s 2017 filing.
On Wednesday the director of the ethics office, David Apol, said that Trump should have reported the payment to Cohen last year.
The Office of Government Ethics “has concluded that, based on the information provided as a note to part 8, the payment made to Mr. Cohen is required to be reported as a liability,” Apol said in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.